Pearl

Pearl is a steady character, dependable and trustworthy, especially at work. At work, she creates contentment plans for people’s happiness. This only requires that Pearl swab the cells inside her client’s cheek, then read the list that the Apricity machine generates. While other colleagues have left the company, Pearl has stayed, just as she stays in her marriage until her husband has an affair with a younger woman and leaves. She continues to be “steady, stalwart, even-keeled” (6), though not necessarily creative. She seems content just where she is, even when she is worried over her son’s illness. Her physical features appear to match this dependability: “dark-cropped hair around her ears and neck in a tidy swimmers cap: features pleasing but not too pretty; figure trim up top and round in the thighs and bottom” (7).

Over the course of the novel, the emotional strain of Rhett...