The Venice Sketchbook

“‘And what about me?’ she wanted to ask. ‘Do you think that my job is what I dreamed of when we were in art school? I had as much talent as you, and yet you were the one who got the job with a fashion house…and I was the one who got pregnant.’”

This quote from Caroline’s thoughts provides character backstory while also setting up Caroline’s inner conflict and resentment. It also reveals the similarities between Caroline and Juliet, creating the potential for Caroline to find the happiness denied to Juliet.

“‘Why are you always so nice?’ Caroline remembered asking her. ‘So kind. So forgiving?’ ‘I wasn’t always,’ her great-aunt replied. ‘Experience makes one come to terms with life, to be at one with the mind and the heart. And most people are suffering in some way.’”

This is one of only two insights into who Juliet becomes decades after the war—a kind and understanding, but also withdrawn woman. Her words also foreshadow Caroline’s discovery of her own suffering and the experiences that taught her about the suffering of others.

“I turned away from the window. I shouldn’t have come, I thought. At that moment a bell bean to toll nearby, its sound resonating through the still air. Pigeons took off in alarm, flapping from nearby rooftops, and at once I was taken back. ‘A city of bells and birds,’ I whispered to myself.”

In 1938 Juliet questions whether returning to Venice was a good idea, but the sounds of the city arrest her. She recalls the words she once used to describe the city, and they remind her of her love for the city and of her youthful hope. The birds and bells continually return throughout the novel, their presence noted by both Juliet and Caroline.

“I watched a group of students going into the next-door building that housed the academy itself. They carried portfolios, and they were laughing together as if they hadn’t a care in the world. That should have been me, I thought, then reminded myself that at least I’d had one year of instruction. Better than nothing. Better than those poor people who had no job at all, who had lost all hope.”

Juliet’s thoughts in this moment reveal two conflicting elements of her personality. On one hand, she feels regret, loss, and envy on seeing these students living the life she had imagined for herself. Immediately after feeling this envy, however, she pulls herself back with thoughts of duty and putting others above herself by telling herself that her losses are not as great as those of others.

“‘You’ll see that I’m not sitting around waiting for you to jerk the strings and play me like a puppet. How will you feel when you know I’ve gone off to the Continent without you?’ She hoped this speech would give her some satisfaction, but it didn’t really. She realized that she didn’t care if Josh stayed with Desiree and her mansion in Beverly Hills. All she wanted was her son, safely home again with her.”

Resentment lingers for Caroline, but her desires are beginning to change; her priority is her son, and she is slowly letting go of Josh and his decisions. This moment also shows Caroline on the path toward claiming her own life as she realizes that she had let Josh “play” her for so long.

“She had talent, Caroline thought. Why did she not pursue it? Had the war drained all of her creativity? She could see the parallel in her own life, that a time of stress and tragedy takes away all but the will to survive.”

Without any concrete information so far, Caroline ruminates over what could have possibly happened to Juliet. This moment illustrates another similarity between the women: Both sacrifice their art but also experience a loss of all desire to create when they suffer tragedy and stress. Art can nourish the soul, but challenging experiences can also affect one’s creative drive.

“Would I fit in with such a crowd? I realized I was not eighteen again. I was almost thirty. I no longer had their hopeful belief that life would be full of opportunity.”

Juliet experiences frequent self-doubt during her time in Venice. She feels like an outsider due to her age, her nationality, and her upbringing, which left her withdrawn. Juliet recognizes that she has lost her ability to trust in hope, because she has been disappointed many times.

“In truth, I had never had too much to do with God. I attended prayers every morning at school. I went to church with my mother most Sundays, but it all seemed like a sham, a show. I felt that God hadn’t actually done much for me. He had taken my father, taken my chance at a happy life.”

Although religion doesn’t take on a large role in the novel, it does show up through the effects it has had on Juliet. She resents God, but her upbringing seems to have left her with some level of belief, because she never claims he does not exist. She also feels shame over sleeping with Leo and recalls that the Bible says adultery is wrong. Society has instilled many religious lessons in her, and that is difficult training to overcome.

“I tucked my portfolio under my arm, and off I went to meet my destiny! That sounds a little dramatic, doesn’t it? But that’s how it felt. My chance to escape from the mundane, the routine, the boring, and to discover my true potential.”

Juliet cannot help feeling hopeful, despite her many disappointments and self-doubt. This passage reveals the beginning of Juliet’s path to building her own community in Venice. Away from the restrictions of her life in England, she meets people who care for her and she starts to live the life for which she had always hoped.

“‘And in England one does everything correctly, no?’ He shook his head. ‘So you draw me a nice correct church, a nicely proportioned figure and a nice round orange. Now I want you to forget everything you have learned and turn them all into one design. Incorporate the church into the face, put the face on an orange—whatever you like, but they should all be part of one glorious whole. Capisce?’”

This moment marks the beginning of Juliet’s journey to self-expression. She has spent so long shutting herself away to care for others that she struggles to express herself and her own desires. Through this class, however, she learns to think differently, something that improves not only her art but her way of living.

“The racial laws created last year by Il Duce were supposed to exclude Jews from education and teaching and then to strip them of property. None of that has happened here. The Venetians still live quite happily and do business in the ghetto and turn a blind eye to those of Jewish origin, like our dear Contessa here […] I have advised her to have an escape plan ready, just in case.”

This information from the British consul foreshadows the coming war and the loss of the contessa and Hanni. Many Venetians spend years believing that their people will never allow such horrible treatment as in Germany, but when the city falls to Nazis, the Holocaust comes to them, as well.

