Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk

Like Phoebe Snow, the Oreos are connected to The Influence and Illusion of Advertising, but they also represent The Power of Memory Versus the Inevitability of Change. They become a symbol of everything Lillian finds wrong with the modern world and the inability to escape the reach of corporate advertising. What Lillian calls “their industrial-strength sweetness” could also be used to describe her impression of the strategies used to advertise them (13): “Instead of appealing to my reason, my thrift, or my taste, those Oreos insinuated themselves into my unspoken desires and anxieties” (36).

Their appearance coincides with many moments of anxiety for Lillian, beginning with her conversation with Johnny. Both topics they discuss—Julia and leaving the city—are anxiety-inducing. Later, the Oreo commercial on the bar television illustrates her distaste for change, its jingle a sign of the “infantilization of the country” (37). As she arrives at Wendy and Peter’s party, a place she knows she will not fit in, she recognizes that their apartment is the birthplace of Oreos. As a symbol, the Oreos come full circle: Lillian is unable to resist them at the novel’s beginning or escape their ubiquity by the novel’s conclusion; in the same way, she is unable to resist the pull of advertising or escape the inevitable changes wrought by time.

The mink coat is the armor that Lillian wears when going on her journey into the dangerous world. It is a symbol of her independence and ambition, her willingness to flout society’s rules, and her pride in the ability to do so: “I top it all off with my mink coat, obviously. [...] I bought it for me. Myself. In 1942” (16). Lillian later reveals that buying the coat was an attempt to reconnect with the person she had been before her son was born and recover a sense of identity. This only reaffirms her “status as an imposter, an agent provocateur” (282), demonstrating her uncomfortable place within The Evolving Roles of Women in 20th-Century America—she doesn’t feel suited to her role as mother, but neither is she still the darling of the advertising world. Her own evolution is emphasized when she wears the coat unapologetically two decades later, when “the world seemed to accept me as a person who ought to be wearing it” (283). As a suit of armor, the coat becomes its own form of illusion and advertising, presenting Lillian as the person she has always wanted to be and a tangible symbol of her professional accomplishments.

The cadences of language are closely connected with Lillian’s professional and personal identity, and this motif is closely connected with The Infinite Possibilities of New York City. Lillian recognizes poets and artists who share her ability to appreciate the possibilities of the city, from some poems that are “full of the real sounds of people’s voices and the vitality of the street” (41), to contemporary rap lyrics, which “are freed to lead the rappers where they will, by way of their own intrinsic music” (189). Lillian’s ability to respect words and styles that differ from her own demonstrates that her true guiding principle is creativity and an interest in the world.

Throughout the novel, Lillian frequently lapses into poetic rhythms and rhymes, with lines such as, “I rejoiced in rest from rump and roast, from spuds and the suds of dishes washed” (147), or “[a] chance to try again and get it right, since the last time I was here, I didn’t quite” (152). Her ability to toss these phrases into ordinary conversation suggests that poetry is so much a part of who she is that she creates it naturally, without thinking. It is also in some ways a defense, an attempt to control her situation through language, as when she creates a pun about Max’s tendency to “over do” things and the overdone steak during lunch at Delmonico’s. As she says, her professional writing was a break from the realities of the Depression for her readers, who “found repose in my pose, world-weary but still cheery” (53), so it is a respite for her and an opportunity to believe again in the possibilities of the future.