Throughout Ruth’s childhood she had encountered many different intriguing characters. While enrolled in a private French school, Ruth establishes of a friendship with Béatrice. Béatrice's character can be described to be like crème brulée, she carries a tough outer coating yet she has very tender and sensitive qualities on the inside. In her initial relationship with Ruth, Béatrice 's outer shell dominates and she is portrayed to be a rude character but upon further analysis hard layer can be seen as a defensive mechanism, serving to protect her tender insides from harm. Ruth's early opinion of Béatrice holds a judgmental attitude, for she states, “the worst was the banker’s daughter, Béatrice, the richest girl at school”(61). However, just like crème Brulée, more Ruth interacts with her, the harder shell breaks away, revealing a change in attitude, and ultimately a new side of Béatrice.
As their friendship grew stronger, and Ruth got to experience Béatrice’s lifestyle she realizes that Béatrice also has a broken family. Béatrice struggles with detached parents and having Ruth come over for dinner reconnects Beatrice and her father. This makes both Ruth and Béatrice happy and strengthens their friendship. When Béatrice finally experiences love from her father and Ruth is able to share her happiness when she see that, “even in the dark I could hear the smile in her voice”(70).
Overall, Béatrice is an admirable character to both Ruth and the reader. This can be seen through the author’s language and description of Béatrice. The author’s depiction of Béatrice’s lifestyle is envied but not requested. The luxury that Béatrice lives in, which is impeccably described throughout the passage, is admirable but the detached family that she lives with gives a whole new aspect of Béatrice. The reader pities Béatrice for having such a distant mother, yet Ruth is able to relate to Béatrice since she also lives in a broken home.
This is a very strong interpretation of beatrice. I was impressed by your comparison of her with Creme Brulee and I found it to be very accurate. When Ruth first meets Beatrice she appears to be a bully and does nothing but steal her food. However, as Ruth starts to break down the barriers put up by the absence of love from her parents and develop a friendship, the reader sees that Beatrice is actually a sweet girl and only needed a good friend like Ruth to help her be happy and build a relationship with her father.
ReplyDeleteI especially thought your review of Beatrice was exceptional. I think your parallels with Ruth's mother and Beatrice's mother are a great addition to buttress your point that Ruth and Beatrice are great friends because they can connect on that deeper level. In many ways I think Beatrice represents the hurt and pained people in life that use anger and bullying as a means of showing their frustration with their own selves. It was a good thing that Ruth was fortunate enough to see the underlying side of Beatrice's malevolence because otherwise the readers of the novel would have definitely had the same interpretation of her--that she was somewhat a malicious antagonist to Ruth. The revealing of Beatrice's broken home gives reason to her hate and anger while bringing the reader closer to her character. Good job on this post, I thought it was very well-thought out!
ReplyDelete