The Safekeep Themes & Motifs

Yael van der Wouden
This Study Guide consists of approximately 40 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of The Safekeep.

The Safekeep Themes & Motifs

Yael van der Wouden
This Study Guide consists of approximately 40 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of The Safekeep.
This section contains 1,953 words
(approx. 5 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy The Safekeep Study Guide

Desire and Intimacy

The novel explores the complexities of human desire and intimacy by centralizing Isabel and Eva’s secret relationship. Before the two characters become involved, Isabel has “[n]ever wanted anyone” or known what it is like to be intimate with anyone outside of her family (86). She has begun to see the neighbor Johan, but does not feel any real attraction to him. She therefore lives a lonely life in her old family home, with little concept of what her future might hold for her relationally. In large part, the absence of sex and love from Isabel’s life is inspired by her repression. She does not experience her sexual awakening until she and Eva share their first “rushed and clumsy embrace” at the end of Chapter 5 (77). This experience awakens Isabel’s desire and loosens her character in new ways (108). In the past, she regarded...

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This section contains 1,953 words
(approx. 5 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy The Safekeep Study Guide
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