The Lacuna

Mrs. Violet Brown is Shepherd’s secretary and typist. She is a middle-aged widow who types Shepherd’s manuscripts, responds to his fan letters, and generally supports him. Mrs. Brown has an important role in The Lacuna as the “archivist” who complies and prepares Shepherd’s personal effects for publication. She is practical, discreet, efficient, and reliable. Although, early in the book, it seems as if Mrs. Brown is an almost stereotypical secretary who lives to “serv[e] greatness,” it later becomes clear that Mrs. Brown is more adventurous, emotional, and intuitive than her stereotype suggests.

Mrs. Brown comes from a poor, extremely religious family that lives in the mountains. However, from a young age, Mrs. Brown dreamed of a different life. She tells Shepherd, “I’ve read the [National] Geographics since I was a girl. My sisters could tell you, I strained for travel like a horse fresh to the bit” (444). However, opportunities for unmarried women are limited during the Great Depression. It isn’t until Shepherd comes into her life that Mrs. Brown finally has the opportunity to leave the country and travel internationally to Mexico. This dream of a different life sets her apart from the rest of her family.

As the Red Scare gathers steam, Mrs. Brown finds herself ostracized from the Asheville community along with Shepherd. After his disappearance, she can only find part-time work in a “basement office” of a department store. Mrs. Brown takes these hardships in stride, noting that “hard times are nothing new to me” (656). She feels for Shepherd, who, in contrast, found it difficult to countenance the hardships caused by the scrutiny of his politics and the subsequent blacklisting.

Mrs. Brown is defined by her love and affection for Shepherd and her belief in the power of his words. She encourages him and praises his writing, tells him to stand up for what he believes in, saves his journals for posterity, and tends to him when he has his depressive “episodes.” Her care is a vital support for him as his life takes a turn for the worse.

Frida Kahlo is a historical figure who is somewhat fictionalized in The Lacuna. Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) is a Mexican painter known for her surrealist self-portraits inspired by indigenous Mexican motifs who was active in Communist organizing in Mexico. At a young age, she contracted polio, and as a teenager, she was in a terrible bus accident, leaving her with the limp and other health problems portrayed in the novel.

In The Lacuna, Kahlo is a fierce, intense, mercurial artist who nevertheless provides constant support and encouragement to Shepherd. When she is first introduced, Kahlo seems to be an imperious, eccentric bourgeois artist with a pet monkey who has pretenses of Communist political commitments but also relies on a household staff to do her cooking and cleaning. As a character, she embodied The Complex Relationship Between Art and Politics. Shepherd and the other household staff are intimidated by her. Over time, though, Kahlo and Shepherd build a relationship. They share intimate details of their lives with one another, as when Shepherd reveals to Kahlo that he is gay, Kahlo tells Shepherd she and Diego are getting a divorce. Kahlo, one of the first artist celebrities, shares with Shepherd her understanding of being someone in the public eye who does not conform to mainstream expectations, stating, “People will always stare at the queer birds like you and me. We only get to choose if they’ll stare at a cripple, or a glare of light” (285). She emphasizes how important it is to shape the media’s, and thereby the public’s, perception by creating a spectacle that obscures what one wants to keep private.

Kahlo is a lifelong supporter of Shepherd. She rescues his papers and manuscripts from the police, arranges a publisher for his first novel, and may have played a role in the possible faking of Shepherd’s death. The material and emotional support she provides him contrasts with the impression given of a selfish, self-obsessed artist she gives off at the beginning of the book.

Diego Rivera (1886-1957) is a Mexican painter and muralist. Frida Kahlo is his third wife. As depicted in the novel, Rivera and Kahlo lived together in Mexico City in a pair of avant-garde structures designed by architect Juan O’Gorman. Barbara Kingsolver first describes Rivera by Shepherd’s market acquaintance, La Perla, as “fat as a giant and horribly ugly, with the face of a frog and the teeth of a Communist” (86). Although not very polite, this description captures Rivera’s large size and commitment to Communism. Rivera is a minor figure in the novel who is nevertheless instrumental to the plot, as he gives Shepherd a job as a plaster mixer for his mural at the Mexican National Palace.

For the majority of the book, Rivera is a staunch supporter of Leon Trotsky against Stalin. As a result, he also embodies The Complex Relationship Between Art and Politics. He shelters Trotsky in his home and accepts being removed from the Mexican Communist Party as a result. However, by 1947, partly in reaction to the swell of anti-Communist sentiment in the United States, Rivera realigned with Stalin. Shepherd expresses shock about this transformation. He writes to Frida, “What rational motives could cause Diego to make this change? ‘It’s a revolutionary necessity,’ he said, but how am I to know what that means? Betrayal as the means to an end?” (471). By the end of the novel, Shepherd has very little further contract with Rivera as Rivera’s relationship with Frida continues to deteriorate and Rivera’s politics change.