With many novels written in third person, the reader can usually get a pretty good understanding of all of the characters; however, in the novel, The Price of Salt, we only really get one character’s point of view-Therese’s. Unfortunately this gives the reader a pretty limited viewpoint, because although the reader can go on the journey with Therese as she explores her sexuality and travels the country, we as readers never get the opportunity to get inside of Carol’s head and so we can’t tell if she also has feelings for Therese. Although Carol acts as a mentor and a lover to Therese, her motives remain a mystery and this leaves us wondering if she truly has feelings for Therese or if this is all part of something else completely for Carol.
Carol is a very hard character to read, she is described as having “gray, colorless, yet dominant as light or fire” (3.30) eyes. This is the first description that we get of Carol, and it gives us a little glimpse into Carol’s personality, because we can pretty much assume that although she seems dull and boring on the outside, there is a mystery to her lying just beneath the surface. We begin to see that with Therese, everything seems to be right out in the open, but with Carol you have to do a little digging to get inside of her mind. We also learn that Carol is a very dominant character, especially when it comes to Therese. Carol usually calls the shots, and has Therese around when it’s convenient for her. We see this change when Carol is confronted by the detective who tells her that “A human being is not property”(19.45-19.46), and it is after this pivotal moment that we see Carol allow Therese to call the shots when she asks Therese to drive, which is a metaphorical and literal action.
Carol takes Therese on a road trip, travelling around the country so that Therese can get some “real world experience”. Carol uses this road trip as a way to explore her sexual identity with Therese, and after spending a night in Waterloo Therese thinks that Waterloo is a special place to them, but Carol responds by saying “There’s a couple Waterloos in every state” (15.102) Carol isn’t trying to say that what her and Therese have isn’t special, she is simply trying to say that there are other women living out in the country like that, with secret lives that the rest of the world doesn’t know about. In this time period of the 1950’s there are no safe havens for women trying to explore their sexuality, and Therese and Carol would be seen as sexual deviants. This brings to mind our previous novel, Passing, because it seems to me that Therese and Carol are trying to pass as heterosexual; women, especially Carol as she fulfills the role of a mother and is afraid that her daughter will be taken away from her based on her sexual orientation.
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