ATDTDA (12): An inappropriate eagerness, 343-347 #2

[Paul Nightingale]

At the outset Smokefoot's separates "two distinct worlds" (345), that
occupied by customers and that "populated by the sizeable regiment of
cash-girls ." etc. Dally is faking it when she comes here; she poses as a
customer but gains access as an acquaintance of an acquaintance of. Her aim
is to find a dress that will allow her to fake it at the party; consequently
there is a tension between her status and her aspiration. She is out of
place, and endures "small humiliations, taking mannequins once or twice for
real women" (346); yet has gained access by fooling (?) the doormen, "living
pillars before whose serene inertia one was either intimidated into moving
along or not".

One can see continuity, then, from the popular theatre where Dally works to
the up-market department store where she performs another kind of work. As
an anthropologist, Dally struggles here to get by; she has to interact, not
with people, but with the machinery of commerce presented by the store:
doormen, mannequins, but also the "elevator, a newly-introduced conveyance
[she finds] miraculous". She is not just another customer, and her status is
constantly under review. To go back to the "two distinct worlds": there is
imbalance between "artfully illusory spaces" and "the less merciful
topography", and also between "the store's customers" and "the silent and
sizable regiment" of employees listed in rigorous fashion (345).

Adopting Dally's pov the text focuses on the store (building and employees);
Dally makes a dismissive reference to "this bunch of old frumps" (346), but
that is about it-until the appearance of the figure she decides must be
Erlys. Again, the text juxtaposes "could have been another clothes dummy at
this distance" to the detailed description of "the deep central courtyard
that ran vertiginously up through all twelve floors ." etc (347). The
"figure in lady-shopper's streetwear" is, in context, nondescript, as though
mass-produced yet "somehow demanding [Dally's] attention": a product that
the consumer decides she must have because it contributes something to her
identity.

Dally has now lost her powers of observation: "The rest of the shopping tour
floated by in nebulous incoherence." She has lost her critical faculties: ".
the details were like cards tossed on the table of the day that upon
inspection could not be arranged into a playable hand". The section ends by
returning to what lies behind the "veil separating two distinct worlds": the
harpist is exposed, and Katie takes her into the "underlit chill" of the
basement. The text therefore positions Dally on that side of the veil; the
mysterious figure seems out of reach on the other side. We end in a
sweat-shop with "women at sewing machines", effectively an extension of the
machines they operate, afraid to look up and acknowledge another's presence.
As employees they would otherwise be invisible, the final word with the
division of labour that modern capitalism requires.