240
PARTISAN REVIEW
speculate upon the moral implications of their own carnivore natures.
Louise and Sarah feed off the Daphnes of this world. As Louise
acknowledges:
"If
you mean that my way of life-our way of life–
exists through the existence of theirs ... well, yes, I suppose one does.
It is a minority way, isn't it Sal? Money, theatre, books.... " So,
questions Sarah, we cannot live without them? "How could we? We
live by our reflection in their eyes." Fair, such an arrangement is not.
But, insists Louise, the question of fairness is pointless. "London
wouldn't be London if it weren't for the provinces. Oxford wouldn't
have been Ox if it hadn't been for Redbrick. School wouldn't have been
school if it hadn't been for secondary moderns. What can you do about
it, except make sure that you come out on top every time?" And Sarah,
reflecting on the overwhelming importance, for a woman, of looks-an
importance comparable to grace-courageously faces the uselessness of
pretending that beauty, the flesh, does not matter.
" It
does matter. And
yet there is no moral in it." No moral at all if one discounts the
advantages of diet, fresh air, health care, clothes, and all those other
trivia that only money can buy.
Looks had afforded Louise her great chance on the London
market. One cannot ignore the echoes of prostitution in her deliberate
marital bargain. Such coldblooded mercenariness proved, in the event,
a sin. But mainly a sin against the looks themselves and love. Louise
should have married the handsome, adequately wealthy actor she
loved, as she seems likely to do at the novel's close. The London
birdcage, that carousel of theatres and television, gloss and chic, rich
fabrics and large drinks, stands firm . The suggestions of critical
distance resolve themselves into reflections on how nice middle-class
girls who want to get ahead and to be happy should deal with it.
A Summer Bird Cage
establishes themes that recur in more
mediated, disguised, or sophisticated forms throughout her work. Of
these, the themes of society and success, love and fate, sexual relations
and personal identity, figure prominently. As does her identification
with an established literary tradition: she refers not merely to Webster
and Forster, but to Austen, George Eliot, Wordsworth, and a host of
others. That discussion of art and of the artistic rendition of female
destiny in particular follows through the rest of her novels. Like the
carefully chosen, precise references to contemporary life (London
addresses, details of interiors, descriptions of clothes, brand names)
these allusions invite identification and recognition, the contribution
of the extratextualto the experience of the text. Such references can also
mislead. For Drabble eschews the social dimension, which, having
