46 pages • 1 hour read
Patricia HighsmithThe Price of Salt
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1952A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Consequences of Love and Lust
The title of the novel suggests the central theme, with “salt” serving as an obsolete term for “lust,” and “lust” representing a more sensational word for “love.” In the 1950s, lesbian pulp novels portrayed highly sexualized lesbian relationships. Highsmith’s publishers likewise marketed The Price of Salt as a titillating lesbian novel, so the allusion to lust in the title gave their audience a reason to buy the novel. Advertising aside, sexual desire is a central element in the story, as Carol and Therese’s love is inseparable from their keen longing for one another. Thus, the primary consequence of love is irresistible attraction. Their bond is the product of love at first sight, with the narrator stating, “Their eyes met at the same instant […] Therese could not look away” (28). Therese is immediately consumed by her feelings for Carol, compelling her to send her a card. Carol advances their initial attraction by calling Therese at work and making plans to see her. As a result of their mutual attraction and desire, their relationship snowballs, each becoming more absorbed in the other. Therese in particular cannot focus on much of anything else, and her desire for Carol reshapes her relationships, especially with Richard. Having felt true love, she can no longer pretend that she loves or wants him. With this, a consequence of love is self-knowledge; Therese becomes more assertive and less complacent, pushing for what she wants rather than accepting what’s given.
The couple’s indomitable lust continues on their road trip, creating moments of true connection. When Therese and Carol finally have sex, Therese acknowledges that it simply feels right, as if their bodies fit together. This contrasts sharply with her descriptions of sex with Richard, which are unpleasurable. As such, love and lust open a new world to Therese where she feels true intimacy and pleasure. At the same time, their desire exposes them to danger. Though they discern a detective is following them, they still have sex—they are unable to resist each other, and it’s “as if their bodies were of some materials which, put together, inevitably created desire” (195). Despite knowing the consequences—Carol knows the stakes from the beginning because she knows Harge, represented in her taking a gun on the trip—their lust for each other hinders their judgment. This demanding attraction lasts until the end, drawing the two women back to each other after their separation. Therese’s desire for Carol pulls her away from the cocktail party and to the Elysee, and Carol’s mutual attraction for Therese manifests when her “hand wave[s] a quick, eager greeting” (257), a moment of vulnerability rarely shown by her character. Therese and Carol remain in love—undeniably drawn to each other—and their love is so strong that it manifests a happy ending for them when most lesbian novels of the time ended in their characters dying or marrying men.
Atomization and Alienation
Atomization and alienation align with the consequences of love, as Therese’s love for Carol is often isolating and distancing. Therese’s love for Carol separates her from people and her goals. When Carol asks Therese to go on the road trip with her, the narrator quips, “As if [Therese] wouldn't turn down a job on a ballet set to go away with Carol—to go with her through country she had never seen before, over rivers and mountains, not knowing where they would be when night came” (111). This alludes to Therese’s feelings of alienation at the beginning of the novel, before she meets Carol. She feels disconnected because she can’t find work in her chosen field or relate to her boyfriend. At Frankenberg’s, her isolation is born partly out of consumerism. The large department store is a symbol of capitalist alienation. Though she sees her coworkers every day, she has no connection with them, and the one coworker who reaches out to her, Ruby, terrifies her. A coworker steals her raw steak, literally taking food out of her mouth and symbolically depriving her of physical and emotional nourishment. Additionally, the consumerism in the store leads Therese to think of dolls as babies and customers as things without distinct meaning. On the busy Friday before Christmas, Therese sees the customers get “swept away and lost in the gluey current that filled the aisle” (33). In the book, capitalism alienates people from their humanity, transforming them into a “current”—a mass of tiny, indistinguishable parts.
