APS TOGETHER
Day 11
Chapter 3, pp. 196-210 (from “Arnold’s father had been sitting in the ice-cream parlor" through “He’s never going to listen to me,” Miss Goering said to herself.")
December 13, 2020 by Claire Messud
Miss Goering’s quest for self-realization has led all her hangers-on into ever-stranger circumstances. Arnold’s father, weary, renounces and wants only to go home. Arnold, though, remains charmingly importunate, which both saddens and pleases her.
Like Andy, Ben pays no attention to what Miss Goering says. He deems her a prostitute, and she will become a kind of prostitute. She will abandon Andy just as she abandoned Arnold and his father; but her choices have, to her, an inexorable logic.
“Together they entered a tiny automatic elevator and Miss Goering’s heart nearly failed her.” (p.210) Her claustrophobia is more powerful than any fear of Ben’s brutality and malevolence. (You’ll recall that Mrs. Copperfield too fears elevators…)
