Themes & patterns

The narrative revolves around Medora Phillips and Basil Randolph maneuvering to control and possess Bertram Cope through invitations, gifts, and influence, treating him as a social trophy to be displayed and managed.

Multiple characters, including Amy, Hortense, Carolyn, and Randolph, project romantic or possessive feelings onto Cope, while Cope himself shows stronger emotional attachment to his male friend Arthur Lemoyne, creating a web of unreciprocated and subtly homoerotic tensions.

The book contrasts the vitality, idealism, and self-absorption of youth (Cope and his peers) with the nostalgia, envy, and controlling impulses of the middle-aged characters who seek to recapture their own youth through the young.

Theatricality pervades the novel, from Lemoyne's cross-dressing stage performance to the characters' social performances—posing as artists, poets, or lovers—highlighting the gap between authentic self and social facade.

The text explores rigid gender expectations through the 'entertaining' young women and the scandalized reaction to Lemoyne's feminine portrayal, while Cope's intense bond with Lemoyne suggests a coded exploration of same-sex attraction in early 20th-century America.

Cope's modest background as an instructor from Wisconsin is contrasted with the wealth and cultural pretensions of Churchton's elite, who view him as both an exotic novelty and a subordinate to be patronized.

Cope becomes the object of artistic creation—painted by Hortense, written about by Carolyn, and sung about by Amy—reducing him to a passive muse rather than an active participant in his own life.

Characters seek escape from social obligations, romantic entanglements, or provincial life (Cope's longing for Winnebago, the trips to the dunes), yet remain confined by the expectations and gossip of the small college town.