What do you think society can do in order to reduce alcohol abuse among its youth?
promiscuity and how it would make her incapable of love.
Alongside of sexual curiosity, was the effect it had on the narrator’s freedom. Being infatuated with Charlotte was very time consuming for the narrator since she was constantly on her mind. As soon as Maurice left on his business trip she took advantage of the extra time she had Charlotte, alone. Not only did this jeopardize her physical but also mental freedom. The narrator took many mental notes about Charlotte and went out of her way to study her by degrees “in the library, watching her hair make reading difficult” and “sitting next to her at lunch watching the bangs go hither” gradually charlotte and her bangs started revolving around her life ( Smith 3). Her main attraction was Charlotte’s bangs, covering all her flaws since she was neither good and “she was no intellectual” but none of this matter since the narrator was stuck under the spell of the bangs (Smith 4). Finally getting a taste of being a boy, the narrator was reaching her peak of the infatuation to get Charlotte to obtain mutual feelings and her thought was “there’s nothing” she would not do to still win her over in time (Smith 5).
Before the climax, the last thing that was affected was the narrator’s emotional logic. Since the beginning she knew what she was getting into when having an affair with a woman in an open relationship. The narrator’s time was up when Maurice came back and decided to propose to Charlotte also the girl “who had taken [her] apart piece by piece” and admits that she realizes how “(un)done” she has become (Smith 9)”. This reality check opens her eyes of the infatuation she was feeling and how it was better to let go of her goal of trying to win Charlotte over. Ironically when the narrator mentions, “…it is almost always women and not men who are waiting under windows”, Charlotte was the “man” to leave the female narrator disappointed even when the narrator thought she was being the man (Smith 11).
In the end , the narrator was only infatuated with Charlotte in a short-lived manner which gave the narrator a blunt reality check. This story can show how the bangs broke down the young life of the narrator but ironically helped her mature and become accepting of the different courses life may take her. Overcoming infatuation over the hot mess was the emotional breakthrough that changed the narrator’
