Carol - Patricia Highsmith
Continuing to challenge collective views of sexuality, 50 years later.
Carol haunts us, for it echoes our current society while tempting us to analyze and empathize with this timeless classic. Carol’s alluring quality lies in the subtle way Highsmith invites her readers to forget the era in which the novel is set. Although written in the late 1940s, we may easily mistake this progressive piece as a contemporary novel.
The novel Carol, by Patricia Highsmith was first published in 1952, under the pseudonym Claire Morgan with the original title "The Price of Salt". To quickly summarize this rich novel, Therese Belivet, a young ambitious stage designer first meets Carol Aird, a suburban house wife and mother, while working as a seasonal employee in a department store. Their relationship slowly grows into friendship and then blooms into lovers as they decide to take a road trip westward across America. Without ruining the novel for those of you who I hope will be interested in reading Carol I will reveal that the love between these two women causes challenges for them in the face of a judgemental society, not unlike the challenges that the LGBTQ+ community still face today. Highsmith invites us to explore the struggles these women face when questioning their sexuality. The love shared between Carol and Therese is not trivializing or glorifying lesbian relationships, but allowing all readers to connect to them on a basic human level. Therese explains that she isn’t in love with Carol because she is a woman, but with who Carol is as a person.
Carol carries significant weight and depth in regards to sexuality. Our education system could benefit by offering our students a novel that demonstrates not only the value of recognizing that non-heterosexual couples exist but also demonstrates that homosexual couples deserve and can achieve a ‘happy ending’. This classic novel is progressive because it was one of the first novels where the gay characters were not beaten or severely punished, did not die or commit suicide, but instead displayed hope for a future. In an afterword, Highsmith explains that
“prior to this book, homosexuals male and female in American novels had had to pay for their deviation … by switching to heterosexuality (so it was stated), or by collapsing - alone and miserable and shunned - into a depression equal to hell. Many of the letters that came to me carried such messages as ‘Yours is the first book like this with a happy ending! We don’t all commit suicide and lots of us are doing fine.’ … As I remember, there were as many letters from men as from women, which I considered a good omen for my book” (Highsmith 1989).
For these reasons, Carol is severely under-ratted as a novel. Carol encompasses the human experience, and making readers feel uncomfortable with the characters (not just for the characters), empathizing with their sense of urgency and unease that accompanies questioning one’s sexuality, and falling in-love with someone who may not love you back. It also demonstrates the raw fear and total discomfort that comes from loving someone secretly, or loving someone you’re not “supposed to”. Highsmith keeps her readers on the edge of their seats, forever wishing, forever hoping for love to triumph over prejudice and the patriarchy.
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