Cleopatra and Frankenstein

“What is a wedding, Cleo wondered, if not a private dream made public, a fantasy suspended between two worlds like a cat’s cradle? But Cleo had never dreamed about getting married. What she fantasized about was her first solo show as an artist, a day dedicated solely to her.”

This quote highlights how Cleo’s dreams are centered on her art, not on her role as a wife. Cleo falls into a marriage out of necessity; no matter how much she loves Frank, they wouldn’t have had to get married if not for her citizenship status. Even so, her reflections about the wedding as a “private dream made public” emphasizes that in marrying Frank, she’s making a dream come true that she never knew she had. She characterizes the wedding as a “fantasy,” which foreshadows the disillusionment of her and Frank’s marriage.

“What did reality have to do with anything anyway? Quentin hated reality. Reality was sweaty and ugly […] It was his father lecturing him in broken English about being a man. It was all of Poland, that run-down junk shop of a country […] No, Quentin wanted fantasy.”

In wealthy New York City, life resembles a fantasy. People with money, like Quentin, have access to everything. But fantasy is fantastical for a reason—eventually, it dissipates and reality sets in. The more the characters in this novel embrace fantasy, the more lost they become. For example, Quentin wants fantasy so badly because his reality is lonely; this pursuit eventually turns into a drug addiction. Zoe, Cleo, and even Frank also try to live in unrealistic worlds, which ultimately deceive them.

“[A]t heart he was still a bit of an idealist. He’d skipped college and started as a copywriter at eighteen, coming of age at a time when it was still possible to make work that felt, somehow, important.”

Frank gave up on his own dreams of being an artist in order to be financially stable. He’s had to set his natural idealism aside to make ends meet, then even further to continue with his lucrative success. Frank has spent his life making responsible choices about his career and the structure of his life. This puts him in a situation of false security. Even though Frank doesn’t have to struggle for money like his sister or his parents, Frank’s wealth precludes him from realizing that he has other problems and dreams he hasn’t attended to. Though his job earns him money, respect, power, and awards, this quote reveals that he no longer finds his work artistically fulfilling or important.

“Her mother would have loved the architecture of the cathedral. She always said that a building should be two parts contentment, one part desire. Cleo had never understood what that meant, but now the phrase returned to her like a prophesy. Two parts contentment, one part desire. It seemed a good formula for living, though one she had not mastered yet. Her mother certainly never did.”

Cleo carries her late mother with her everywhere. In this quote, Cleo reveals a life lesson her mother tried to teach her: Essentially, life should be about contentment. Contentment is not the same thing as happiness—it implies satisfaction, not joy. Desire is also important in life, but not as much as contentment is. Cleo struggles to live that way, as desire characterizes most of her motivations in life. Even so, this “prophecy” is a warning against a life consumed by desire.

“On the back of the bike, the world softened and smeared. She stretched her arms out either side of her and grabbed palms full of solid air. The night was a thousand black butterfly wings beating against her skin. Cleo understood why bikes were so often described as freedom; not for their ability to take you elsewhere, but for the way they transformed the place you already were.”

As an artist, Cleo is sharply and deeply observant of the world around her. Here, Mellors uses imagery to reveal how Cleo can appreciate seemingly minute moments in life. Cleo is a deep thinker and feeler. She can transform an average bicycle ride into an adventure. This also reveals that Cleo is interested in metamorphosis and foreshadows that she is too young and desirous of change to be in a marriage with Frank long term. Cleo doesn’t necessarily need an escape, but she craves a life in which her environment can be unpredictably interesting and beautiful. This quote uses a metaphor, a comparison without using “like” or “as.” In this case, “the night” is compared to “a thousand black butterfly wings beating against her skin.”

“I am lonely, of course. I’m so lonely I could make a map of my loneliness. In my mind it looks like South America, colossal, then petering out to a jagged little tip. Sometimes I’m so lonely I’m not even on that map.”