“I didn’t quite know what to make of him. He was a flirt, but what could he see in me, especially when he was clearly interested in Imelda? Was it perhaps a national sport in France to flirt? I knew so little of men in any country, only that the English boys I had met in my youth lacked any finesse in approaching the opposite sex. Too many years of boarding school, I suspect. Anyway, the encounter had cheered me in a strange way. I had expected to feel annoyed, but now I realized it was nice to know I was not to be the older spinster, overlooked and unimportant.”

This moment is later echoed by Caroline’s appreciation for Luca’s interest in her and their affair. Both women feel as if they are past their prime, and both suffer loneliness. So even though Juliet does not want to be with Gaston, she appreciates his flirtation as a sign that she has not missed out on life entirely.

“He was looking at her with what seemed to be real concern. ‘Not at all. I understand how you feel. Grief and worry. They can eat away at a person.’”

Like Juliet and Leo, Caroline and Luca feel a connection quickly. While Leo and Juliet bond over duty, Luca and Caroline bond over loss and grief. Such understanding is unfamiliar to Caroline, at least in a romantic relationship, and she struggles at first to accept it.

“I have to confess that I have not reached the stage of friendship where I can share in a similar way with her.”

One effect of Juliet’s sacrifices for family was the instinct she developed to hide herself and to mask her emotions. She takes pleasure in the fact that she builds friendships with her fellow students, but her instinct to keep to herself is a difficult one to overcome. Despite her struggle to confide in Imelda at this point, Imelda takes on the role of her first confidante about the pregnancy.

“There were suggestions, laughter, and I began to relax amongst them. Food was offered, including the sardines in their sauce, polenta, pasta. Everything tasted wonderful. I found myself thinking how pale and dull our lives in England were compared to this. And then the thought crept in, unbidden. Did I want to go home at the end of the year? What if I just stayed and found a job and spent my life amongst these happy, loud, affectionate people?”

Juliet begins to imagine the possibility of choosing a different life for herself than her family and situation had set out for her. The family that she joins at the festival are welcoming and loving, and she dreams of building a life with such people. The hope is short-lived as duty and then war get in the way.

“But then I wondered, what if he did come to see me again? Would I be able to resist him? Did I want to end up as a man’s mistress? And didn’t the Bible tell us that adultery was wrong?”

Juliet is struggling against the morals that her society and her religion taught her. Despite her happiness the night before, she feels shame after making love to Leo. She shows determination, however, when she stands up for herself and insists she will not be Leo’s mistress.

“‘Not noble at all,’ she said. ‘A righteous duty. They are my kinsmen, my fellow Jews. They reminded you I am Jewish, I’m sure.’”

Duty takes on a new form in the contessa. For the most part, duty has been a limitation that people like Juliet and Leo accept but resent, but for the contessa, duty is something she chooses because she believes in the righteousness of saving her kinsmen from oppression.

“He walked over to the window, then came to perch on the arm of her chair. Caroline was horribly aware of his presence. […] Caroline wished she was not sitting down. It put her in a vulnerable position, although there was nothing hostile in his demeanor.”

Having lived first in the shadow of Josh’s oppressive personality and then in the precarity of the situation with Teddy in America, Caroline is sensitive to power imbalances. Caroline, like Juliet, has had to learn to protect herself, so she is resistant to the idea of allowing someone else to have power, even in a symbolic way.

“At that moment it dawned on me that I had not had a chance to behave like this for years. To be free, to tease, to laugh and, as I began to realize, to love. Now I would be going back to the grim reality of a war, to danger, deprivation, maybe even a German invasion. ‘My last days,’ I whispered to myself as we went up the stairs to our class.”

Juliet has reveled in the freedom and community she has built in Venice—exposure to what life could be has made it difficult for her to abandon such possibility. This moment also foreshadows the war and Juliet’s losses. Although she won’t leave Venice as soon as she believes, these are indeed her last days of true freedom, since she will have to cope with the pregnancy and then with war.

“I rather surprised myself how dispassionately I was handling this. I suppose I was desperately trying to keep fear at bay—fear and despair. I was no longer that emotional girl who burst into tears easily. I had learned to shut off my emotions long ago. I hadn’t cried when I was told I had to leave art college, because I saw how terrified my mother was, and my father so ill. I hadn’t even cried when he died, because my mother was hysterical enough for both of us. So I thought I had forgotten how to feel—until Leo had made me feel alive again and I had experienced love.”

Grief and loss affect people in a wide variety of ways; Juliet learned to cope with loss by becoming the strong one of her family. With her mother hysterical, Juliet was forced to swallow her emotions to instead create rational solutions. Venice and the people she met there have helped her learn to open up again, but her rationality is a skill she can recall when she needs.

“I’ve realized that one of the hardest things is not having someone to talk to. No relative, no friend of my own. Not that I could ever have confided in my mother, but perhaps my sister, Winnie, if she hadn’t gone to India. And here, Imelda or the contessa came to mind, but I just can’t see myself opening up to them, burdening them with my worries. I suppose it comes from years of loneliness.”

Juliet still cannot bring herself to burden others with her problems, allowing her lack of practice with intimacy to take priority over her own troubles and need for support. She is lonely, but she lacks experience in reaching out to others, believing herself unworthy of their time and concern.

“How can you put a broken heart on to a piece of paper? The full enormity of what had happened hadn’t completely engulfed me yet, but I knew that it would, soon enough.”

Grief and loss can make words seem inadequate; Juliet reckons with this in the aftermath of Angelo being taken from her by force. She has put the bare facts down on the page, but she struggles to process her experience. She and Caroline both suffer separation from their son, but Juliet has even fewer resources than Caroline, leaving her powerless against Bianca.

“‘I say always do what your heart tells you, Cara,’ he replied, and the way he looked at her made her feel that he wasn’t just talking about Teddy.”

Caroline is beginning to see her world open before her as she meets people who truly care for her and who want to help her. Luca waits for her to accept these possibilities and to achieve the happy ending denied Juliet.