The Chaperone

“Were people just stupider then? Meaner? Maybe, Cora allowed. But it was foolish to assume that had you lived in that time, you wouldn’t be guilty of the same ignorance, unable to reason your way out. Cora herself had only escaped that particular stupidity because of her special circumstance. Other confusions had held her longer.

There’s plenty of stupidity now, the grandniece said, and I know it for what it is. True, Cora conceded, and I’m proud of you for that. But maybe there’s some more, and you don’t know it’s there. Do you know what I’m saying? Honey? To someone who grows up by the stockyards, that smell just smells like air. You don’t know what a younger person might someday think of you, and whatever stench we still breathe in without noticing. Listen to me, honey. Please. I’m old now, and this is something I’ve learned.” 

This flash-forward scene lets Cora express feelings about social attitudes that future generations will one day look back on. She acknowledges that the process of social change is an ongoing one. The comparison of social evils to stockyard smells makes it clear that Cora agrees that they are a negative influence on society, but she points out that the average person living through them doesn’t see them that way.

“Cora had no doubt she was looking at Louise: even crying, the skin around her eyes puffed with rage, she was strikingly beautiful. She was short and small like her mother, with the same pale skin and heart-shaped face, the same dark eyes and dark hair. But her jaw was firmer, and her cheeks were still as cherubic as young June’s. Framing all this was the remarkable black hair, shiny and straight and cropped just below her ears, the ends tapering forward on both sides as if forming arrows to her full lips. A smooth curtain of thick bangs stopped abruptly above her brows. Viola was right. For all her resemblance to her mother, really, this girl looked like no one else.” 

This passage offers a detailed description of Louise. The emphasis is on the uniqueness of her appearance, especially in the early 1920s as the avant-garde “flapper” styles were just beginning to gain popularity. It’s clear that Cora recognizes Louise’s striking beauty in this first meeting. 

“Of course, in just a few years, Cora would better understand Louise’s annoyance with her father’s ignorance: being the best dancer in Wichita was hardly the end of her ambition. In just a few years, they would be reading about her in magazines, about her films, about her wild social life. She would receive over two thousand pieces of fan mail a week, and women all over the country would be trying to copy her hair. Before the decade was out, she would be famous on two continents. By then, if Leonard Brooks wanted to see his eldest daughter dance and dazzle, he would have to pay at a theater like everyone else, and gaze up at a thirty-foot screen.” 

The details of Louise’s later fame reveal that her trip to New York does in fact launch her career, as she hopes it will. The passage also highlights Leonard’s distance from his daughter by suggesting that he thinks she’ll return to Wichita after the summer ends. The fact that he will have to view her films in a theater like a stranger emphasizes the lack of emotional connection between them.