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Book 2, Chapter 2: Experiments in Convalescence
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in This Side of Paradise, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Youth, Innocence, and Coming of Age
Friendship and Masculinity
War, Modern Life, and Generations
Money and Class
Love and Sexuality
Summary
Analysis
In Maryland, Amory meets Eleanor Savage, who will be another of his strange, intense affairs: neither of them will ever again have an adventure like the other. Amory meets Eleanor while going for a walk in the rain in the countryside. He hears her singing in a haystack in a field, and she recognizes him as the blond boy who walks around reciting poetry. They sit together in a hollow in the haystack, and he finds her beautiful, with intense eyes. Eleanor shares Amory’s deep interest in literature.
Eleanor, like all of Amory’s other love interests, is highly intelligent, intense, and beautiful. But in Eleanor, Amory seems to find an intellectual companion in a way that is distinct from his other relationships. While Isabelle and Rosalind were both intelligent, they, unlike Eleanor, did not as deeply share Amory’s interest in literature. Eleanor provides a kind of intellectual fulfillment that Amory previously only received from his friendships with men in college.
Themes
Amory learns that Eleanor grew up in France with a mother like Beatrice and came to the United States when she died. After being a debutante in Baltimore, she was sent to live with her grandfather in the country because of her rebellious behavior. Amory and Eleanor are in love and enjoy the end of summer swimming, walking in the woods, and reading poetry together.
Eleanor, like Isabelle and Rosalind, is a wealthy girl from high society, but Eleanor more clearly defies various social codes. This rebelliousness prompts Eleanor to more directly question social hierarchies and conventions; in this way, she shares Amory’s “bizarre streak.”
Themes
On Amory’s last night in Maryland, he and Eleanor go on a horse ride in the woods. Eleanor laments being a woman and despairs that she is destined for marriage to a man less intelligent than her. When Amory tells Eleanor, who is an atheist, that she will ask for a priest on her deathbed, she gallops toward the cliff but throws herself off her horse before it goes over. Their love is ruined after this event, but they send each other poems years later in remembrance of their romance.
Eleanor is the first person to point out to Amory the gendered injustice of societal conventions of marriage and romance. Amory mocks Eleanor’s total rejection of social conventions, telling her that, when push comes to shove, in moments of serious despair she will give in to religion. This shows that Amory is perhaps not unconventional enough yet to truly challenge the foundations of society. What’s more, after Eleanor’s dangerous stunt with the horse, Amory sees how tempestuous and impulsive she is, and this scares him.
Themes
