Even More On Beauty

We are called in this novel to investigate the left, and the liberal. We get the feeling that perhaps she may be anti-left insofar as she makes Howard appear to be an ugly person. When Howard is talking to the curator at the museum, for example, he talks down to him and acts superior. Yet Smith shows him in a light that makes it unattractive. His attitudes prevent him from making anything that is truly beautiful, including himself.

The epigraph at the beginning of the section chapter called "Anatomy Lesson" is a quote by Elaine Scarry, which says, "To misstate, or merely understate, the relation of the universities to beauty is one kind of error that can be made. A university is among the precious things that can be destroyed." In this chapter, Zora originally threatens the Dean French to expose her father's affair with Claire in order to get into a class. In this instance, the university is not something that defends or creates beauty at all. The accrediting of grades is something that prevents the protection of true beauty.

When Zora and Carl speak before Zora starts her second year at Wellington, one can see that the true beauty and intellectualism is much truer and real outside of the university setting. In their conversation, Carl comes out seeming as the best type of student, self-motivated not by grades or transcripts or future expectations but only by desire to learn more. This is a true kind of beauty. Every student has the desire and potential to be like Carl however sometimes maybe the social structures prevent it. In this way, at times we are dead in our education.

Howard is also one who feels dead, the living dead, with his own intellect, personal life, and beauty. He tells his students that "beauty is a mask that power wears," a Western myth and preaches the anti-beauty. This shows how Howard is dead in both his personal and work life, saying the same lines "for six years straight" so repetitively that he probably doesn't believe it anymore.

As we read the rest of this novel, it will be crucial and difficult to tell which side of the culture war is winning.