This quote features a simile—a comparison using “like” or “as”—that emphasizes the depth of Eleanor’s loneliness. Eleanor likens her loneliness to the map of South America. She has loved ones in her life, but she craves the romantic love and support of a partner. Eleanor is close with her mother but doesn’t want to have a life where her mother is her only friend. Eleanor’s loneliness is more manageable than the loneliness of the other characters, like Cleo. Eleanor has the skills that allow her to navigate loneliness and stay true to the best parts of herself.

“Some people have six toes. Some people get caught in forest fires and suffer third-degree burns all over their body. Some people have headaches they ignore for months, then finally go to the doctor only to find out it’s a brain tumor that kills them within weeks having never achieved their life’s potential. I did not end up pretty. Big whoop.”

Eleanor knows how to keep her life in perspective, a strength and tactic for thriving through the various stresses and pressures of life. Eleanor is not considered a beautiful woman, but she doesn’t allow that to get in the way of her life. She accepts what’s good instead of focusing on what’s bad, which sets her apart from the other characters who tend to wallow in their conflicts. The imminent death of her father also helps Eleanor keep her perspective intact, as she understands the value of life. Eleanor’s attitude shows maturity and intelligence. The repetition of “some people” creates rhythm.

“The wrong half. I keep repeating the phrase in my mind as we walk. I want to tell Frank that there is no wrong half, no halves at all in fact, that if there were, we’d be busy halving ourselves again and again until we got to the little square of us that was good and then we would all be free to love and be loved.”

Mellors emphasizes Frank’s low self-esteem. It can be difficult for others to see this part of him because he tries to maintain the façade of wealth, good looks, prosperity, and happiness. Internally, however, Frank struggles—he doesn’t know himself and is entrapped within his past. In contrast, Eleanor understands that a human being is a whole being and that creating disparate identities is unhealthy. Eleanor is a person who loves unconditionally, who cherishes people for their flaws as well as their strengths. This implies that Eleanor would make a good partner for Frank.

“Talking to his mother bewildered him. He wished he loved her a little more or hated her a little less, something to tip the scale. Instead, he lived in the fraught balance between the two, each increasing the intensity of the other: the more he longed for her, the more disappointed he felt by her; the more disappointed he felt, the more he longed.”

Frank’s relationship with his mother is formative and at times destructive. Frank wants to extend compassion to his mother but has a difficult time resolving his resentments toward her from his past. As an adult, he no longer needs his mother the way he did when he was younger, but they can’t develop a friendly relationship.

Frank’s mother is largely absent from his life. This quote highlights that he craves a compassionate relationship. She continues to disappoint him, pushing him further and further into his resentments. This quote emphasizes how complicated relationships can be; love and hate are emotions that are close in proximity. There is biological and sociological pressure to love one’s mother, which makes Frank’s fraught relationship with her even more troublesome for him.

“She used to take such care with her appearance; he loved watching her get dressed each day for work. He’d supported her decision to quit doing the textile design, a job she’d sniffed at as beneath her fine art pedigree, to focus on painting. Now he suspected that was a mistake. It wasn’t good for her, all this free time. He was happy to support her financially while she made art, but she’d been painting less and less. And this anger she had about women in the art world, women anywhere, really…Passion was one thing, but hysteria was another. It only seemed to be growing in her as her painting life dwindled.”

This quote foreshadows the beginning of Frank and Cleo’s break-up. Frank appreciated when Cleo took care of her appearance; this emphasizes that his attraction to her is often more surface-level and about others’ admiration of her beauty rather than her internal beauty. The text also suggests that Cleo doesn’t believe that she should have to work for money, implying an unrealistic sense of entitlement on her part. Frank funds Cleo’s life so she can stop work and focus on her art, exacerbating Cleo’s inability to be independent.

