Love

Over the course of the collection, the author explores the ways in which love and intimacy might alter the individual's understanding of herself and her circumstances. Each of the main characters and narrators in the Five Tuesdays in Winter collection possess a different view of love and relationships, and over the course of each short story, the characters' views evolve. For example, in "Creature," as a 14-year-old girl, Carol has an innocent and youthful understanding of love and romance. Indeed, her two weeks at the Pikes' mansion make her believe that romance can be a fantasy, not dissimilar to those she has read about in classic literature. Because she is reading Jane Eyre, in her early days at the house she says that she "suddenly felt so much closer to Jane," and that her letter to Gina gradually "took on the tone and vocabulary of Charlotte...