The Price of Salt

Reading The Price of Salt, I find that the narrator is unreliable. It’s not necessarily anything she does, so much as her feelings. Throughout the first nine chapters I feel as if something is missing. I consistently wondered whether or not this was a sequel. This may be due to the fact that the setting is not firmly established. I gather that it’s Christmas time in New York, but I can’t figure out when this novel takes place. The lack of setting sort of adds to the overly romanticized section where the narrator simply sees this woman across the room and falls in love. All of the sudden the narrator’s entire life revolves around this woman whom she doesn’t know, but proceeds to feel jealous, smitten, and a range of other emotions towards. One of the questions I find myself asking (and probably critics as well) is whether or not I would have this problem of believing the narrator if her love interest had been a man. My answer would be yes. In fact, if the narrator had actually visited the ‘man’ the way she does Carol, I would actually be worried about her. There is no sense of danger in this novel (at least not yet). Carol clearly has other motives for wanting Therese to visit her house (especially when she invites her to sleep). These motives are covered by the narrator’s inability to see Carol as nothing but a mother figure, and yet she yearns for Carol to be someone else. Therese even has contradictory thoughts, wondering if she actually loves Carol.

I feel like overall Therese is a character that has no agency in her own life, except for when she meets Carol (and this too is suspect). Therese is unhappy with her job at the ‘doll’ store and doesn’t want to end up like the old woman (whom she once again follows into her house). Not wanting to end up like this woman is understandable, but Therese only has what seems to be an unproductive or artistic job to fall back upon - designing/building stage sets. The job that she’s offered most likely won’t even happen considering as of now they only have three actors and a director.