Preview of Paradise Summary:

If the social concerns and themes associated with the evolution of Ruby are stasis, conservatism, violence, and patriarchy, the alternative locus of the novel, the "Convent," represents an antithesis to each of these as surely as the iceberg and the Titanic are converging entities in Thomas Hardy's poem "The Convergence of the Twain."

While much of the plot of Paradise involves the reader's unraveling the motives and dynamics of the Ruby men's violent assault on the Convent to kill or drive away the "convent women" (both motives are plausible at one time or another in the book), one thematic center deals with the ways in which the two locations contrast with one another to form a dialogue on several topics, among which we can isolate austerity vs. hedonism, fixity vs. freedom, stasis vs.