This quote also reveals Frank’s growing resentment—despite enabling her new lifestyle, Cleo has stopped painting and has become quite angry about the treatment of women in the world. This shows a side to Cleo that Frank doesn’t appreciate. He prefers Cleo when she’s agreeable, suggesting that Frank married Cleo unrealistically, believing that she would always be cool and never show her anger. Frank doesn’t seem to consider that Cleo’s apathy toward her art and her anger toward the world are signs of her depression returning, highlighting how little Frank truly knows or wants to know the real Cleo.

“Frank was watching himself as if he was not himself. He felt gruesome and powerful at once. He had never been allowed to be angry growing up. He had never been allowed to feel anything. Now, the anger blanketed all other feelings. There was no shame, no remorse, no tenderness. He felt protected and untouchable. He felt drunk.”

Here, Mellors characterizes Frank in parallel with his literary nickname, Frankenstein’s Monster. Like the Monster in Shelley’s classic novel, Frank struggles between the extremities of his emotions. He keeps so much of his feelings tampered down, preferring to be agreeable. In not expressing himself, Frank ultimately unleashes his feelings in a rage.

Frank has not discovered a healthy balance for his expressing emotions. When he unleashes his anger and shame, he likens it to being drunk. This reveals both a repressed emotional connection with his drinking and how good it feels for him to finally speak the truth.

“Anders’s own feelings for Cleo were a riot of contradictions. His initial reaction to the prospect of her telling Frank about them had been terror, almost repulsion. Now, in the quiet of the taxi, the thought of Cleo being his all the time, out in the open, not just for a few stolen moments, kindled a warm blush of pleasure within him. But at what cost would that pleasure come? He’d known Frank for over two decades, Cleo only a year. But being with Cleo made him feel reckless, as though he could burn his life to the ground and rebuild it anew.”

Mellors uses possessive language to emphasize that men want Cleo for how Cleo makes them look and feel—"the thought of Cleo being his […].” Anders doesn’t express love for Cleo because of who Cleo is. Instead, he loves how Cleo makes him feel young, reckless, adventurous, and new. Anders doesn’t want a partnership with Cleo; he wants to “have” Cleo, and to show her off to the world. He is willing to sacrifice a decades-long friendship, demonstrating that he is motivated by ego and desire. This foreshadows how Anders’s relationship with Cleo is doomed to fail.

“Only then, in the quietness beneath, did the new feeling arrive. It was shame. Shame that she had quit her job, shame that she did not paint, shame that she had married Frank, shame that he was in love with someone else…shame that her mother was dead and she could not ask her for advice, shame that her mother didn’t want to be her mother enough to not be dead, just shame, shame, shame.”

Cleo’s shame is a profound problem for her mental health. She internalizes every conflict in her life as indicative of her being a bad person. The novel suggests that Cleo is not necessarily bad; it’s more that her life, like everyone’s, will have ups and downs.

Cleo is convinced that she deserves to be unhappy because of the deep shame she feels. The text repeats “shame” for emphasis, and highlights the myriad sources of that shame. Notably, Cleo’s relationship with Frank brings her shame. This suggests that Cleo regrets marrying Frank, and that she recognizes that their marriage was about lust, money, and status.

She is also ashamed over her mother’s death. The loss of her mother is traumatic. Cleo’s mother is no longer in her life to bear witness and help Cleo navigate the world. Cleo blames herself for her mother’s death by suicide, believing that her mother didn’t want to be her mother. This quote reveals Cleo’s mental state and the downturn her life has taken. It foreshadows her own attempted death by suicide as well as her divorce from Frank.

“She should have known on their wedding day when Frank bought her the blue orchid, dyed with poisonous ink, that he didn’t understand her, never would. She needed to return to the earth, simple and unadorned. She had been living too long in Frank’s false world. She thought she would find security there, but she had not.”

Cleo craves a return to her simpler, more adventurous, multilayered life. She’s become complacent, bored, and depressed in Frank’s world. Notably, she calls Frank’s world a false one, a reflection of Manhattan’s capitalist obsession. Frank constructs a veneer of happiness but doesn’t know what true happiness is. Cleo recognizes this and it scares her because she also doesn’t know what happiness is. These lines highlight the beginning of Cleo’s mental health crisis. In this quote, the blue orchid is a symbol of death and inauthenticity.

