Colm Tóibín at The Nation:
Fiction about young girls has often been in thrall to silence, secrecy, and evasion. In Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, for example, young Fanny Price moves on tiptoe, daring anyone to notice her. Instead, all the noticing is done by her. Her duty is not merely to stay in the shadows but also to remain quietly pleasant and accommodating. So, too, the young Catherine Sloper in Henry James’s Washington Square shares her feelings with no one, and thus her feelings deepen. She is at her most interesting when she is at her most silent and withdrawn.
In 1952, in the third chapter of Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Price of Salt, there is a sudden jolt, a kind of shock. From now on it is clear that Therese, the 19-year-old shop assistant, is lesbian. This is established not because of what she says, or even because of what she thinks. Rather, it is done by her eyes. We learn about her because of how she returns the gaze when one of the customers, a woman called Carol, gazes at her. The woman’s “eyes were gray, colorless, yet dominant as light or fire, and caught by them, Therese could not look away.”
more here.
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