Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk

“Women in my day spent $150 million on cosmetics annually. I helped get them to do it. Tonight on the street, under orange lights, women will walk by, their arms through the elbows of their men in overcoats, their eyes lined in blue. The blue pencil I used in my day was to mark up copy, ad copy.”

Lillian contextualizes the power of advertising and her role in it, which she characterizes with the ironically positive “helped.” Her observations of the makeup the women wear emphasizes the passage of time and the changes that have occurred since she was young. The notice she takes of bright and contrasting colors also represents Lillian’s strong attention to detail.

“The use of the passive voice to disguise one’s role in the making of a decision is imprecise and obfuscatory. You’re a better adman than that.”

Lillian scolds her boss Chester for using the passive “it’s been decided” to explain why Macy’s cannot give her a raise. Her use of the term “adman” is intentional, as she is daring him to state outright what he doesn’t want to say: A woman simply isn’t allowed to make as much as a man.

“But I thought that its beauty outweighed its folly, and that a little grandiosity in the Depression wasn’t actively hurting anyone, even if it wasn’t necessarily helping, either.”

Lillian’s admiration for the Empire State Building represents her love of risk and beauty. She identifies with the landmarks around her, seeing traits in them that she values in herself, as her fortunes rise alongside them. As with other events and issues, her opinions run counter to the general consensus, making her stand apart from society as the novel’s picaro.

“It gets me out, and it keeps me healthy, and no one on the street seems to want to mess with me, as they say on the street. All my friends in New York—back when I still had friends, before everyone moved away or died—had mugging stories, but I’ve never had trouble.”

Rooney packs a lot of ideas into these two sentences: Lillian’s love of walking, her efforts to keep up with the latest trends and slang, and her fierce independence as a last holdout against the tide of people she sees leaving her city behind. They also foreshadow the fact that before the night is through, she will have her own mugging story.

“Miss Lockhart missed that rebelliousness was the thrust of Antigone, seeing only that it was old, a classic, and Greek. To her mind, this kind of material would attract the right kinds of fiancés, men with college degrees and social mobility. The script had uplift and values, and had withstood the onslaught of time.”

Lillian and Helen perform plays to make money to get an apartment of their own, so the story of Antigone represents independent thought and the freedom to make their own choices. The allusion also represents generational differences in values, exemplified in the women and Miss Lockhart, who parallel Antigone and Creon.

“I was scared to death, but I ended up being a natural. Plus, I learned by working there the best way to be stylish—seams always straight, nose never shining, lipstick never faded, coiffure always in curl or wave—without being one of those women other women are prone to hate.”

Lillian reflects on her first job and what she learned from it. In addition to demonstrating her ambition and professional goals, she focuses on the balancing act that went into creating the illusion of the perfect working woman—the need to be pretty but not so pretty as to be unlikeable—connecting with The Evolving Roles of Women in 20th-Century America.

“Back when we lived in the now-foreign land of our happiness, he would give the bottle to the baby and wash dishes with agility, if only occasionally.”

This quote uses metaphor to suggest that happiness can be a place, something that can be left behind and lost. It also reflects her admiration for Max and his efforts as a husband and father, which are uncharacteristic for the time period and therefore part of the reason she loves him. It emphasizes The Power of Memory Versus the Inevitability of Change.

“I assured her that while I am not much of what I used to be, I am still a walker—that since everything else in my life is mostly gone, I just am in the city. I just like to be here.”

Lillian insists that Wendy not treat her like an old woman while acknowledging that that is what she is. Her words emphasize her lived connection to the city and the sense of rightness she has there that she would not have anywhere else. Now that everything else is gone, the city is her only constant and the only place she feels truly herself.

“Lace and satin and showers of rice. Nice if it stops you from thinking of the years ahead, when you’ll be boiling that rice into mush to feed a screaming infant while your husband’s out on the town, trying to find someone new.”

Olive has baited Lillian by arguing that every girl dreams of her wedding day, and Lillian retorts that few women looked beyond the dream of that day to the realities that would follow. It emphasizes her distinction between the notion of marriage that is advertised and the reality of it; ironically, Lillian will have just the experience she describes.

“You’re different from everyone else. All the rules and emotions and obligations that guide most of us through life—they’re invisible to us. They’re natural, like breathing. But they’re visible to you. And you use that to manipulate people.”

This characterization sums Lillian up as a picaro, and her mother says this as an insult, telling her that her gifts for language and psychological intuition are weaknesses that will make her unhappy. Lillian, acknowledging that what she views as her skill is difficult to turn off, is frustrated to realize later in life that her mother was right, and that even though she can see the strings, she is subject to the same manipulations.

“It is possible to stay indoors during a storm and end up struck by lightning all the same.”

Lillian characterizes the day she meets Max. Though she has scorned the idea of love at first sight, she finds herself struck by it. The language she uses to update an old saying nods to her insistence that even though love as a lightning strike is an old cliché, she is experiencing it in her own way.