When Carol becomes the center of Therese’s life, her dependence on her causes her to lose her sense of self. She presents the road trip as liberating and juxtaposes it with Frankenberg's suffocating atmosphere, yet the road trip becomes another form of alienation from the broader world. The couple turns into a tiny unit, moving from town to town without a solid purpose, distantly corresponding with their loved ones through telegrams, letters, and phone calls. Even the private detective’s work secretly recording them represents a type of alienation—human connection reduced to covert photographs and audio recordings. While Therese and Carol find pleasure and true connection in each other on their road trip, the trip is also a way of escaping their lives—Carol is avoiding Harge, and Therese, Richard. As such, the trip reveals their lack of sustainable, meaningful identities—they can’t live on the road forever.
Once the detective reveals himself, the women become alienated from each other, splitting into discrete identities rather than a passionate unit. This is represented first when Carol refuses Therese’s physical touch in public; their love and passion can only exist in private, and Therese becomes isolated in public. They physically separate when Carol flies back to New York and Therese stays in Sioux Falls, where she doesn’t do much but think of Carol. In Chicago, Therese counters her isolation. She gets a job she likes, building an identity outside of this love affair, and she goes back to New York feeling like she’s a part of the world. Certain city streets used to give Therese a “sense of oppression,” but she now feels “a tense excitement” and wants “to plunge headlong” into them (245). In this way, The Price of Salt is a coming-of-age novel with Therese growing into a young woman who is ready to interact with the city—and with Carol—in a way that allows her to be a whole person.
Love, Obsession, and Learning to Let Go
The theme of love, obsession, and learning to let go links to the book’s meditations on alienation. Part of what contributes to Therese’s initial feelings of isolation is not knowing her feelings or how to responsibly interact with others. This is particularly true regarding Carol, as Therese’s feelings for her are so intense that they border on obsession. She becomes jealous with Carol speaks with Abby, even though their romantic relationship is ostensibly over. She doesn’t even like when Richard speaks with Carol, feeling as though he is squandering her time with her. Therese doesn’t want to share Carol with anyone else, and her love consumes her. These feelings are represented by the lyrics to “Easy Living,” which are a motif in the novel: “Living for you is easy living […] There’s nothing in life but you” (Billie Holiday, “Easy Living”). Adrift in her life as a retail worker, Therese is shaping her life around Carol rather than pursuing her own interests or goals beyond desire.
While ostensibly romantic, obsession is dangerous. Highsmith represents this clearly through Richard and Harge, both of whom respond to their love interests’ indifference with obsession. Despite Therese’s unhappiness and their lack of connection, Richard refuses to let go of Therese and is convinced he can fit her into the mold of a wife. This is symbolized by the traditional Russian dress his mother gives Therese, which she finds beautiful but absurd and not to her taste. Even when Therese escapes on her road trip with Carol, Richard clings to her, sending a telegram that claims to know her mind better than she does. On the more extreme end, Harge’s entire role in the novel is an obsessive force, dedicated to ruining Carol’s chances at having love, even maternal love. Regarding his efforts to get sole custody of Rindy, she explains to Therese: “It's not love. It's a compulsion. I think he wants to control me” (113). If he can’t have Carol, no one else can. His obsession with Carol is captured by him hiring a private detective, an invasive person who doggedly follows the two women in pursuit of what he wants—for the detective, a payday; for Harge, Carol’s unhappiness.
The antidote to obsession is knowing when to let go. Dannie highlights this when he tells Therese about his sublime revelation while riding a horse in Pennsylvania. He explains,
[I]t made me very happy. I thought of all the people who are afraid and hoard things, and themselves, and I thought, when everybody in the world comes to realize what I felt going up the hill, then there'll be a kind of right economy of living and of using and using up (106).
Thus, letting go isn’t about discarding people—it’s about sharing people and experiences with the world. People shouldn’t hold onto themselves, their experiences, or others as if they were commodities because this is ultimately dehumanizing, the novel argues. This mentality does require an equal society, and since The Price of Salt is set at a time when lesbian relationships were illegal and stigmatized, letting go does result in an utter loss for Carol, who loses the right to see her daughter. However, she ultimately gets free from Harge, allowing her to pursue her love for Therese. When Therese lets go of Carol, she self-actualizes, finding meaningful work and building a separate identity from their relationship. She is no longer simply living for Carol, and this new balance opens up a sustainable path to love, represented in their final reunion at the end of the novel.
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