The Lions of Fifth Avenue

“But a first edition of one that had gone on to become an American classic meant more than that: It was a piece of history, the closest example of the author’s intent.”

When a first edition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass goes missing, Laura considers its value as an aesthetic artifact as well as the most direct connection to Whitman’s mind at the time of its composition. Fiona Davis, through her characters, makes this same argument, in various iterations, many times over the course of the novel. In fact, Sadie’s courtroom version of the argument persuades the judge to give Robin a longer sentence than he would have.

“A couple of the professors were wary of the women students in particular, commenting on their attire if their skirts were deemed too short, one even sneaking about the building in the hopes of catching them committing immoral acts with male students.”

Laura’s innocence regarding journalism school is challenged when she discovers that the halls of academia are just as sexist as the outside world. She sees sexism in the double standard of the professors, and sees it in her assignments. Laura overlooks the school’s sexism to earn her degree, but when Dr. Wakeman fails her for arbitrary, sexist reasons, she cannot ignore it any longer.

“Sadie was the loony librarian who wore weird clothes.”

After a disappointing evening with her mother, Sadie considers her status within the family. Her older brother Lonnie is a respected doctor who takes Pearl into his home during her convalescence; Sadie is an isolated loner who can’t seem to move on after her divorce. Rather than celebrate her differences as appealing eccentricities, Sadie sees them through her mother’s eyes: as faults to be remedied in order to make her more appealing to a man.

“She supposed a death in the family did that, made you dredge up the silt from the bottom of your life.”

Pearl’s death is a bitter reminder of the loss of Sadie’s father, a musician she loved and adored. By contrast, Pearl is a critical woman who berates Sadie constantly for not moving on from her divorce. For Sadie, death brings buried feelings—both positive and negative—about her family and her place in it.

“Every library with rare books and maps faced the same quandary: whether to ‘deface’ a book which made it difficult to sell on the black market or retain the book’s purity and leave a tempting morsel for thieves.”

Fiona Davis illuminates a difficult conundrum in the world of rare books. In order to prevent theft—or at least make identifying stolen books easier—libraries will stamp a page to mark it as library property. This small act of marring an otherwise unspoiled book is a necessary step many libraries take, although it flies in the face of a purist’s ideation of untouched historical artifacts. In the end, it proves a beneficial strategy, as Sadie is able to identify a stolen book in the hands of an unscrupulous bookshop owner.

“‘Maternal health, the health of the babies of poor immigrant women, is not a priority in this city at this time,’ said Dr. Potter.”

Echoing not only the theme of patriarchal dominance but the timeworn problem of institutional neglect of immigrants, Amelia lectures Laura on the necessity of her work. The lack of education among new mothers is so severe that one woman responds to Amelia’s advice that she must hold her baby to nurture a bond with “My own mother said you have to ignore them, or they’ll grow up to be weak” (91). Many countries, the United States included, have a less than sterling record when welcoming new immigrants, and Amelia’s work is a testament to the neglect they endure at the hands of a society that doesn’t want them (despite benefiting from their labor).

“With a deadline, it’s amazing how fast you get things done. Journalists don’t get paid if they don’t write, so it becomes less precious.”

As Jack labors endlessly over his manuscript, Laura chides him for treating every word as sacrosanct. She compares his writing to journalism, which depends on meeting deadlines. There is no time for perfection, she argues. The conversation, while fairly inconsequential, masks the first signs of discontent between Laura and Jack. His demand for endless creative time begins to infringe on her ability to complete her school assignments and “wifely” duties (cooking and caring for the children).

“She’d taken off the stiff collar she wore and loosened her necktie, much in the way that Jack did when he came home. Yet her obviously ample cleavage swelled under the shirtwaist like a Gibson Girl’s. A strange mix of feminine and masculine.”

Laura watches Amelia undress after her day at work, a sight she finds tantalizing. Amelia’s fluid sense of fashion is intriguing to Laura, both sexually and politically. By recognizing Amelia’s similarity to Jack, however slight, she sees in her friend the possibility of love like she has with her husband. At the same time, Amelia’s unapologetic bravado inspires Laura and nudges her in the same direction, to become fully herself without self-consciousness or fear.

“You could say that it’s an active representation of the human act of creation…that it’s a bridge from the reader to the author, one that provides far more than just the mechanical representation of the content.”

Sadie and Nick examine a first draft of Leaves of Grass, and Nick is mesmerized by the edits—in Walt Whitman’s own hand—and the worn condition of the pages, signs of the author’s working process and not something one would ever see in a reproduction. Sadie explains the importance of preserving these rare first editions, for the very wonder Nick is experiencing at the moment. This scene captures the first personal connection between these characters over a shared love of poetry.

“Not that she’d ever twirled, but wearing it made her feel that she might become the kind of woman who did.”

After her divorce, Sadie goes down the “thrift store rabbit hole” (133), searching for clothes that might give her a fresh look, that might make her feel desirable to someone. Instead, she sticks to her eccentric, quirky wardrobe, exacerbating her “weird” librarian look, which in itself is nothing to be ashamed of, but it doesn’t help her step out of her comfort zone. Despite this, she still fantasizes about a romantic twirl on the dance floor.

“Pearl had gotten rid of the clothes not to punish Sadie, she knew, but to take away any conduit to sadness. She’d only wanted her children to be happy, which left no room for grief.”

Pearl, not a sentimental person, gets rid of her husband’s (Sadie’s father’s) clothes immediately after his death. In an attempt to erase anything that might cause grief, Pearl also erases memories of happiness. Grief, Fiona Davis suggests, is a necessary gauntlet through which people must pass before they find acceptance and closure. Pearl, however, takes a shortcut, which robs Sadie and Lonnie of the important grieving process.

