Foil

Character Role Analysis

Connie/Luciente

Connie and Luciente are pretty much the only main characters in the book. And you know they're foils, because the book tells you.

A voice in her ears, good-natured, chiding: Lucinete as a fraction of her mind, as a voice of an alternate self, talking to her in the night. Perhaps she was mad. (12.126)

Can't get much clearer than that. They're alternate selves. Luciente is what Connie could maybe be, if she got kicked into the future, born out of a tube, had access to education and food, and didn't have doctors trying to put implants in her brain.

When Connie thinks, "Luciente spoke, she moved with the air of brisk unselfconscious authority Connie associated with men" (3.67), she's realizing a possibility for herself, as a woman. Part of the tragedy of the book is that Connie never fulfills that possibility. Whether the future of Mattapoisett comes or not, Connie never gets to live there; she only gets to briefly visit.