“Worst of all was a suspicion, one I could neither dismiss nor explain, that my scoffing had done nothing to check the stupid sentimentality that it took as its target, but had actually strengthened it somehow, amounting in the public eye to a few rounds of witty banter prior to the taming of the shrew.”

After her engagement to Max, the newspapers use variations of “we told you so” when printing the news. Lillian is dismayed that this has undone her image as a proudly single professional woman. By alluding to The Taming of the Shrew, she suggests that her love story has become a cliché itself, with her as the woman who just needed a strong man to tell her what to do all along.

“My long walks, I discover, have provided a rich reserve of encounters with odd, enthusiastic, decent people; I hadn’t realized that I have these stories until someone asked to hear them.”

Lillian makes this discovery during her dinner with Penny and her family at Delmonico’s. It represents The Infinite Possibilities of New York City and her enduring interest in connecting with the people around her.

“But the other thing I felt—that no one had ever told me I might—was that as much as I loved him, I could never be totally sure that I wanted him around forever. I did not know if my life was categorically ‘better’ for having him here.”

This illustrates Lillian’s ambivalence about motherhood and her struggle with The Evolving Roles of Women in 20th-Century America. Despite all the positive things she does feel in common with other mothers, this doubt contributes to her sense of herself as an imposter.

“Walking the surface street, I cannot deny, is scary: a bizarre no-man’s land. There are people down here, not many, who are as good as ghosts. In order not to bother or be bothered by ghosts, you just act like you’re one of them.”

Lillian briefly sheds her armor of fearlessness to admit that some places in the city feel unsafe. Her characterization of the people as ghosts acknowledges the substance misuse epidemic of the city in the 1980s. Later in the novel, Lillian describes her experience with depression and alcohol use disorder as turning her into a “ghost” as well.

“‘Maritza,’ I say, ‘don’t worry too much about what anybody’s grandmother thinks. Do whatever you want. Anyone who tells you shouldn’t is trying to sell you something.’”

Lillian’s advice to Maritza is the same basic advice that Lillian has followed throughout her lifetime—it emphasizes the inevitability of change and the evolving roles of women generationally. Lillian suggests that this kind of judgment is “selling” a way of life, or an idea about life, that aligns with societal expectations rather than personal happiness. This reinforces the idea that dominant society is the antagonist of the novel.

“She shadowed me for years, feeding off her inarticulate anger at the world, and when she saw that I was weak, she attacked. She sabotaged every effort I made to adjust my dime-bright expectations to my middle-aged maternal circumstances [...].”

Lillian attempts to describe the process of reconciling reality with the illusion of a life she had tried to create for herself. She personifies her depression as another version of herself, one who refuses to accept the inevitability of change.

“When I have all of Manhattan to choose from I tend to dither, to hold out for perfection—but as any poet can testify, limits encourage both inspiration and decisiveness.”

Lillian uses the rules of poetry as a metaphor for decision-making when searching for a hostess gift for Wendy. It suggests that infinite possibility can be a double-edged sword, in which too many options make decisions impossible.

“Lots of immigrant people work in Manhattan hospitals now, and they need a place to buy their stuff. [...] We’ve been in the States for twenty years, ever since I was a little kid. We came when a lot of other Asian people came, after the law changed.”

Lillian’s interaction with CJ acknowledges New York City’s changing demographics and its long history as a city of immigrants. It also shows that racism and discrimination persisted despite reforms, even as the city relied on its immigrant population to keep the city running.

“The point of living in the world is just to stay interested.”

As Lillian nears the end of her journey, she states her motto and guiding principle. It encapsulates her perspective and describes the source of all her interactions in the novel.

“As I try to remember what I’ve read about the disease, I can’t help but steal a downward glance at my own exposed fingers, veined and pale against the dark.”

At Wendy’s party, one of the guests suggests that she believes that all LGBTQ+ people have AIDS. The encounter depicts the kinds of prejudices, fears, and misinformation that marked the early days of the epidemic. Lillian’s response illustrates these fears and characterizes her: She recognizes her own possible preconceptions and vulnerabilities but is also unwilling to be commanded by fear or societal panic.

“I say it sometimes because it feels true. More true than anything else I can tell people, anyway. We live together, we love each other, but he’s not my boyfriend. If I say he is, then people want to know when we’re getting married. If I say he’s just a friend, then people think it’s weird, like it’s a problem, and they want to help me find my own place, or to set me up with some nice guy they know. And I don’t want that. I’m with Peter. It’s different, but it works for us.”

Wendy struggles to explain her relationship with Peter and the lies she often feels pressured into telling about it. Her difficulty articulating this mirrors Lillian’s own struggle to come to grips with the conflicts between personal ambition and societal expectations, suggesting that while many things have changed, society still creates many of the same pressures.

“On postcards it never rains. Our honeymoon was like a postcard. Our second ocean voyage was not like our honeymoon.”

Lillian idealizes her honeymoon, figuratively capturing the contentment she felt traveling with Max and literally emphasizing the beauty of the places they visit. She reiterates the first two sentences from earlier in the novel to create a contrast in the third sentence that emphasizes the impact of her depression.