“The mention of her mother surprised Frank. He could not have known that […] her real living companion that week had been her mother. Her mother had sat with her during the long, leaden hours, waiting for the day’s scant activities […] Her mother had leaned against the sink as she scrubbed her teeth [ …] Her mother had wedged herself between Cleo and Frank on each visit […] Worst of all, when Cleo looked in the mirror, it was her mother who now stared back. She was fighting to think of them both, her mother and herself, as something other than broken and suicidal.”

Through Cleo’s hospitalization, Frank comes to understand the depth of Cleo’s grief and connection to her mother. As a survivor of attempted suicide, Cleo has come dangerously close to her mother’s fate. On one hand, Cleo wants this: Even though her depression is overwhelming, it’s an echo of her mother, a reminder that she is her mother’s daughter.

Mellors also writes of Cleo’s mother as a symbolic presence that tries to help Cleo. Cleo’s mother is used figuratively to create distance between Frank and Cleo. Though Frank wants to help, he can’t heal Cleo—only her mother could do that. With her mother gone, only Cleo can do that.

This quote also foreshadows further conflict: Cleo sees herself as her mother, a dangerous road to travel down. Cleo wants to honor her mother’s memory by identifying with something other than brokenness and suicide, an important next step in finding herself—not in juxtaposition with her mother, but in a more compassionate parallel.

This quote uses repetition, repeating “her mother” for emphasis and to create rhythm.

“She paused to think. ‘I just don’t want that one act to become the totality of who I am. It’s no more definitive to me as a person than what you did to Jesus is to you.’”

This quote marks a major turning point in Cleo’s character development. She decides to forgive herself for her self-abuse and move forward. Cleo’s brush with death helps her put her life into perspective. She is opening the next chapter, one in which she can consider what kind of person she wants to be. She wants to reform her identity, not in opposition to what she once was, but with the new understanding of what’s happened to her. This is a positive next step for Cleo and shows her growing wisdom.

“[W]hen you’re an actor you can kind of be both seen and not seen at the same time. You’re speaking, but not your own words. You express feelings, but not your own feelings, or at least not usually. You can play a character without being judged by your own character. It’s freeing, you know? Freedom from being yourself.”

Zoe struggles with her own identity crisis. Like other characters who make a façade to hide their real selves, Zoe is unsure what authenticity means to her. Acting is a way to be both herself and to escape. Zoe needs to work more on her real life, and to understand that vulnerability is key to moving forward with identity and relationship formation.

This quote emphasizes not just Zoe’s identity crisis but puts her in conjunction with Cleo, Frank, and Anders, who all struggle with living authentically.

“Her body felt drained of all sex. She was back to being a child. He rested his forehead on the slope beneath her belly button. She took his skull in her hands, his lovely curly hair sprouting between her fingers. Devotional. That was the word for two bodies like that. They should have been more devoted; she understood that now.”

Frank and Cleo’s marriage ends, but the novel emphasizes that there is still hope for friendship; there is no resentment, because they understand one another better now. Cleo realizes that they missed out on devotion, which is too late to fix. Instead, their lack of devotion can be a shared conflict that helps them take accountability for their break-up and therefore move forward. There is love between Cleo and Frank, but they both need to help themselves before they can be capable of devotion.

In the above quote, Cleo also returns to childhood. Frank always liked how young Cleo was in comparison to him, but now he realizes that Cleo is still in many ways a child, longing for a version of her lost childhood. She needs a mother and a father more than she needs a husband. Frank is not a replacement for a parent.

“People are like this too, you know…We break. We put ourselves back together. The cracks are the best part. You don’t have to hide them.”

