Summary
As "Glassware and Other Breakable Items" opens, Isobel's Aunt Yvonne and Aunt Noelene are sitting in the kitchen, discussing arrangements for the funeral of Isobel's mother. While they deal with the household finances and the possibility of finding funeral clothes, Isobel calmly packs her belongings. Isobel's sister Margaret is in a state of tearful distress, yet Isobel remains composed and cannot bring herself to display any grief, not even during the funeral. Afterwards, she reveals to her aunts that she has a job interview coming up and that she can find a place to stay on her own. Only when she learns that Margaret will be leaving her and sees the household furniture being portioned out does Isobel finally begin to cry.
Margaret prepares to go live with Aunt Yvonne. The two of them drop Isobel off at the boarding house where Isobel will be staying. In short order, Isobel meets the tall, elderly, and meticulous woman who keeps the boarding house, Mrs Bowers; she is also introduced to Mrs Prendergast, a large, old woman who keeps Mrs Bowers company. Isobel unpacks her few belongings, reflecting that she is becoming more independent. In her happiness at breaking with her old life, she even considers telling people that her name is "Maeve" but abandons this plan once she settles in for a meal with the other boarders. These individuals include Betty, a composed and attractive older woman; Mr Watkin, an easygoing and self-possessed older man; and Tim and Norman, two lively young men who talk about football (soccer). The meal itself is served out by Madge, Mrs Bowers' own daughter, of whom Mrs Bowers herself seems rather critical.
After the meal, the boarders pass the time by playing games of cards; Mr Watkin is something of an expert and offers advice to Tim and Norman. Betty gives Isobel a tour of the premises, and explains Mrs Bowers' various rules and restrictions as she does so. Unfortunately, because Mrs Bowers watches the electricity bill attentively, Isobel will not be able to spend time reading at night as she had hoped. So as not to seem antisocial, she makes her way back to the game of cards downstairs, but only temporarily, and soon heads up to bed.
The next day, Isobel makes her way to Lingard Brothers Importers, where she has a job interview. She is shown into the office of a busy man named Mr Walter, who is in charge of the firm; he explains that Isobel's duties will involve translating correspondence and some light accounting, but the interview turns briefly tense when Isobel makes a joke about her compensation. Isobel nonetheless secures the position. She is given a place in the vicinity of three other office girls—Olive, Rita, and Nell—and settles in to translate correspondence from a Czech glass manufacturer named Mr Vorocic, who is apparently dealing with misfortune after misfortune. Isobel has a few misfortunes of her own: she has trouble working a typewriter, she cannot translate one of the German words in Mr Vorocic's letter, and she finds the supervision of Mr Richard, who runs the firm along with Mr Walter, uncomfortable.
Isobel begins to adapt after these initial difficulties. She also spends some of her time helping Frank, the pleasant man in charge of the glass storeroom, take inventory. Later, she pays a lunch visit to Aunt Noelene, who is still offering Isobel financial assistance and inquires about the boarding house. Although Aunt Noelene also encourages Isobel to work with raises and promotions in mind, Isobel herself does not seem comfortable with these ambitions. She does, however, leave Aunt Noelene's premises with some gifts of accessories and clothing, including a fur-trimmed winter coat.
The only part of Isobel's job that remains a burden is the overbearing presence of Mr Richard. She also becomes accustomed to the activities of the boarders: Betty disappears from time to time, Tim and Norman continue to be rowdy and flirt lightly with Isobel, and Mrs Prendergast engages Mrs Bowers in morbid discussions about dreams and death. Isobel also attends Business College classes in order to improve her shorthand and typing skills. Saturdays become a special day for her, because they are associated with eating out, reading, and a general sensation of independence.
One day at work, Isobel learns that Rita is engaged to be married. The other girls in the office gather to admire her ring and joke about which one of them will be married next. Isobel makes a joke about marrying Mr Richard; somewhat unexpectedly, Frank lashes out angrily at her remark. Olive takes Isobel aside soon after to explain that Frank is a Communist (and should be treated with caution) and that Mr Richard is a superior (and should be shown more respect). When Isobel later goes to help Frank with the inventory, he apologizes for his outburst and asks Isobel what she wants out of life. Isobel says that she just wants to fit in with the crowd. Frank explains that he has been warned against voicing his political opinions and the two of them carry on handling the glassware.
