What did you think of Bessie?!
My eyes lit up every time she walked into the room.
I love how she's described as a "refreshing eyesore" among Manhattan matrons, who are always dressing up to go shopping at Saks. Bessie, by contrast, looks as if she never leaves the building at all. She putters around in her ancient kimono with the added-on pockets, containing "two or three packs of cigarettes, several match folders, a screwdriver, a claw-end hammer. a Boy Scout knife that had once belonged to one of her sons, and an enamel faucet handle or two, plus an assortment of screws, nails, hinges, and ball-bearing casters — all of which tended to make Mrs. Glass chink faintly as she moved about in her large apartment." Isn't that spectacular?
Did you even wonder why they were having the apartment repainted to begin with? Can you imagine Bessie, that old Vaudevillian, ever getting dressed and entertaining company? Did anyone ever visit? Still, there's something endearing about the way she pads from room to room all day trying to keep things going, battling clutter, worrying about the bath mat, trying to fix things, from the enamel on Zooey's teeth to Franny's mental state (as if there's not really much difference between the two chores).
One of my favorite moments in the book is when she tells Zooey, "Oh, I'd like to put a diaper on that mouth of yours!"
What do you think she added to the book? What was her role?
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She was easily the most approachable, the most funny, the most sympathetic character in the book - at least, to me.
ReplyDeleteI was shocked that Zooey kept referring to her as "Fatty," which seemed at the time to be disrespectful and callous, to say the least.
In light of the ending of the book, however, it may be meant as one of the most endearing titles of all.
Yes, she was marvelous. Zooey called her a hoyden and an Irish rose and Fatty and a Druid (capital D), and each time I saw her in some new and earthy light.
ReplyDeleteI guess I thought of her as very fertile and powerful. Somehow she and her husband conceived these seven unusual kids, but however fussy she seemed, underneath she was very shrewd. The gifts the kids had came from some secret source hidden underneath her exotic/ridiculous trappings.
I adored her.
I love a quirky mom character.
ReplyDeleteI could see how annoying she would be as a mom, constantly invading your privacy and monitoring your well-being and giving advice. But she was definitely endearing. And I think Zooey's insults were meant in a good-natured way. Bessie didn't seem to take much offense.
I love a quirky mom character, too, Erin!
ReplyDeleteOddly, I enjoyed Zooey's name-calling, because I understood the names as terms of endearment, as Shanxi suggested. Christy, I love your characterization of those words casting Bessie in an earthy, fertile light. Her willingness to be called names — and even to be called "Bessie" instead of "Mom" by her children — bespeaks a kind of freedom of expression in the household that probably payed an important role in the kids having expansive, open minds and questioning authority.
At one point the narrator describes Bessie as still having great legs, and you get the sense that if she cared to, she could still turn heads. So that's another reason that the names didn't bother me. I kind of understood "fatty" not as a reference to her physical size but to her mental size (the way she spread herself into her kids' lives so thoroughly).