Suggestions
Use up and down arrows to review and enter to select.Please wait while we process your payment
If you don't see it, please check your spam folder. Sometimes it can end up there.
If you don't see it, please check your spam folder. Sometimes it can end up there.
Please wait while we process your payment
By signing up you agree to our terms and privacy policy.
Don’t have an account? Subscribe now
Create Your Account
Sign up for your FREE 7-day trial
Already have an account? Log in
Your Email
Choose Your Plan
Save over 50% with a SparkNotes PLUS Annual Plan!
Purchasing SparkNotes PLUS for a group?
Get Annual Plans at a discount when you buy 2 or more!
Price
$24.99 $18.74 /subscription + tax
Subtotal $37.48 + tax
Save 25% on 2-49 accounts
Save 30% on 50-99 accounts
Want 100 or more? Contact us for a customized plan.
Your Plan
Payment Details
Payment Summary
SparkNotes Plus
You'll be billed after your free trial ends.
7-Day Free Trial
Not Applicable
Renews March 29, 2023 March 22, 2023
Discounts (applied to next billing)
DUE NOW
US $0.00
SNPLUSROCKS20 | 20% Discount
This is not a valid promo code.
Discount Code (one code per order)
SparkNotes Plus subscription is $4.99/month or $24.99/year as selected above. The free trial period is the first 7 days of your subscription. TO CANCEL YOUR SUBSCRIPTION AND AVOID BEING CHARGED, YOU MUST CANCEL BEFORE THE END OF THE FREE TRIAL PERIOD. You may cancel your subscription on your Subscription and Billing page or contact Customer Support at custserv@bn.com. Your subscription will continue automatically once the free trial period is over. Free trial is available to new customers only.
Choose Your Plan
Payment Details
Payment Summary
For the next 7 days, you'll have access to awesome PLUS stuff like AP English test prep, No Fear Shakespeare translations and audio, a note-taking tool, personalized dashboard, & much more!
You’ve successfully purchased a group discount. Your group members can use the joining link below to redeem their group membership. You'll also receive an email with the link.
Members will be prompted to log in or create an account to redeem their group membership.
Thanks for creating a SparkNotes account! Continue to start your free trial.
Please wait while we process your payment
Your PLUS subscription has expired
Please wait while we process your payment
Please wait while we process your payment
We meet Tomas's lover Sabina again, this time just as she is joined by another of her lovers, Franz, a good-looking and guilt-ridden married professor. He suggests a trip to Palermo, but Sabina refuses. She pours them wine, and removes her clothing; she leads Franz to the mirror, and places the bowler hat on her head. Franz, thinking she is joking, removes the hat. He kisses her, she agrees to go to Palermo, and he leaves the studio.
Alone and disappointed, Sabina remembers the first time the bowler hat entered her lovemaking. In Prague, Tomas put it on her head as a joke, and both looked at her image in the mirror, growing aroused. Sabina thinks the hat undermines her dignity as a woman. She thinks about wearing the hat in her lovemaking with Tomas, and muses it was "far from good clean fun it was humiliation"— a humiliation she provoked and enjoyed.
The bowler originally belonged to Sabina's grandfather, a mayor in a small Czech town, and was then passed down to Sabina's father. After her parents' death, rather than fight her brother for inheritance rights, Sabina told him she would just take the hat. The bowler hat became an erotic object for her and Tomas, and eventually came to symbolize their affair, and their time in Prague. Now it begins to stand for Franz's misunderstanding of Sabina.
The narrator comments that Franz and Sabina, like any pair of lovers who meet later on in life, have a dictionary of mutually misunderstood words. He devotes the middle section of Part 3 to defining these misunderstood words. A sampling:
Woman : Franz bases his ideal of womanhood on his mother. Franz considers Sabina a woman in this sense; Sabina considers herself "Sabina", an non-gendered essential being. She thinks of her femininity as secondary, an accident of birth not crucial to her identity.
Fidelity and betrayal: Franz worships fidelity. He loved his mother faithfully until she died. He hates betraying his wife to be with Sabina. Sabina, on the other hand, finds betrayal interesting. Her life is a series of betrayals—of family, art school, country and lovers.
Please wait while we process your payment