The things you think when you are in the privacy of your own mind and the things you tell other people are both very different things. For instance, if the guy you have a thing for winkes at you at a party, you’re definitely going to tell your friends it happened, but you might not admit how happy it made you in that moment.
The same thing goes for Ophelia. I mean, obviously she doesn’t have a thing for any of the guys at the brothel and she definitely didn’t run into him at a party, but the main idea stays the same. In Ophelia’s letters to Constance, she writes about the things that happen to her and yes, sometimes she discloses her feelings, but she never writes the way she does in her diary in the second part of the book.
What I’d really like to focus on, are the last few months of Ophelia’s stay at the brothel and her departure from it. I believe that the biggest turn for Ophelia was in January of 1912, when she ventures out to take photographs with the Kodak she saved up for. She’s trying to take a picture of a bird, however, the bird flies away. “As my shutter fell/he lifted in flight, a vivid blur above/the clutter just beyond the hedge—garbage/rats licking the insides of broken eggs.” (Tretheway44) The redbird flying off, not sitting still for the camera, reminds me of Ophelia, posing for photographs. I know that might sound backwards, but as she poses for Bellocq, she feels trapped. She says “I fade again into someone I’m not,” (Tretheway 40) meaning that she feels captured in somebody else, which she is being forced into by Bellocq. Escaping, flying away like the bird, is something she wants to do herself. The bird blurs away, leaving an unsightly sight behind, which is exactly what Ophelia wants to do. Plus, in her February 1912 diary entry, she once again paints her surroundings negatively, calling the city “dull” and “gray” with “weathered ships docked at the quay, rats/dozing in the hull, drizzle slicking dark stones/of the street.” (Tretheway 45) She obviously dislikes where she currently is.
Now, in her last letter to Constance before the postcard, Ophelia writes that she longs to travel. She writes “I lost/myself, for a moment, and found/upon waking from my daydream, the book/clutched to my chest, and the globe/set in motion, spinning beneath my hand.” (Tretheway 32) While she doesn’t mention any of the negatives about her living space, she does mention wanting to leave.
And finally, in her last diary entry, she finally realizes that she needs to get out of there. By “[seeing] only [her] own clear eye,” (Tretheway 46) she realizes what she really wants, and gets out of there. However, in her letter to Constance, she never reveals what made her flee from the brothel and her life, she just tells her that she’s moving on. She writes that the changing of winter to spring reminds her of herself, how she does not fit her skin anymore, much like the trees who blossom again. But her revelation, her special moment, her wink, she keeps for herself.
You’ve done some nice observation of what is happening while Ophelia is taking pictures, Emily. I agree that her view of the trash after the bird takes flight could be an instigation to leave. But I also wonder if seeing the trash in this way provides an opportunity to see it differently. Can the trash, like the dust, become transformed through photography?
I like that you mentioned the clear eye. This definitely hints at a sense of self discovery, which is obvious in the final portion of the book.
i agree with your point that the “biggest turn for Ophelia was in January of 1912, when she ventures out to take photographs with the Kodak she saved up for.” I think that point in the book clearly marks a change in her fortune.