This short novel is one of Fenimore Cooper's more scathing social satires, and also one of his more daring experiments in fictional form; for perhaps both reasons, it has always been hard to find in print.
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This short novel is one of Fenimore Cooper's more scathing social satires, and also one of his more daring experiments in fictional form; for perhaps both reasons, it has always been hard to find in print.
Read Less
Objects Can Observe This book will change your mind if you?ve ever doubted that inanimate objects can observe and voice opinions about persons and society. In this novel the handkerchief is a sentient female object that recounts her life among humans, offering witty, astute observations of both French and American societies of the early 19th century. The handkerchief?s life begins in a Normandy flax field, though her ancestors had grown along the Connecticut River and emigrated to the Old World. She describes being harvested and woven into an exceptionally expensive, aristocratic linen handkerchief. As Cooper put it, the aristocracy at that moment ?had a bad odor? in Paris and the handkerchief flounders for quite a while. Eventually she?s bought by an impoverished young woman of the nobility. The young woman, Adrienne, fending for herself, uses her last sous to buy the handkerchief. She works and works, indeed, she toils, creating luxurious lace around the linen. Her plan is to resell it, thus saving herself and her dying grandmother from destitution. Sadly, Adrienne is cheated and receives only a pittance for her toil. The handkerchief, now more exquisite than ever, is eventually sold to an American who takes her to New York where she?s the most expensive handkerchief that fashionable New York society had ever seen. Her observations of New York, the land of liberty, are hilarious. The American nouveaux rich is preoccupied with ostentatious consumption and this linen square is bought and sold for ridiculously showy sums. She becomes a one hundred dollar ?super-extraordinary? handkerchief. Alas, fortunes go bust and the handkerchief, unexpectedly and happily, finds herself back with Adrienne who had left Paris for a position as French governess in New York. I loved this book and wonder how I missed it years ago as an English major in college. I also wonder which 21st century object is observing the foibles and hypocrisies of contemporary society. Whatever it is, can it possibly have the same eloquent and critical insight of the by-gone cloth handkerchief?