# Cope Makes an Evasion explained — Bertram Cope’s Year > Chapter companion for Bertram Cope’s Year by Henry Blake Fuller. ## What happens Randolph visits Joseph Foster, who is knitting and expresses bitterness about Cope's fainting episode at Mrs. Phillips' dinner. Foster compares the women's fussing over Cope to a religious festival in Florence. Randolph reveals he is moving to a new apartment and plans to host small gatherings. He also reflects on his limited knowledge of Cope's background, having only consulted a Freeford directory. ## Themes in this chapter ### Youth vs. Middle Age Foster's bitterness toward Cope's youthful vigor and the attention it garners contrasts with his own physical limitations. ### Performance and Artifice The women's dramatic reaction to Cope's fainting is compared to a religious festival, highlighting the performative nature of social interactions. ### Class and Provincialism Randolph's investigation of Cope's family through the Freeford directory reflects class-based curiosity and provincial social structures. ## Character check-ins ### Basil Randolph Visits Foster, discusses Cope's fainting, and announces his plan to move to a new apartment. ### Joe Foster Knitting in his room, expresses bitterness about Cope's fainting and compares the women's reaction to a religious festival. ### Bertram Cope Referenced as the subject of Foster's bitterness; his fainting episode is discussed. ### Medora Phillips Mentioned as having told Foster about the fainting episode and as being out strolling. ### Hortense Dunton Mentioned as having fainted the morning after the dinner, according to Foster. ### Rosalys Cope Listed in the Freeford directory as a schoolteacher at the same address as David L. Cope. ## Key lines > I remember how, when I was in Florence, we went out to a religious festival one evening at some small hill-town near by. This was twenty years ago, when I could travel. There was a kind of grotto in the church, under the high altar; and in the grotto was a full-sized figure of a dead man, carved and painted—and covered with wounds; and round that figure half the women and girls of the town were collected, stroking, kissing— Adonis all over again! Foster compares the women's fussing over Cope to a religious festival in Italy where women venerated a statue of a wounded man. _Foster's bitterness and envy of Cope's physical vitality are expressed through this analogy._ > I suppose you know that your young friend got up a great to-do for us the other evening? Foster sarcastically refers to Cope's fainting episode as a dramatic performance. _Highlights Foster's resentment and the theatrical nature of the incident._ > If I had only picked up another bone or two, I might really have put together the domestic organism. Yet why should I trouble? It would all be plain, humdrum prose, no doubt. Glamour doesn't spread indefinitely. Randolph muses that learning more about Cope's family would likely reveal an ordinary, unglamorous background. _Reflects Randolph's ambivalent curiosity about Cope's origins._ ## Links - HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/bertram_cope_s_year_se/chapters/xiv-cope-makes-an-evasion - Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/bertram_cope_s_year_se - All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/bertram_cope_s_year_se/chapters