Annemily's Blog

Most of the characters we have met so far are either members of an elite and secret boys club (Win Everett, Laurence Parmenter, George de Mohrenschildt,T. J. Mackey) or one of Lee’s male friends. So far, the women in Libra tend to be playing traditional and supportive roles (love interest, mother, daughter). The exception to this is Dr. Braunfels. Dr. Braunfels seems pretty cool. She is some sort of spy boss who speaks a ton of languages. When Lee tells her that all he really wants is to defect to Russia, she stays focused on what she needs while keeping Lee calm: “What she wanted him to do, for now, was put aside any thoughts of defecting and concentrate on getting access to classified documents and photographs” (111).  Even though Dr. Braunfels acts really professionally, the narrator describes her completely differently: “She has a full mouth and pudgy hands. There was a mock girlishness about her, several levels of something tricky and derisive” (111). This negative image

In Maryland, the social center is the cookhouse. Tom Weylin rarely enters it and according to Dana “sometimes old people and children lounged there, or house servants or even field hands stealing a few moments of leisure” (94). I think Dana’s place in the 1800s can be traced pretty well by her comfort in the cookhouse. When she first enters the cookhouse (in “The Fall”), Dana is uncomfortably out of place: Supper was corn meal mush. The cook saw that I was looking at it instead of eating it, and she misread my expression. "That’s not enough?” she asked. “Oh, it’s plenty!” I held my bowl protectively, fearful that she might give me more of the stuff. “Thank you.” (73) Dana doesn’t yet know that the cook is Sarah. She doesn’t feel comfortable saying that she doesn’t want the food. Sh e is terse and polite. Dana doesn’t know how to cook in the 19th century and spends most of the re st of “The Fall” learning from Sarah. By “The Fight,” Dana is much more comfortable