Intellectualism

The novel's protagonist and narrator, Frances, is proud of her intellectualism, and the novel explores how intellectualism can define both personality and worldview. As a child, she says, she regularly fantasized she was the smartest person in her school (33). Though she regularly reads the work of well known theorists, she does not necessarily accurately assess either their ideas or how she is applying those ideas to her own feelings and actions. While attending a production of Tennessee Williams' 1955 play, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Frances notices a care label inside the slip of the actress who is playing Maggie. Because the actress does not conceal a contemporary care tag, Frances says, the play's psychological realism is no longer authentic for her (27). Her experience at the play, she says, makes her think of the work of French, postmodernist theorist, Jean Baudrillard, “though […] these were probably not...