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Chapter 1
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Life Class, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
War
Art
Gender
Love and Relationships
Class
Summary
Analysis
Later, Paul goes to the Café Royal and marvels at the glamor and beauty of the place and its patrons. Elinor introduces Paul to her friends, Teresa Halliday, whom Paul is immediately attracted to, and Kit Neville, an artist who left the Slade two years ago. Neville reveals he was expelled from the Slade because he got one of the models pregnant and refused to marry her. Neville comments that most of the models are “loose” except for Teresa, who he reveals is not only a nude model but also married. Teresa adds that her husband Jack, an abusive alcoholic, has been gone for a year, but she suspects he’s back and has been spying on her. Paul is distracted by fantasies of Teresa at work as a nude model. Elinor and Neville leave together, and shortly afterwards Teresa and Paul do the same.
The Café Royal is yet another element of London in which Paul feels out of place. Elinor and Neville also embody the upper-class privilege to which Paul lacks access, with Neville also representing the privilege of a wealthy and successful male artist. Neville sees the women who model for him as mere objects for his art, and though he claims to exempt Teresa from this sexist judgement, the abuse Teresa receives from her husband makes clear the connection between Neville’s brand of objectification and Jack’s unpunished domestic violence.
Active
Themes
