During her many conversations with Hannibal Lecter, Starling’s class background slowly comes into focus. The first time Lecter meets Starling, he immediately notices the way she is dressed. He remarks that she looks like a “rube” who is trying to appeal to a sophisticated class of people but is only pulling off a poor imitation. Lecter’s comments cut deep for Starling because she does feel embarrassment about how she grew up. Later in the novel, Starling tells Lecter the story of how her father died; she claims he was a town marshal, and two people addicted to drugs shot him while he was on duty. Eventually, she admits that he was little more than a security guard and that she played up her description of him to impress Lecter. Again, Starling’s behavior suggests she is ashamed of where she came from, even though she has great love and respect for her father.
Over the course of the novel, Starling never resolves her inferiority complex. However, the novel also shows the reader that Starling has nothing to be ashamed of because her Southern, rural background often helps her while working the Buffalo Bill case. She knows how to talk to her fellow Southerners when trying to get them to do what she wants. In this way, she stands in stark contrast to someone like Crawford, who is not as effective as Starling when dealing with people in the South. As such, the novel ultimately advocates for the importance of class diversity, especially in a field like law enforcement, in which it is necessary for agents to deal with people from wide and varied backgrounds.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Class and Shame ThemeTracker
Class and Shame Quotes in The Silence of the Lambs
You’d like to quantify me, Officer Starling. You’re so ambitious, aren’t you? Do you know what you look like to me, with your good bag and your cheap shoes? You look like a rube. You’re a well-scrubbed, hustling rube with a little taste. Your eyes are like cheap birthstones—all surface shine when you stalk some little answer. And you’re bright behind them, aren’t you? Desperate not to be like your mother. Good nutrition has given you some length of bone, but you’re not more than one generation out of the mines, Officer Starling. Is it the West Virginia Starlings or the Okie Starlings, Officer? It was a toss-up between college and the opportunities in the Women’s Army Corps, wasn’t it? Let me tell you something specific about yourself, Student Starling. Back in your room, you have a string of gold add-a-beads and you feel an ugly little thump when you look at how tacky they are now, isn’t that so? All those tedious thank-yous, permitting all that sincere fumbling, getting all sticky once for every bead. Tedious. Tedious. Bo-o-o-o-r-i-ing. Being smart spoils a lot of things, doesn’t it?
“Clarice, he was working at night, in a pickup truck, armed only with a shotgun.... Tell me, did he wear a time clock on his belt by any chance? One of those things where they have keys screwed to posts all over town and you have to drive to them and stick them in your clock? So the town fathers know you weren’t asleep. Tell me if he wore one, Clarice.”
“Yes.”
“He was a night watchman, wasn’t he, Clarice, he wasn’t a marshal at all. I’ll know if you lie.”
“The job description said night marshal.”
When her pupils darkened, Dr. Lecter took a single sip of her pain and found it exquisite. That was enough for today.
