I think a lot of this story is about the difficulties of a young woman who can't rely on her own taste and good sense, and feels she needs others to tell her what to think. In that way she is a little like Catherine in NA.Lucy can't think for herself
Posted by Kate on February 15, 1998 at 11:00:41:
I think a lot of this story is about the difficulties of a young woman who can't rely on her own taste and good sense, and feels she needs others to tell her what to think. In that way she is a little like Catherine in NA.
As well as the scene in Santa Croce, where Lucy is helpless, without her Baedecker, to know what is beautiful, there is the scene in the following chapter, where she asks Mr Beebe whether Mr Emerson is nice or not nice - she can't work it out for herself.
She is dependent on others to tell her about what she has experienced and what it means - till the crucial experience in the Piazza, where something important happens, and she knows it has, and so does George - but he won't tell her what it is. She has to muddle (a word which appears quite often) through and try to work it out for herself.
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