Then there’s Hotel du Lac as a sort of rest home for the shady or cast-off well-to-do – I love that! “In this way the hotel was known as a place which was unlikely to attract unfavorable attention, a place guaranteed to provide a restorative sojourn for those whom life had mistreated or merely fatigued. Its name and situation figured in the card indexes of those whose business it is to know such things. Certain doctors knew it, many solicitors knew it, brokers and accountants knew it … Those families who benefit from the periodic absence of one of their more troublesome members treasured it.”
And yet that seemed to cast such an air of melancholy about the place, for all the participants to basically recognize they were society’s damaged goods for one reason or another. You know, they may deserve their own posts, but that common factor changed my perception of each character – to see the inhabitants as more fragile and pitiable save for Mr. Neville and his predatory and perceptive dealings.
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Yes, and it was interesting how the society mother and daughter didn't act and weren't treated like they were cast-offs, even though they were in a strange way (people who were unable to grow beyond a certain mark in life and lived out the rest of their days in a kind of arrested development). It was very "Sunset Boulevard."
I thought a lot about how when you're staying in a hotel, particularly in a foreign country, that your real identity seems to be kept at bay or on hold or something. It's like you're existing outside of your real life (among others who are doing the same).
True, and I think the mother and daughter only work as a unit, too. When death would separate them (since, as Edith noted, a husband for Jennifer would have to be absorbed into the fold -- a glorified bag handler), neither could really carry through her shtick as is, even with the comfort and protection of money.
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