Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Voyage in the Dark, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Homesickness, Memory, and Belonging
Sexism, Love, and Power
Race and Identity
Money and Happiness
Summary
Analysis
Anna has dinner with a man and takes him back to her room in Ethel’s flat. She’s quite drunk and decides to throw her shoe at a frame hanging on the wall, since the dog in the painting annoys her—it’s always staring at her. She and the man then start dancing, but she tells him to let her go. He doesn’t, so she hits him on his wrist, which is in a bandage because he injured it. Enraged, he calls her a “bitch,” though he stops when he sees that she’s vomiting. When she comes back from the bathroom, he’s gone. Alone, she thinks about why she doesn’t feel well and tries to tell herself it’s not because she’s pregnant.
This tumultuous scene with a random man hints that Anna has been socializing with quite a few different men and taking them back to Ethel’s flat to become physically intimate. In other words, she has been doing exactly what Ethel wanted her to do, using her youthful good looks to attract wealthy older men. And though it’s arguable that she’s never all that happy at any point in Voyage in the Dark, it’s especially clear that her current lifestyle hasn’t brought her much in the way of contentment, as evidenced by her edginess when she throws her shoe at the painting of a dog—a sign that she strongly dislikes her immediate circumstances and, in turn, the life that has come along with those circumstances.
Themes
