Just Some Scattered Thoughts about Brett
Is Brett a bad person? I just can’t wrap my head around her actions in this book, and how they are so woven into the emotional realities of all the other characters! Brett, on several occasions, laments feeling like a “bitch.” I take this to mean she recognizes the discomfort and pain she can create in the people around her, and scorns herself for continuing on the same path. What is best for Brett-- sort of fluttering freely from man to man-- is inherently harmful to any of these partners she might take. I think that is her main conflict: people expect her to do something, and become emotionally invested in that reality. But then she does something completely different. Ouch. So what should Brett do? Is she meant to just give up any shot at personal fulfillment because these men expect her to settle down? Or follow her fluttery heart and leave these poor dudes alone and confused?
A pattern is established in the book that Brett comes around and Jake drops his own life to cater to her. To indulge in her parties and drunkennes, if you will. He literally takes her to Romero, despite his own quasi-romantic relationship with her. Jake recognizes this cycle himself. He says “Send a girl off with one man. Introduce her to another to go off with him. Now go and bring her back. And sign the wire with love. That was it all right.” (243) Jake recognizes that Brett keeps running off with different people. Then, when she ends up in an unsavory situation, she calls on him to bring her back. His exclamation at the end really solidifies his frustration with a situation he has gotten himself into.
This pattern does not work for Jake, though it seems to work excellently for Brett. She can run off willy-nilly and always have a safety net. Is she selfish for not seeing that she causes Jake harm? Can she be expected to understand the effects she has on Jake when he is so stoic about them? It is easy for me, seeing from Jake’s perspective, to blame Brett for the pain he feels. But should he perhaps take some responsibility? After all, he goes along with Brett’s craziness. He’s enabling her to do these crazy things. She can’t stop and he can’t stop and it’s a messy situation.
But then the Brett-Jake relationship seems so one-sided. Brett can call on Jake, but Jake expects nothing from Brett in return. And that is why Brett keeps him around, keeps him in her circle. She doesn’t have to concede even a fragment of her own freedom to keep him in the picture. So from this angle, it seems she definitely takes advantage of Jake.
Brett doesn’t go back to people who aren’t Jake. So why not? My answer is that these people try to hold her down. Romero asks her to grow out her hair, then straight up tries to marry her. Cohn gets too romantic. Tries to defend her honor. She doesn’t appreciate it, because she has very different ideas of “honor”, and thus he’s also sent away. Jake doesn’t hold onto Brett in the same way the others do. Rather, he lets himself get swept around by her. So he fits her life better than the others do. However, that makes Jake miserable. It seems, again, that Brett asks for too much and gives too little back in return.
But then Brett continually makes comments about “being a bitch” throughout the book and I wonder what she means by that. But she resolves to stop her “bitchy” ways. She says to Jake “You know it makes one feel rather good deciding not to be a bitch” (249). So what exactly is she resolving to do? Is she going to stop dragging Jake into her messes? She decides to marry Mike (247). I think she’s resolving to a traditional life, getting married, settling down, and being more womanly. On page 247, she has started crying at the prospect. I wonder if Brett feels “such a bitch” because she simply can’t follow the typical path for a woman in her social setting. And the men around her expect her to settle down, get married. So when she doesn’t, when she runs off again, she knows she causes them pain but she also can’t stay. It’s not in her nature to stay settled.
Brett is just a web that is difficult to untangle. She is definitely an agent of chaos, and a bringer of unhappiness in Jake’s life. But it seems Jake’s unhappiness is in part from expecting Brett to settle down! So Brett is then stuck with a free spirit when everyone around her wants her to stay. In order to stop being an inconvenience to everyone else, she needs to stop fulfilling her own needs to just move. So is everyone asking too much of Brett? Or is she asking too much of everyone? Or just too much from Jake?
This post does a good job organizing the mess that is Brett and helps me better understand her. I think throughout the book Jake does hurt from Brett's rendezvous', but I think in the end he just accepts that Brett isn't the type of person to just settle. They're personalities and lifestyle really compliment each other well but it doesn't do either much good. I think this is eventually going to crash and burn but in the meantime Jake is pushing that off for later and deciding to continue with this cycle.
ReplyDeleteYeah I agree that Brett is a character that is hard to make sense of. You want to say she's a bad person but at the same time, it doesn't seem like her actions are very deliberate in order to hurt those around her. I think you did a good job of trying to untangle her complex personalities and actions.
ReplyDeleteI definitely think that their relationship is very complex. I like that you called out Jake for being an enabler. It seems as though he wants to help Brett because he loves her. But that only ends up making him more miserable. I don't think their relationship is entirely one-sided with Brett simply taking advantage of Jake. To some extent, Jake has to blame himself for the situation he's in.
ReplyDeleteDespite all its superficial differences, the fling with Romero bears a lot of similarity to the fling with Cohn--Brett leaves with a man for another city, spends some time there with him, and then leaves with the understanding that it "doesn't mean anything" (only in this case, she has to kick him out of the hotel room). Romero, like Cohn, gets all sincere and romantic and wants to marry her, and unlike Cohn, he even wants to CHANGE her (her hairstyle, her independence and promiscuity) in very "traditional" ways.
ReplyDeleteEven though Brett claims to be "in love" with Romero (whatever that means) when she's angling to have Jake set her up, this ends up being just one more in a long series of such episodes, and she's completely confident that Mike will take her back, even though he's pretty mad and jealous about Romero. So the "cycle" does seem to "work" better for her than for Jake, but I would suggest that it also seems to "work" for Jake as well. He may not LIKE it (as when he bitterly sums up his role as the guy she calls to for help whenever she's in a jam), but he accepts it, and he knows he can't expect or insist on anything else. Jake and Brett are also described as "in love," and theirs seems a more enduring and durable variety than we see with Romero (which entails trying to CHANGE the other person). Jake and Brett accept each other for all their flaws and inconsistencies, and in a certain light, it's quite admirable and progressive of Jake not to "judge" Brett or to try to change her into his ideal. At the very end, we see two damaged people moving forward in an imperfect world, supporting each other in a relationship that doesn't lend itself to easy labels.
Great post! I think you analyze Brett and Jake's relationship really well and I like how you've brought up Brett's own self-image. While I don't agree with the way Brett seems to push Jake aside until she finds him useful, I think you bring up an important being that Jake enables her to do that. While, as you point out, the relationship seems one-sided, Jake allows all of it to happen and certainly seems to hold some responsibility for their odd relationship. I also like to consider how we would perceive this story if it was written in present day. Like, now that short-term relationships are pretty normal, would anyone really consider Brett a bitch for not having the same feelings for the guys she pursues?
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