Bertram Cope’s Year · Chapter
XXXI: Cope Gets New Light on His Chum explained
Cope returns to Churchton and observes Lemoyne's intense preparation for a theatrical performance, where Lemoyne plays a female role with unsettling verisimilitude.
What happens
Cope returns to Churchton and observes Lemoyne's intense preparation for a theatrical performance, where Lemoyne plays a female role with unsettling verisimilitude. The performance draws mixed reactions: Mrs. Phillips dislikes it, Carolyn Thorpe is indifferent, and the Pearsons condemn it. Randolph offers faint praise that thinly veils his criticism. After the show, Lemoyne's offstage antics—embracing a male performer in character—lead to a violent rebuff and his expulsion from the university. Cope, now seeing Lemoyne as a liability, reluctantly seeks Randolph's help again, but Randolph refuses. Lemoyne becomes a drag on Cope as he finishes his thesis, and the two plan a summer together, leaving Randolph to vie for Cope's attention.
Themes in this chapter
Performance and Artifice
Lemoyne's theatrical role blurs gender lines and exposes the tension between authentic self-expression and social acceptability; his 'art-structure collapses' when he carries the act too far offstage.
Gender Roles and Sexuality
Lemoyne's feminine portrayal and offstage advances challenge conventional masculinity, provoking violent rejection and institutional censure.
Social Manipulation and Patronage
Randolph's calculated aid and withdrawal, along with the university's decision to expel Lemoyne, illustrate how patronage networks control social and academic standing.
Characters to notice
- Bertram Cope
Returns to Churchton, plays tennis, grows uneasy with Lemoyne's theatrical preoccupations, and feels personal chagrin at Lemoyne's downfall.
- Arthur Lemoyne
Immersed in dress rehearsal for a female role; his performance is too convincing, leading to offstage scandal, physical rebuff, and expulsion from the university.
- Basil Randolph
Attends the performance, offers a veiled critique to Cope, and later refuses to help Lemoyne again, appearing almost pleased by the outcome.
- Medora Phillips
Finds Lemoyne's performance distasteful, as anticipated.
- Carolyn Thorpe
Watches Cope play tennis and thinks of writing a poem; at the performance, she enjoys the chorus girls but is not drawn to Lemoyne's character.
- George F. Pearson
Attends with Amy, criticizes Lemoyne's makeup and gown, and expresses dislike for him.
Key passages
“Most amateur drama is based, perhaps, on the attempted 'escape': one likes to bolt from his own day, his own usual costume, his own range of ideas, and even from his own sex.”
Amateur theater often serves as a form of escape, allowing performers to temporarily abandon their everyday identity, clothing, thoughts, and even gender.
The narrator reflects on the psychological appeal of theatrical transformation, especially cross-dressing.
“It was Arthur Lemoyne's fortune—or misfortune—to do his work all too well.”
Lemoyne's success in playing a female role was both a blessing and a curse, as his convincing performance provoked discomfort and condemnation.
Irony: his artistic skill leads to social and academic ruin.
“He brusquely cleared himself of Lemoyne's arm with a good vigorous push. This effort not only propelled Lemoyne against some scenery and left him, despite the voluminous blond wig, with a bruise on his forehead; it immediately pushed him out of his part, and it ended by pushing him out of the organization and even out of the University.”
A male performer violently shoved Lemoyne away when he tried to embrace him in character, causing a bruise and triggering a chain reaction that expelled Lemoyne from the play, the club, and the university.
Physical rejection as a metaphor for social expulsion; the push is both literal and symbolic.
