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Summary
I. Great Lady on a White Horse
Jimmy is seeing a girl named Ruth Prynne who lives with other actors and actresses on a floor of a bohemian apartment building named Sunderland. Ruth is running late and complains that it’s difficult to get out of bed early in the morning when you don’t have a job to go to. She enjoys shocking Jimmy, who is young and still relatively inexperienced, with her stories. Jimmy wants to leave the building as quickly as possible, as it makes him uncomfortable. While he waits for Ruth to get ready, Jimmy gets a glimpse of the colorful characters who live there. He meets Cassandra Wilkins and Jojo Oglethorpe. He sees Ellen but does not meet her. Over lunch, Ruth tells Jimmy that Ellen would still be a chorus girl if she had not married Jojo. Jimmy thinks it’s a shame that a beautiful girl like Ellen is married to Jojo.
Ellen walks through the city on a Sunday afternoon, and what she sees is described in great detail. Taking note, especially of the advertisements, Ellen imagines the Danderine girl, from ads for a dandruff product, riding a white horse through Lincoln Square. Ellen gets on a bus where she continues people-watching, overhears conversations of fellow passengers, and snippets of songs float through her head.
She arrives at the Brevoort, where she meets George. She is late, which is a habit for Ellen when meeting him. George is in love with Ellen, but she will not allow him to express his feelings. Stanwood Emery approaches the table and asks to sit with George and Ellen because someone he’s trying to avoid is looking for him. George begrudgingly agrees since Stan is his boss’s son. When Stan leaves, George tells Ellen that he is spoiled and has access to too much money. George tries to get back to expressing his feelings for Ellen when she spots Jojo. After he joins the two at the table, Ellen abruptly gets up and tells the two men that she has to get to rehearsal and leaves them. Stan, who has been waiting for Ellen to leave the hotel, offers to take her to the theater in his car. He starts softly repeating lines from the Danderine advertisement.
II. Longlegged Jack of the Isthmus
Joe Harland has a clerical job for a shipping company. When he receives a note from his boss to meet him at the end of the workday, he knows he will be fired. After getting the news, Joe figures out how long the money he has left will last him. He has three days’ worth of money. He knows it is a bad decision, but Joe decides to go to a bar. Joe has a few drinks and then buys drinks for the other patrons. He tells them that he used to be called the Wizard of Wall Street. He says that during his ten years as a trader, his luck came from a blue necktie that his mother crocheted for him when he was a boy. He started dating a girl and he gave her the tie to show her how much he cared about her. He made light of his lucky charm and since it was old and worn, she threw it in a fire, changing Joe’s luck forever.
Nicky Schatz is dressed as a Western Union boy in a ruse to get into and burglarize an apartment building. He finds a roll of bills in the first apartment. He breaks into the second one, and he is caught by Ellen and Stan who have begun an affair. Nicky has broken into the Sunderland apartments. Ellen points a revolver at Nicky. While they could have reported him, Ellen instead gives Nicky a dollar and sends him on his way.
Ruth tells Jimmy the latest news from the Sunderland. Jojo dramatically threatened to kill Miss Costello, another tenant at Sunderland’s. Miss Costello wanted the Oglethorpes kicked out of the apartment because Jojo is gay. Tony Hunter, another tenant, took the pistol from Jojo, and Ellen locked Jojo out of their room. Jojo found asylum in Tony Hunter’s room. Ruth shares that both men are gay. Jimmy asks why Ellen married Jojo, and Ruth maintains that it was because of what Jojo could offer her professionally.
Joe Harland is convinced that Emily would have given him some money if not for her husband. As he’s leaving his apartment, he runs into his landlady who demands his late rent. Joe has nothing to give her and so she throws him out of the building. Joe visits an old employee from his stockbroker days, Felsius, and begs him for money. The man uncomfortably refuses his old employer based on principles. He has never borrowed any money in his life. Joe meekly asks for lunch money and Felsius gives it to him.
Cassie Wilkins, a tenant of the Sunderland apartments, is out with Morris. He’s older than Cassie but does not have a good job. In her childlike speech, she keeps reassuring him that his lack of money does not bother her. She dreams about where they will live and what they will do in their fictional, successful future. Then Cassie tells Morris about a part that she’s been offered. A naïve idealist, Cassie does not want the part because it’s vulgar. She only wants to play beautiful parts, and she wants Morris to love her and not just want to sleep with her.
