Lucy Snowe Analysis

As Lucy grows up and experiences hardships – though what exactly, she as our narrator doesn’t tell us – she is determined to remain an unobtrusive observer and her own observations become more decisive as she chooses whether to act on this knowledge or not thus earning her autonomy through her own decisions based on information she gathered. Our narrator learns how to take the expectations of female repression and use them to her own advantage, allowing her to being to break free of the confines placed on women and take back her own freedom. For instance, when she catches Madame Beck searching through Lucy’s room while the latter is sleeping, becomes a prominent example of another female spy that Lucy build off her own surveying: “I divined her motive for this proceeding, viz., the wish to form from the garments a judgment respecting the wearer, her station, means, neatness, &c. the end was not bad, but the means were hardly

Beck’s snooping, Lucy does struggle overwhelming sense of being watched and the mistrust that goes along with it. Lucy doesn’t want her secrets to be revealed, but understands the reasons her boss is spying. So, Lucy faces the conflict of being spied on and learning from Mme. Beck – which is the eventual outcome – and with Lucy’s own desire to watch the people around her. May’s article “Lucy Snowe, A Material Girl? Phrenology, Surveillance, and the Sociology of Interiority” reasons that: “There is also a problem with Lucy’s consistency: she sometimes seems to invite the very kind of intrusion she normally struggles against, and she also does not always respect the secret space of others” (53). After Lucy discovers Mme. Beck in her room the second time – it takes time for her to come to terms with what it means for her to be spied on and the potential repercussion. Once the second incident with Mme. Beck occurs, Lucy’s façade about her thoughts towards this invasion of privacy falls for a