The Beautiful and Damned: Chapter 8 Summary & Analysis

A year ago, when Anthony left for the officer training camp, Gloria walked through the crowd away from the train station a shell of her former self. She has been unhappy with Anthony for a year but nonetheless loves him. She writes him a letter expressing her love as soon as she gets home, then falls asleep. She realizes that she has few friends and is very lonely without Anthony, even though she does not enjoy his company. She keeps meaning to go see him in the South, but the lawyer keeps telling her the lawsuit is about to go to trial. After a time, she reconnects with Rachael Barnes. A few drinks in, she decides she likes Rachael and forgives her for her flirtation with Anthony and for witnessing the disastrous arrival of Adam Patch at the party in Marietta.

Rachael invites Gloria to dinner with two military captains. After dinner, they all retire to Rachael’s house, where each captain picks a woman with whom to flirt. Gloria’s captain tells her she should stop drinking, and she defiantly takes another drink. She shivers when she sees Rachael kissing the other officer. Rachael offers Gloria a room to stay overnight with the officer who has been flirting with her, but Gloria declines. In the cab on the way home, she feels indignant that the officer did not even try to get her to come home with him.

In February, an old flame comes to New York with the Aviation Corps and calls upon Gloria. She had once intended to marry him. She finds that she loves him not at all, although he still seems to love her just as much as ever. She sentimentally kisses him one evening and is glad to have done so, because the following day, his plane is shot down over Minneola.

When the trial is postponed again to fall, Gloria decides to try becoming an actress without telling Anthony. As time passes, she realizes from his letters that he does not want her to come visit, so she starts to think less about him. She passes the time with a series of suitors. She tells her friends that Anthony has been made corporal, but no one seems to care. When his letters grow more frequent for a time and then drop off entirely, she begins to worry and must restrain herself from going to Mississippi. A telegram tells her that he was in the hospital with influenza but has recovered and will shortly be in New York.

A week after Anthony and Gloria’s reunion at the Armistice Ball, Anthony’s regiment must return to Mississippi to be officially discharged. Anthony is relieved not to run into Dorothy there. He can think only of Gloria now. He is unmoved by the captain’s emotional speech about honor and duty. He returns eagerly to New York.

By February, two months after Anthony’s return, he and Gloria are back to quarreling and spending more money than they have. They can no longer afford their apartment. One day, when Anthony comes home drunk, Gloria laments that she can’t afford a fur coat. Anthony says of course she can, and Gloria tells him she is sick of relying on bonds to finance their lifestyle, which they always say they will change but never do. For example, Anthony told her earlier that he was not going to drink today, but now he is drunk. Gloria feels resentful and hopeless.

Anthony considers writing for newspapers but is unable to find a suitable job. One day, when perusing the paper, he finds an ad for a salesman position. He answers the call and finds himself in a room full of prospective salesmen, listening to a man extoll the virtues of pamphlets called “Heart Talks.” These pamphlets, which the salesmen would be tasked with pedaling, profess to be about “the principal reasons for a man’s failure and the principal reasons for a man’s success.”

Anthony reports back to Gloria about Heart Talks, laughing at the ridiculousness of the salesmanship scheme. She tells him he can’t give up again and convinces him to go back to buy in as a salesman. Anthony is one of only a handful of men to sign up as salesmen. They are all encouraged to be “pushers” and to buy stock in the pamphlets to increase their personal interest in the matter.

Anthony’s first attempt at selling the pamphlets is a disaster. To get his foot in the door of an architect named Weatherby, he tells the man’s assistant that he is there on a personal matter. When it becomes clear to Weatherby that Anthony is a salesman, he strides into his inner office and shuts the door in Anthony’s face. Anthony spends the next hour bolstering his confidence with whiskey. He thinks of his next sale attempt as a success. Although he fails to sell the plumber anything because the man is off to lunch, he tells himself that he would have made a sale were the man not hungry. Time after time, he politely takes no as an answer from his marks. He gets progressively drunker as he tries to sell pamphlets to a series of bartenders.

Very drunk, Anthony decides once and for all that he is going to make a sale at a delicatessen. He tries to parrot the speech he was pitched when he answered the ad from the paper, but he can barely get his words out. When the proprietor threatens to call the police, Anthony stumbles out to the street and takes a cab home.

When prohibition passes in July, Anthony counterintuitively finds alcohol even more readily available than before, because it is now a badge of honor to have it on offer. He becomes increasingly argumentative with not only Gloria but also with Maury. He often has hazy memories of these arguments.

Anthony has not laid a hand on Gloria in anger since the incident on the train platform after the day at the beach. However, their relationship is volatile. He hates her as much as he loves her. Gloria continues to want a squirrel fur coat, and their inability to afford it is a constant reminder of their growing financial anxiety, which is mounting to panic. Gloria resents that one week, during which they are thrown out of a theater because Anthony begins removing his clothing, they spend as much money partying as they would have spent on the coat.

In November one night, Gloria tosses and turns and asks Anthony for ice water. She reflects uneasily that she did not try hard enough to find love in her youth, feeling only that her beauty must be flung at a lover while she still had it. She knows that she never wanted children, but even without them she is losing her beauty. She keeps thinking that she will be twenty-nine in February. She decides to go see Bloeckman the following day to audition for a movie. The next day, she collapses on her way to the elevator. She returns to the apartment and waits for Anthony on the bed, unable even to get undressed. She is diagnosed with influenza, which develops into double pneumonia as winter progresses. Gloria feels that she wants only to be a little girl.

Gloria rants feverishly one day about how she would sacrifice the millions of people swarming around the city for a palace. The Irish serving woman isn’t quite sure what Gloria said she would sacrifice a million of. She supposes dollars, but that does not seem quite right.

In February, a week before her birthday, Gloria calls Joseph Bloeckman to schedule a screen test. She finds that he has changed his name to Joseph Black. He eagerly helps her, bringing her in to read for the part of a flapper who faints upon receiving a phone call informing her of her husband’s death in a car accident. Gloria hopes she does not still look too ill. She enjoys the screen test and feels that she has done very well. She does not tell Anthony what she has done.

Gloria is anxious over the next few days while she waits to hear back about the screen test. The third day, she bites the inside of her mouth raw and quarrels with Anthony until he leaves the apartment. Gloria goes for a walk to pass the time until the mail arrives. She tries to distract herself by people-watching but counts down the minutes until three o’clock, when the mail should be delivered. Arriving eagerly at home at the that hour, she finds a letter from Bloeckman informing her that the director wants a younger actress for the part of the flapper. She is being considered for the role of a rich widow instead. Gloria laments that it is her 29th birthday and that her beautiful face is aging. She sinks to the floor in tears in “the first awkward movement she had ever made.”