Analysis
Witting begins "Glassware and Other Breakable Items" by taking a major novelistic and creative risk. Having built the preceding sections of her novel around the fraught contact between Isobel and her mother, Witting quickly, unexpectedly, and even unceremoniously removes May Callaghan from the narrative. Without so much as a deathbed scene, one of the main attractions of Witting's narrative—a woman of fascinating, multi-sided awfulness—is gone. Of course, an event as momentous as the death of a parent gives the observant, sardonic Isobel some new grounds for reflection and insight: "All that Isobel could think, of the coffin and the candles, the hymns and the praise, the relatives who never visited while her mother was alive, came now with serious faces to the church and the grave, was that her mother had become like other people at last" (51). At least as construed by Isobel herself, May's funeral is as unpleasant and as driven by empty appearances as May's life. But how will Witting sustain interest in the rest of Isobel's life? What causes of tension will there be now that Isobel's main antagonist is dead and now that Isobel herself (despite her unemotional reaction to the funeral) is a mostly competent young adult?
Instead of immediately settling upon a new source of all-consuming conflict, I for Isobel investigates a few of the diverse, smaller, day-to-day conflicts that the adult Isobel faces. This setup is especially evident in the descriptions of Isobel's life at Lingard Brothers and at the Business College. She is required to deal with vexing coursework, social awkwardness, difficulties in translating German, and the occasional shifts of mood in her colleagues. But no single character opposes her as dramatically or as systematically as her mother does. The closest thing to an antagonist here may be Mr Richard, who—unlike the vociferous, violent May Callaghan—acts mostly as a silent irritation.
The real conflict that Isobel faces in "Glassware and Other Breakable Items" is a matter of individuality: how much can she keep being her literary self, and how much will she need to give in to the demands of the society around her? Though now free of especially oppressive influences, Isobel finds that adulthood is not really a state that frees her up to do as she pleases. Even a desire as simple and harmless as reading at night cannot be fulfilled, as Isobel learns soon after entering Mrs Bowers' boarding house: she is forced to dismiss "with regret the dream of a reading light and a nightly haven" (60). Instead of continuing on as a solitary individual, Isobel is expected to be a member of various adult communities, from her small society stationed at the import office to the social circle of the boarding house itself. She may not fit in perfectly, but the more important requirement is that she not stand out in any disharmonious way—as Frank the Communist sometimes does, or as she might if she were to seclude herself with a book and run up Mrs Bowers' electricity bill.
It is especially intriguing, then, that Isobel strikes up such an easy relationship with Frank himself. The two of them are capable of working through any conflicts that arise, and open up to one another much more than Isobel opens up to the other young women in the office. All this raises a pointed question: how much can a young woman like Isobel really conform? Her best relationship at work is with a political dissident, and her sympathies in the boarding house seem to lie with oddballs such as Betty and Mr Watkin, not (again) with people her own age. Such social leanings are not dramatically rebellious, but they are a sign that the individualistic, imaginative, and mildly eccentric personality that Isobel manifested in her girlhood has found ways to persist into her adult life. Holmes and Watson were her fascinations then; Frank and Mr Watkin are the objects of her interest now.
Beyond the ability to read at night and live in idiosyncratic peace, though, what Isobel positively wants becomes somewhat ambiguous. The early stages of "Glassware and Other Breakable Items" give her the opportunity to contemplate a career, marriage, and even (as Frank's suggests) the possibility of writing. Of course, her declared sentiment is that she wants to fit in—that "I want to be one of the crowd" (88). Isobel's desire to simply fit in is understandable, especially after a girlhood of being cruelly singled out by her own parent. Yet keep in mind that she is also working through some of her first truly adult experiences. Becoming "one of the crowd" may be more of a way of coping with the difficulties of newfound independence than an expression of what Isobel, in the deepest reaches of her personality, truly wants.