Eleanor’s brother Levi compares fixing a broken vase to how people constantly needing fixing. The simile is apt because Mellors has spent the entire novel showing how people break and heal in an endless cycle. This is an important message in the novel: All people suffer in their own way, and there is no end to suffering. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a way to mend trauma, and to find a path forward. What’s more, here Levi says that the “cracks are the best part.” So many characters yearn for the façade of perfection that they are afraid to shows their flaws, which then get the better of them. Eleanor embraces Levi’s attitude and loves herself for her flaws as well as her strengths.

“He had never really known if she was any good as an artist. She had certainly been unhappy enough to be good. But what did that mean? Talented people were often unhappy, but unhappy people were not often talented. Frank always thought that Cleo’s main gift was her way of being. She was uniquely attractive, not just in her looks but in her essence. She had a way of bringing the light into a room with her, like a window being flung open.”

Frank reflects on what he knows and doesn’t know about Cleo. A major contributor to the breakdown of their relationship is his inability to see Cleo for who she is, versus his projection onto her of whimsical adventure. Despite having been in a relationship with Cleo, Frank doesn’t know if Cleo is a good artist. Cleo’s art is an extension of herself—not knowing her art is, in effect, not knowing Cleo. Frank continues to learn that he saw only one part of Cleo—her physicality. His major error with Cleo was not thinking beyond her exterior.

The text uses a simile, comparing Cleo’s presence to “a window being flung open.”

“They did not yet know what he did. That you could be gifted, hardworking, tenacious, even touched by a little bit of luck, and still not succeed, or if you did, not have it last. That never to experience achievements commensurate to your talent, never to receive adequate payment for your efforts, was a terrible, demoralizing thing.”

There is a large age gap between Frank and his wife and sister: He can understand their struggles of identity, but must let them navigate it on their own. Like Cleo and Zoe, Frank was once an artist. Unlike them, Frank gave up on his dreams to pursue a more stable career. This has worked out for him, but it did mean sacrifice.

Even though Frank is successful, he doesn’t feel fulfilled. He has unachieved potential that haunts him, and he knows that Zoe will have experience the same. The novel implies that balanced expectations between practicality and art are better than self-denial.

“What could he say about Eleanor? She was handsome, not beautiful, and didn’t attract the attention Cleo did merely by walking into a room. But she made of deeper, sturdier stuff. The best sense of humor he’d ever found in a woman, in anyone really, except maybe his mother. But she was kinder than his mother, tenderer too, with a writer’s true capacity for empathy.”

Eleanor is not beautiful like Cleo, but her beauty is not about her looks. Eleanor is intelligent and funny. She has honed compassion through years of stable relationship-building with herself and others. Eleanor learned self-love from her parents, a foundation of stability that both Frank and Cleo lack. In Eleanor, Frank finds love that is not superficial.

This quote suggests that Frank is still analyzing Cleo through the lens of appearances, but may change as he gets deeper into his relationship with Eleanor. He repeats the mistake of believing that Cleo is not more than dazzling; he still doesn’t see Cleo’s internal beauty.

“Cleo’s brow furrowed further. So Frank had come because of Eleanor. Of course it had not been for her. And there it was, the feeling she had been trying to deny, the dark, oily jealousy rising in her that Frank would do for Eleanor what he would never do for her. Eleanor got this version of Frank, the sober, thoughtful man who took her suggestions, while Cleo had endured the drunken predecessor like a fool.”

Cleo still struggles with unresolved resentment. For Cleo, the major problem with Frank was that he never stopped drinking; this felt like a direct affront, as though Frank didn’t respect her enough to change. Cleo still doesn’t understand that their relationship could not have been the catalyst for change—they didn’t make one another better because they didn’t really know one another. Her jealousy toward Eleanor is based on the feeling of having lost not just Frank, but her belief that women like Eleanor demand respect while women like Cleo are treated as disposable. This quote suggests that in Cleo’s mind, her relationship with Frank would have endured if he became sober, which seems unlikely.