Corinna Mae
The play is barely underway before simile is introduce as a means of having one character describe another not yet on stage. A party is underway downstairs in honor of the nuptials of Corinna Mae. Esther, the protagonist of the story, is smart as a whip, but accompanied by what seems to be a standard trade-off for that advantage. The new bride is just the opposite, as Esther makes clear:
“Silly Corinna Mae, ain’t got no brain at all, and just as plain as flour.”
Esther
Painfully aware of her plainness, Esther is in no hurry to trek downstairs and celebrate the brainless sack of flour’s luck in landing a husband. Especially since she is being urged to make that trek because there are always available men open to a nice smile. Esther resists through metaphor:
“Well, I ain’t going down there to be paraded like some featherless bird.”
Metaphor by Reputation
Some similes are constructed from a comparison that is not actually based on person experience, but rather gathered from the zeitgeist of collective awareness. For instance, one need not have ever actually met a hippie to get what one means when someone is compared to one. The same deal goes down here with the exception that Mrs. Van Buren is honest enough to admit it a comparison earned by reputation only. Except that the Tenderloin was New York’s scandalous red-light district, so perhaps her “honesty” is merely a quick attempt to cover up her actual honesty:
“I feel like a tart from the Tenderloin. Granted I’ve never been, but I’m told.”
Born to Sew
Esther is almost what might be termed a prodigy as a seamstress. Not being born the attributes of a Corinna Mae which would facilitate landing the financial security of a husband (possibly) she was gifted instead with a talent that seemed to come straight from the fates:
“An old woman in the rooming house teach me to sew intimate apparel, saying folks’ll pay you good money for your discretion. It was just about the best gift anybody give me. It was as though God kissed my hands when I first pulled the fabric through the sewing machine and held up a finished garment.”
George Armstrong
George Armstrong is the character that stirs up the hornets’ nest of Esther’s life. They become associated in a most unique way, with George taking it upon himself to begin writing to Esther from his position working on the Panama Canal construction merely as the result of a chance happenstance of sharing a mutual acquaintance. George turns out not to be at all the man his letters promise, but the content of those letters indicates what someone like Esther would see in the promise contained within:
“They say a mad Frenchman dreamed up this Panama project and convinced the devil to give him an army of workers. The price—this great fissure across the land that reach right into the earth’s belly. Indeed, chaos is a jackhammer away.”
