Between The Acts

Content Warning: This section of the guide depicts characters with colonial, racist, patriarchal, and anti-gay attitudes.

“Old Oliver raised himself, his veins swollen, his cheeks flushed; he was angry. His little game with the paper hadn’t worked. The boy was a cry-baby. He nodded and sauntered on, smoothing out the crumpled paper and muttering, as he tried to find his line in the column, ‘A cry-baby—a cry-baby.’”

This passage supports the theme of Gender Roles and Expectations by showing that Bart values traditionally masculine traits such as stoicism and fearlessness. He is trying to instill these traits in his grandson by scaring him and teaching him to not react with fear. However, George starts crying with fright. Bart regards his grandson as sensitive and weak as a result. Boys and men who struggled to adopt traditionally masculine traits in the way society of the time dictated were seen by traditionalists as weaker and more sensitive and, thus, more feminine.

“Inside the glass, in her eyes, she saw what she had felt overnight for the ravaged, the silent, the romantic gentleman farmer. ‘In love,’ was in her eyes. But outside, on the washstand, on the dressing-table, among the silver boxes and tooth-brushes, was the other love; love for her husband, the stockbroker—’The father of my children,’ she added, slipping into the cliché conveniently provided by fiction. Inner love was in the eyes; outer love on the dressing-table.”

Isa is conflicted about her feelings for Rupert Haines, whom she idealizes as her love and a missed opportunity for happiness. She also feels a mixture of love and hate for her husband, Giles. She feels the strain as a wife in 1930s England as well, especially an unhappy wife, highlighting Gender Roles and Expectations and how they stifle women like her.

“Books are the mirrors of the soul.”

Isa reflects on this saying and sees how books connect with people’s inner selves and deeply held values and interests. She notices that while there are still classic books in the Pointz Hall library, more new books are appearing in the library.