In Defense of Brett

When I was doing the reading last week, I made note of a section that I wanted to go back to and look at a bit closer: the conversation between Brett and Jake as they're walking outside just before Jake sets Brett up with Romero. The section I'll be referring to specifically begins on the bottom of page 186 when Jake says "Don't feel bad." It is just after Brett is rude to Cohn and Jake tells her he would act just as badly as Cohn does.

The most repeated phrase at the beginning of this passage is Brett's "I'm a goner." She tells Jake that she's crazy about Romero, and that "it" is tearing her up inside, and that she can't stop "it." The two "its" could refer to two different things, and the more obvious reading seems to be to assume that her "love" for Romero is tearing her up inside, and that she can't stop her flighty behavior in general. However, I read it as if the "its" both refer to her flighty behavior. Especially in light of later passages in this book, I see Brett as an extremely sympathetic character. When you look at the fact that she has tried a relationship with Jake and really does love him combined with the fact that it must hurt her just as much as it hurts Jake to decide that it won't work out, and then add in the bit about her difficult marriage to Lord Ashley, as Mike mentions to Jake; it's very clear that Lord Ashley has been abusive to her in their marriage. According to Mike, "Finally, when he got really bad, he used to tell her he'd kill her. Always slept with a loaded service revolver. Brett used to take the shells out when he'd gone to sleep. She hasn't had an absolutely happy life, Brett" (207).

In light of what we can infer about Brett's past, she is so much more sympathetic during her conversation with Jake. She tells Jake, "I've got to do something. I've got to do something I really want to do. I've lost my self-respect...I can't just stay tight all the time" (187). This implies that in the same way that Jake drinks to make himself feel better, Brett feels that she must run around with men and do what she "really [wants] to do." I imagine she feels as though she's lost her self-respect because she feels constricted by Lord Ashley, Cohn's possessiveness, and even her engagement to Mike. I also get the feeling that because she will never be able to do what she really wants to do, which is be with Jake, she must convince herself that she really wants to do other things and really wants to be with all these other men. This way she can feel less constricted and more independent, as though she has some sort of choice. With Jake, she doesn't feel that she has a choice. She has tried a relationship with him (although we don't know details) and decided it wouldn't work out. From this point, she has no choice at all in the matter. The decision has already been made. It makes perfect sense that her flightiness is a result of her need to have a choice and to get something that she really wants, because she can't have the one person she really wants.

Brett also realizes that there is a problem with her behavior. She says, "I don't say it's right. It is right though for me. God knows, I've never felt such a bitch" (188). She feels bad about her behavior. On some level, I'm sure she realizes it hurts Jake. On a more obvious level, she realizes that she's hurting every romantic interest she has. She does see her behavior as right for her though. This is hard for readers to understand and sympathize with because we see her through Jake's eyes (as Sarah and Shruti pointed out in their Panel Presentation). If we try our hardest to understand where Brett is coming from and what her life is been like, it is possible to understand why she engages in this behavior. It is analogous to Jake's drinking: both of them are unable to be with the person they love and so they cope with it by doing things to help them numb the pain of dealing with what they truly care about.

Similarly to the way that Brett is in the same boat as Jake, Jake shares Brett's feelings about their future together, and does not believe that they can be romantically involved. On the last page of the book, Jake seems even more pessimistic about their relationship than Brett does. When Brett says, "We could have had such a damned good time together" (251), she sounds entirely genuine to me, even to the point of believing it possible for a moment that she and Jake could still be together. When Jake says, "Isn't it pretty to think so?" (251), I get the sense that he's being much more cynical than Brett is, especially in light of his recent sarcasm toward her. It seems to me that a relationship is even less of a possibility in Jake's mind than it is in Brett's. Jake's last line seems to shoot down any possibility of the two of them having anything more than friendship in the future; at least that was how I read it.