Summary
Two Saturdays after Frank's brief flare-up and candid discussion with Isobel, Isobel herself is sitting in a coffee shop and reading a book called The Prime Minister by Anthony Trollope. She notices that several young people have entered, and have begun discussing poetry. They are reading out an original composition, which references Lord Byron (whose name Isobel recognizes) along with Auden and Spender (who are unfamiliar to Isobel). As Isobel observes them and listens in on their lighthearted conversation, she gets the impression that she knows one of the young women: Vinnie Winters, who went to school with her sister. She approaches Vinnie and mentions Margaret, but is initially met with a blank, awkward response.
Despite this unease, a young man named Kenneth invites Isobel into the conversation, which has now turned to a literary diversion: the members of the group must decide which parts of speech they are. Isobel, when her turn comes, claims that she herself is a preposition and that her landlady Mrs Bowers is the preposition "against." The conversation remains lighthearted, and culminates in the idea that some people can best be understood as curses or expletives. Isobel then returns home to Mrs Bowers' boarding house. When asked where she has been by Mrs Bowers, Isobel claims that she was with Emma (an imaginary figure, who supposedly attends the Business College). Isobel stays with Mrs Bowers for long enough to hear Mrs Prendergast tell a gruesome story about a woman who tried to cook a baby, then retreats to her room after a few pleasantries from Mrs Bowers herself.
After her initial encounter with the members of the "special group," Isobel hunts down the authors that they favor, particularly the poets W.H. Auden (whose name she initially mistakes as "Orden") and Stephen Spender. She waits for the young people to re-appear in the coffee shop the next Saturday. Two of the young men, Nick and Trevor, arrive; they talk with Isobel about another author favored by their circle, novelist George Eliot. Isobel attempts to divert her companions with stories about the eccentric denizens of Mrs Bowers' boarding house; she repeats some of Madge's devotions and learns (from Trevor) that Madge is speaking Buddhist mantras. Though Isobel has trouble relating to some of the conversation (which concerns lectures and authors mostly unknown to her) she does bond with Trevor, who walks her out and looks warmly on her desire to stay a reader, rather than becoming a writer.
Isobel is now elated with her new companions and the new reading list that she compiles from their literary references. When she is alone, she talks to an imaginary, idealized man named Joseph, his name taken from a mentor of some of her new literary friends. Changes are also taking place at Mrs Bowers' boarding house: Madge is engaged to a handsome young man named Arthur, who presents himself to the boarders. Tense and disapproving, Mrs Bowers herself says little to Arthur, but Betty offers hospitality and Isobel approvingly takes note of Madge's dark stone engagement ring. Mrs Bowers' irritation over the marriage only grows more severe after Arthur leaves; she laments Madge's supposedly weak will and apparently strange engagement ring, and even lashes out at stolid Mrs Prendergast. Unfortunately, some of the bad sentiments in the boarding house are also directed towards Isobel, whose winter coat has made her the object of snide comments.
One day, when Isobel is in the cafe with her friends, the literary group finds that it is being watched by a tall young woman with intense eyes. Trevor walks this newcomer away; Isobel learns that the young woman is Diana, who was once in a relationship with Nick and has been obsessively following him since their breakup. Isobel and a few of her friends then make their way to a building known as Fifty-one, where Nick, Trevor, and a young woman named Helen live. Despite such measures to evade Diana, Isobel reflects approvingly on Diana's appearance and seems to desire a life of passion similar to Diana's. While at Fifty-one, Trevor invites her to his room and encourages her to read both George Eliot and the Russian novelists, particularly Dostoevsky.
Meanwhile, the tensions at the boarding house have become worse. The hostility between Mrs Bowers and Madge erupts one day at dinner: Madge had offered to bring Arthur to the boarding house to help her mother, but now decides to leave with him, immediately. Isobel helps her pack and, despite her growing fear of Mrs Bowers' disapproval, feels satisfied with this small act of kindness. Soon after, Isobel meets her friends at the cafe: only Mitch and Kenneth are there, reviewing a manuscript. Isobel decides to go to Fifty-one instead of staying around. Here she finds Helen, but also discovers that Diana is lurking around. Helen asks Isobel to send Diana away, since Isobel would have an easier time doing so as a newcomer to the group. Diana, as Isobel finds in the course of a brief conversation, is ashamed of her obsession with Nick and despondent over the course of her life. She has lost her job, and considers herself as good as dead. Isobel leaves Diana convinced that Diana may be on the verge of suicide. And unfortunately for Isobel herself, Mrs Bowers soon begins to vent her frustrations on Isobel, now that Madge is no longer around to bear the brunt of her mother's bad temper.
The next time Isobel is in the cafe, the members of the literary group talk approvingly of Mitch's writing, which Kenneth had been reviewing. Isobel then accompanies Trevor to Fifty-one once more. When they are alone in Trevor's room, Trevor attempts to put his arms around Isobel, who resists this attempt at romance. Later, Isobel wanders the streets, reflecting on her insecurity over starting a relationship and feeling steeped in misery.
