Andrew's Wiki
The Hotel

Themes

• Modernist unique self
  • Ronald and Sydney are both the disaffected “lost generation” subjects, defined against the jovial Lawrence sisters and Victor Ammering, the war veteran who can’t find work but is willing to re-enter the world of the living by splashing himself into this leisure space
  • Leisure spaces give a new field for modernist subjects to re-create themselves against a different milieu, a new chance to find themselves anew by defining themselves against this new community. So as to establish themselves as rebels with or without a cause.
  • Sometimes the dance is a little harder than they expected: Sydney set herself against the narrative of heterosexual desire left by the annals of seaside visiting, instead picking up the chances for homoerotics. But she misses it: her homosocial experience was actually supposed to lead to catching her son a wife: exactly what Sydney didn’t come out for.
  • And Sydney’s anti-social behavior is what attracts a true husband in the first place: Milton likes her b/c she’s so rude and cold, because she sets herself up as against the typical modern girl, like the Lawrences. But again she falls right into the trap and ends up accepting the proposal she had earlier rejected.
  • Her defiance against Mrs. Kerr’s version of Sydney entering the marriage market ironically ends up in Sydney entering the marriage market, just in a diff way.
  • And yet it’s at this point that Ronald sees her as acting “normal,” even though he doesn’t see that she did it to avoid the implication of marrying Ronald himself.
  • It’s a dangerous game to play when you don’t know the rules. Esp the rules of exchange, whcih is what Mrs. Kerr reminds her of: paying her off with amethysts and pastries once she sees that her boy won’t due as payment to Sydney solving her leisure problem.
    • Failed social encounters lead to normalized social encounters and/or capitalist exploitation