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Part 2
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Real Thing, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Reality, Artifice, and Art
Class in England at the End of the 19th Century
Money, Identity, and Class
Summary
Analysis
Major Monarch and Mrs. Monarch begin to model for the artist. Mrs. Monarch is the primary model, but the Major comes regardless, which the artist deduces is because he has “nothing else to do.” Major Monarch is very friendly and enjoys chatting with the artist while the artist works. The two of them don’t have much to talk about—the artist doesn’t share the Major’s social circle and the Major doesn’t discuss anything theoretical—so they stick to topics like good leather, good wine, and trains. Mrs. Monarch, while also courteous, is much more reticent when she is in the artist’s studio. She keeps their conversations professional, clearly making the effort to not “slide into sociability.”
Major Monarch tags along with his wife to the studio because he has “nothing else to do,” another indicator that these aristocrats don’t have much purpose. At this point, however, the artist enjoys chatting with Major Monarch, even if their conversations are shallow. The Major, who, as an aristocrat, only knows the social goings-on of the fashionable world, of which the artist is ignorant. The artist, who likes discussing theoretical topics, can’t do so with the Major because the latter is a very simple man. Once again, this reveals the vapidity and hollowness of the aristocracy—they aren’t intelligent enough to dive into conversation on significant topics. Their breeding has made them good conversationalists, but that is the limit to their training. Meanwhile, Mrs. Monarch doesn’t want to confuse her visits with social calls; she is trying to step into the working world and wants to be perceived as a serious employee. The contrast between the two Monarchs’ approaches shows their uncertainty of how to behave as employees. They’ve never been hired before and have different ideas of how they should act.
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The artist quickly runs into issues while drawing Mrs. Monarch. He notes that she sits as though she is posing for photographs, which is to say, very stiffly. While this may do for photography, it’s a problematic practice when modeling in an attempt to suggest something other than yourself. Mrs. Monarch has “no variety of expression [. . .] no sense of variety” and each of the artist’s depictions of her look like “a photograph or a copy of a photograph,” with the additional issue that all of her illustrations of her result in her being too tall. He tries to position her in various ways, but she always looks the same—she always looks like herself. The artist begins to catch himself trying to create “types” that look like her, instead of having her model the “types.” The Major is just as bad; all his images also turn out way too tall. All the while, they behave as though the artist is the one who is lucky by having them model.
Photography, which in the story symbolizes the documentation of reality and how such documentation of reality is not the same as art, makes another appearance in this passage. Mrs. Monarch has been photographed before, and she is under the impression that the artist is trying to do the same thing—that is, to depict her exactly as she is. It is also important to note that, at the point in history when this story was written, photography subjects had to remain still in order to avoid blurriness. In this way, Mrs. Monarch’s stiffness is useful for photography. But art is not photography. The artist is not trying to depict her exactly as she is. Instead, he needs a model who can suggest feelings to inspire his creations of different characters. But Mrs. Monarch doesn’t grasp this concept, so the artist is continually thwarted in his attempts to draw her. All of his drawings look like photographs, which is to say that they don’t look like artwork. This is the issue with trying to work with reality instead of artifice in art: the artist tries to depict “the real thing” instead of allowing something unreal to inspire the feelings that give art it’s real-life appearance. But the Monarchs can’t suggest anything else; they can only be themselves, which shows the severe limitations of reality in art. The fact that both the Monarchs look too tall speaks to the unwieldiness of trying to use reality to create art. In the effort to depict “the real thing,” the artist loses sight of the feelings, ideas, and their relationships between them that he is hoping to inspire with his art.
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The artist is especially irritated when drawing the Monarchs because the resulting art is very far from his goals. He loves the “variety and range” of human characters and despises “being ridden by a type.” He recalls how he used to argue that, when creating art, everything else should be sacrificed before sacrificing character. There is no one type, he maintains, that can represent everyone. While working with the Monarchs, he comes to appreciate Miss Churm, with her ability to imitate so many different “types,” even more.
Miss Churm’s opinion of the Monarchs, “her invidious rivals,” only continues to sour. They only occasionally cross paths at the studio, but when they do, she treats them with skepticism and veiled derision. The Monarchs, however, don’t notice her much at all. The artist believes that this is not from snobbery, but rather because they don’t know how to converse with her; they have nothing in common. One day, when both the Monarchs and Miss Churm are in the studio, they have tea together. The artist, who frequently looks to his models to perform the tea service, asks Miss Churm to serve it. She does so, subtly mocking the Monarchs by over-emphasizing her inflections, but they don’t seem to notice. Afterwards, Miss Churm is furious with the artist, believing that he was trying to humiliate her.
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The Monarchs’ patience, though, is remarkable to the artist. They stop by his studio on the chance that he could use them and sit for hours to wait their turn. The artist tries to find other artists to hire them, but no one is interested. The Monarchs take this as a sign that the artist is the only one who understands their value so, consequently, they rely on him more heavily than before. On top of this, they have their sights set on being selected as the models for the illustrations for Philip Vincent’s novels. The Monarchs are sure that they would be especially valuable for these illustrations, in which the artist would be depicting upper-class characters.
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One day, while Mrs. Monarch is modeling, a knock at the door interrupts their session. The visitor is an Italian man in search of modeling work. He doesn’t speak English, so he communicates with the artist solely through mimicry. Although the artist is initially uninterested, he is quickly impressed by the man’s range of expression and ability to communicate without speaking. The young man’s eagerness to help also catches the artist’s eye, so he offers him a position as both a servant and a model, which the man readily accepts. The artist discovers that the man’s name is Oronte, and that he is an Italian immigrant who had moved to England to make money, only to be abandoned by his business partner with whom he sold ice cream.
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