“You’re a mother. What did you expect?”

After Edwin Gaillard and his men search Jack and Laura’s apartment, Laura confronts Jack about not being forthcoming about the stolen books. Jack responds, “if you’d been around more, I might have mentioned it” (153). Laura feels Jack’s judgment—that by pursuing her own interests, she’s not being a good mother. Jack’s terse statement summarizes the inequity of gender expectations at the time.

“Quite the intrepid reporter. What did your husband make of this?”

Laura’s coverage of a protest earns praise from Dr. Wakeman, but as an aside, he wonders how Jack feels about his wife attending the protest, implying that she needs a man’s permission to be out at night. When Laura responds that Jack “is fine with my studies” (164), Wakeman calls him a “modern man,” as if only the most progressive husband would sanction such behavior. Wakeman’s condescension is emblematic of early-20th-century gender norms.

“A bitter envy welled up inside Laura, and she hated herself for it. She wanted to be free to love like that, even just for a day.”

When Amelia announces that she and Jessie broke up, Laura is envious of Amelia’s freedom to drift in and out of relationships at will. Laura tells herself repeatedly that she loves Jack, but she increasingly feels restricted by her marriage. Her response, rather than sympathetic, seems “patronizing” to Amelia. She realizes her emotions have gotten the better of her, that she’s lost her journalistic objectivity. Try as she might to maintain an emotional distance, Laura’s love for Amelia overrides any concerns of journalistic ethics.

“What if she wrote specifically to further a cause, in order to change minds?”

Rather than force herself to maintain an objective stance about issues she feels strongly about, Laura imagines herself writing persuasive essays, op-ed articles instead of straight reporting. Doing so would allow her to pour her passion into her work, something Dr. Wakeman cautioned against. Caught up in the turmoil of social activism, Laura begins to see her true worth as a writer, and simply reporting the facts is no longer enough.

“She’d disappointed all of them, including Harry and Pearl. Pearl, who she’d hoped would see that women deserved satisfying careers, just as men did.”

Once again, Laura confronts Dr. Wakeman’s sexism, although with serious consequences this time—he fails her for editorializing in her thesis despite his acknowledgment that men are allowed to do the same. Laura’s failure is not solely hers; she feels she’s failed her family, her daughter in particular, after devoting so much time to school. Her desire to be a role model, to live a life of financial independence has crumbled, and for a moment, she retreats back into her former role as wife and mother.

“That he would voice that thought out loud disturbed her to no end. He didn’t seem to understand after all this time, that she wanted a passion like he had.”

Jack’s seemingly innocent suggestion that Laura could type his manuscript edits after having been denied a degree rankles her. She realizes that, all along, his support of her journalism education has been perfunctory at best. He’s clearly willing to dismiss her dream in favor of his own passions.

“She was exposed down here in the Village. Or perhaps she was truly herself down here. Both thoughts frightened her.”

Just being in the Village—in Amelia’s proximity—fills Laura with both fear and excitement: fear of radically changing her life and excitement for the same reason. She vacillates between her love for Amelia and passion for women’s rights, and her obligation to her family. It’s the pull of traditional gender roles that plagues her with guilt, the ingrained idea that she is not entitled to anything that comes before her husband and children.

“She could continue guarding against betrayal and hurt by shutting herself off from even the idea of love, but in many ways, that was no different from protecting the folio from vandals by locking it away in a sealed vault, or attempting to protect her job by hiding information from the past that might be relevant to the present.”

Sadie comes to a crossroads with Nick—to either shut him out like she did with Claude, or remain open to love (and hurt). She has internalized her habit of emotional isolation, and it has carried over to her job, as she hides her own past from Dr. Hooper for fear that it will jeopardize her career. She treats her emotional life like a rare manuscript: delicately, with gloved hands, so as to not damage its fragility. With Nick, however, Sadie realizes she is stronger than a rare book, and she can weather the storm that love often calls forth.

“Meanwhile, you should get the vaccine. Don’t listen to the idiots who say that it causes tuberculosis. It’s perfectly safe.”

As Harry recuperates from typhoid, his doctor advises Laura and Jack to get vaccinated, that claims of vaccination being harmful are nonsense. With heated debates over COVID-19 vaccines proving an issue well after 2020, it’s difficult not to read a contemporary parallel in this quote.

“Somehow, she’d always believed that if she just loved everyone enough, all would be well, that love would be the snowfall that blanketed the crevasses and jagged edges of their world, smoothing them out into a gentle field of white.”

Laura realizes that Harry falling into the clutches of Red Paddy is largely due to the tension between her and Jack. Harry has not been getting the attention he needs at home, so he’s been seeking it elsewhere. However, he’s too young to understand that Red Paddy doesn’t have his best interests at heart. Laura’s love for her children is beyond question, but without external expression of this love, her feelings are irrelevant.

“The work she said, had been distilled to its essence so nothing further was necessary.”

Laura’s order that all of her writing be destroyed after her death is counterintuitive to a curator like Sadie, who relies on old documents to piece together the puzzle of history. Laura has a different take on Sadie’s practice. She sees notes and rough drafts as distractions. She doesn’t want historians to piece together her legacy from fragments and edited drafts. Laura’s published work is the culmination of her thought process, and history will have to be satisfied with this.

“Yet Laura had pursued who she loved regardless, while Sadie had refused even the possibility of love after her divorce.”

Despite the familial connection between Laura and her granddaughter, in this moment, Sadie sees only their differences. She sees her grandmother as a feminist icon and essayist, bold and daring and taking life by the horns, while she sees herself as too timid to deserve the Lyons legacy. What she doesn’t see, however, is the struggle Laura endured to achieve her iconic status. One doesn’t become an icon without tragedy along the way, and Sadie endures her own trials to become a strong woman in her own right.