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

[kelber at mindspring.com]

I. J. K., aside from its unit-vector reference, sounds like a description of B. Altman's, one of the last remaining original stores of the Ladie's Mile.  The building presently houses the Library of Science, Industry and Business and an outpost of City College.

http://www.preserve2.org/ladiesmile/

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: Paul Nightingale <isreading at btinternet.com>

>
>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.
>