One Monday morning, Isobel is at work when she receives a stunning phone call from Helen: Nick has been hit by a car and is dead. Helen wants Isobel to inform Diana of what has happened. Isobel's co-workers, particularly Olive and Mr Walter, offer consolations and practical advice about how to reach Diana's address. When Isobel arrives, she finds Diana wearing a dirty nightgown. She breaks the news; Diana, surprisingly, reacts with disinterest and begins combing her hair. Isobel then sets off for Fifty-one, where she is joined by Helen and Nick's mother Mrs Drummond. At first, Mrs Drummond seems composed and goes upstairs to pack Nick's belongings. Then Isobel and Helen hear Mrs Drummond shouting "No, no!" in anguish and panic. They succeed in calming her down at least for the time being; Trevor arrives and mostly remains silent, and Isobel departs.
On her way back to the boarding house, Isobel passes by a house with a "ROOM VACANT" sign that she had noticed in the course of one of her earlier walks. She makes it to Mrs Bowers' premises and informs Mrs Bowers that she will be leaving. Mrs Bowers still feels contempt for Isobel, but Isobel feels relief and happiness as she packs her books and prepares for life in her new lodgings.
Analysis
With the arrival of the "special crowd" (89), Isobel is offered a type of social interaction that she has not experienced before. For the first time, she has the opportunity to bond with others who share her literary interests and exhibit some of her powers of critique and perception. She feels no urge to assume a fake identity (as she was tempted to do by re-naming herself Maeve at the boarding house) or to seek out a model of conduct (as she did in observing older people such as Betty and Mr Watkin). She is, in short, finally among intellectual equals and is relatively comfortable among them. Granted, Isobel has not yet created any writing and is not herself studying literature, but she nonetheless can hold her own well enough against characters who, like Trevor and Kenneth, have stronger formal educations in the humanities.
The real importance of Isobel's new companions may be their potential to unlock her latent abilities. The process of such intellectual awakening can be somewhat awkward: Isobel barely recognizes authors such as Auden and T.S. Eliot, who are fundamental to the discussions of the "special crowd." She also seeks to please by drawing on the resources of her own life: "Oh, how she tried! She told the story of Mrs Prendergast's dream, working hard at the land, dreaming tone. She must entertain, she must be a success" (101). Arduous though some of her efforts may be, Isobel exhibits the ideal mentality of a student of writing and literature. She reads steadily, determinedly, and without presumption, and she takes what she knows as the basis of entertainment: she follows her own version of one of the mantras, "write what you know," that guides effective writers at all levels.
As Isobel settles into the "special crowd," other aspects of her life are altered. Her work for Mr Walter persists much as it did in the earlier portions of "Glassware and Other Breakable Items," yet her relationship to Mrs Bowers and to the boarding house as a whole is transformed. The worsening of this relationship is dictated in part by events that are trifling (Isobel getting a new coat) and completely beyond Isobel's control (Maeve marrying Arthur and the resulting sourness in Mrs Bowers). Yet Isobel is well aware that she is in yet another oppressive environment in the boarding house, that even passing dinnertime interactions have become ordeals: "Mrs Bowers, dishing up at the stove, gave her a mean look that made her quail. She didn't want Mrs. Bowers to like her, yet she quailed. Her body was a dog that answered to the orders of others" (129). Isobel has found so much fulfillment, both intellectual and emotional, outside the boarding house. Inside, she reacts to Mrs Bowers with the same combination of deep aversion and helpless obedience with which she reacted to her mother. A version of Isobel's girlhood self has come back to haunt her.
Unfortunately, Isobel's bond to the "special crowd" also proves fleeting. This relationship is subjected to a series of shocks—Diana's appearance, Trevor's attempted romance, and finally Nick's death—from which it never truly recovers. Isobel ultimately judges that "She did not belong with them, though they had not shut her out" (145), and there are a few possible explanations for Isobel's departure from her newfound literary circle. Perhaps she never bonds with any one person in the group enough to bond with the group as a whole. (For Isobel and for her reader, these characters are very much a flurry of names and faces, with the possible and unfortunate exceptions of Trevor, Nick, and Diana.) Perhaps she is still adjusting to the world of adulthood, and is not adjusted enough to work through the problems of romance and death, rather than fleeing from them.
Yet perhaps Isobel's real bond is not to the "special crowd" but to the world of intellect and creativity that this crowd represents, at least in its ideal form. In the end stages of "Glassware and Other Breakable Items," Isobel's connection to the crowd has almost nothing to do with literature in any case: their contact becomes more a form of crisis management, in light of the upheavals involving Diana and Nick. Nor is it clear that literature was always the point anyway. Indeed, it is not especially hard to read Trevor's reading recommendations primarily as a ploy to get closer to Isobel and initiate a romance. But as Isobel leaves behind both the "special crowd" and the boarding house, she pleasantly contemplates her books, including a few that her fleeting friends introduced her to: "Shakespeare, Keats, Byron (now known as facile), Shelley, Auden" (146). The crowd may be gone and may in fact be completely expendable, because Isobel has literature to keep her company.
