Being in fashion and looking good, dressing correctly and stylishly, are synonymous with success. This is the year that black patent leather is in style. Is it no wonder that even the fashion fun of New York City cannot make Esther forget the Rosenbergs and her own thoughts of death?
Thus, Esther starts to wear more black, more than just her black shoes and black purse. She dresses in a black shantung sheath dress for fancy occasions. In contrast, Doreen, who is smart and cynical, and whose comments at Ladies' Day functions keep Esther from being bored, wears white and lots of frothy silk lingerie. Yet even Doreen's white lace dress does not make her look innocent and pure. Esther sees Doreen as "dusky as a bleached-blonde Negress." Betsy, on the other hand, Esther's other friend on the magazine staff, the girl who is called Pollyanna Cowgirl by Doreen, is quite genuinely innocent in her Midwestern ways. She is not sophisticated enough, as the southern Doreen and the New England Esther, to really understand what is happening that summer, but the magazine's beauty editor makes a cover girl out of Betsy, and Betsy keeps on smiling her "Sweetheart of Sigma Chi smile."
Esther vacillates between wanting to be cynical like Doreen and innocent like Betsy. In some ways, Esther is like both girls, and this shows us how divided she is. It is perhaps this tendency toward a split personality that gives Esther part of her mental problems.
In addition, Esther keeps lying about things. She lies about who she is; she calls herself Elly Higgenbottom. We ask ourselves: why does Esther allow herself to be in situations in which she does not even want to admit her true identity? She seems to want these fast life experiences, such as going to the disc jockey's apartment, but she doesn't want anyone to know about it, especially these apparently contemptible New Yorkers. She worries about her manners and how she appears, yet at the Ladies' Day luncheon she kids herself that her gluttony in eating all the caviar is all right — and has to remind herself of the poet whom she met who ate his salad with his fingers and was so poised at it that it seemed the right thing to do.
