Clara's Room

Ah, college dorm rooms. If you're still in high school, you have yet to experience the joy of living in a building with a bunch of other people, sharing a bathroom and, in this case, a telephone. One thing's for sure: Once you have a dorm room of your very own, you'll embrace the independence of living away from home. Unless, of course, you leave your parents' house on really bad terms, like Clara does. Then it can become a symbol of independence tainted with past pain.

Clara's one of those college kids who loves being on her own, and because she's not exactly happy with her dad right now, she kind of wants a trial separation. "It's like my own private place," she tells Jessaline, "and I don't want family in it, not yet, not till I've got over them" (22.5). Good luck with that one, Clara.

While absence from her family in a new place evokes self-discovery and individualism for Clara, it creates a completely different sensation for Rose, who recalls only "hollowness" (21.41) from her first time away from home—after her parents were killed. And her biggest fear is that her daughter is lonely like she was.

For Rose, seeing Clara's room is more than reassurance that her daughter is doing okay on her own. It's about knowing her daughter isn't going to leave her forever. "Surely it was she herself who felt abandoned," Rose realizes when she learns of Clara's engagement, "as she'd felt when her parents had died" (41.24). As Clara prepares to be married, her room is the place where both she and Rose move on from the past and begin a new stage in their family. Clara claims it as her own space, but once she lets her mother in, we know they'll go forward together. Aw.