As Ellen is packing her trunk, she stops to scratch out the “O” for Oglethorpe. She is leaving Jojo and Sunderland’s. Cassie comes in to tell her about her breakup with Morris. Ellen tries to comfort Cassie and shares that she is quite happy. She feels free now that she is finished with Jojo and will be living on her own. However, once she arrives at her apartment, Ellen feels alone and scared.
Analysis
Because Jimmy grew up in such a sheltered way, he is easy to shock. When he visits the Sunderland apartments for the first time, he is uncomfortable, but at the same time he’s fascinated by the different way of life shared by the actors who live there. It’s completely different from anything he has ever known. Jimmy recognizes that Jojo is gay, so he does not understand why Ellen married him. This again illustrates Jimmy’s youth and naivety. The fact that everyone knows that Ellen married Jojo to get out of the chorus shows that Ellen has no care for what people think. She wanted to be a success and she saw an opportunity. The marriage also gave Jojo cover as he cannot live openly as a gay man and continue his Broadway career. While they never speak about it directly, their marriage was one of convenience for both of them.
The most intimate look at the city, both the infrastructure and the people, comes through either Ellen or Jimmy’s eyes. While Jimmy has a tortured relationship with New York and is always thinking about leaving, Ellen loves everything about it, including the constant onslaught of advertising and consumerism. There are ads everywhere, and Ellen seems to absorb them, sometimes absentmindedly repeating snippets of jingles and taglines. Ellen is habitually late to meet George because she does not truly value or respect him. He gets annoyed with her, but he is always quick to forgive a thoughtless Ellen. She is, however, protective of Jojo. When George brings up Jojo in a flippant way Ellen reprimands him, saying that Jojo is complicated and tragic. This comment supports the idea that Ellen may have convinced herself she was being genuinely magnanimous when she married Jojo. Though when Ellen suddenly leaves George and Jojo on their own at the table, she shines a light on her own character, as it seems she’s trying to punish both of them.
No obvious sparks fly when Ellen meets Stan, but even during their few lines of dialogue, the two share something that Ellen and George do not. Stan is better suited to Ellen’s free and lively ways, and they are both interested in material things. The affair that begins between them marks the first time Ellen genuinely cares for someone other than her father. It is mutual, as Stan does not like that Ellen lives at Sunderland. He puts Ellen up on a pedestal shortly after meeting her and believes she is too good to live in the apartments. Besides his feelings for Ellen, Stan’s dislike of the Sunderland apartments reveals his discomfort with anything that is not opulent. Stan grew up immersed in wealth and is repelled by a lack of it. Ellen, thought she has set her sights on success, is not as troubled by her modest accommodations. As Ellen’s feelings for Stan strengthen, she becomes more miserable because she of the choice she made to marry Jojo. When Ellen returns home from a date with Stan, she does so with disgust and dread.
While Joe Harland is a tragic figure, his refusal to take any responsibility for his past is frustrating. Joe believes everything came crashing down because of a burned necktie but does not acknowledge his part in the downfall. He repeats this pattern when he finds himself without a job or money, telling himself that these events are not his fault. Although he doesn’t admit that his alcohol abuse is ruining his life, the scene where Joe asks his old employee for money illustrates his complete lack of self-awareness. There is scant evidence of Joe’s character in his days as the Wizard of Wall Street. It’s possible that he was a cocky, self-important man in his past, but now, he humbles himself to the point of begging from Felsius. Joe’s story also shows the cruelty of a city where even one’s family will turn their back on someone falling on hard times. He is unique and tragic among the characters in that he experienced the finer things in life and then loses everything.
Cassie, with her infantile way of speaking, represents the more innocent inhabitants of the city and creates a counterbalance to Ellen’s character. Cassie is not exactly thriving at this point in the story, and her mindset makes it difficult to understand how she has survived in the city as long as she has. She envies Ellen as she prepares to leave Sunderland and Jojo, but at the same time, Cassie does not respect Ellen’s choices. Cassie is a romantic who expects her life to be beautiful and full of love. She cannot fathom how Ellen married just to further her career, even though she also envies how easily Ellen has thrown away the moral expectations of being a woman. Ellen is not held back by what society dictates for her and is now successful enough to live on her own. Ellen is preoccupied with her own impending freedom as she tries to comfort Cassie over her breakup. She knows that although they have been roommates, she and Cassie live in very different New Yorks. However, Ellen is not as carefree and independent as she seems. Her fear and feeling of loneliness when she arrives in her new apartment is reminiscent of the time she spent as a little girl in an empty apartment waiting for her father to return.
