Puttermesser Paired (Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Cynthia Ozick
- First Published: 1990
- Type of Plot: Psychological
- Time of Work: The late twentieth century
- Setting: New York City
- Principal Characters: Ruth Puttermesser, Rupert Rabeeno
- Genres: Psychological fiction, Short fiction
- Subjects: New York, North America or North Americans, Northeast, U.S., United States or Americans, Intellectuals, Love or romance, Twentieth century, Authors or writers, New York City, Women, Lawyers, Aging
- Locales: New York, NY
The Story
Ruth Puttermesser, a New York attorney, has set aside gainful employment to live on her savings and think through her fate. In her fifties, she has a strong self-image of being brainy, cherishes a devotion to the nineteenth century novelist George Eliot, and finds herself very much alone. Dismayed to recognize her signs of aging, she decides she should marry. Ruth idolizes Eliot—another homely female intellectual, but one who found a happy fate—and lives in her subjective reality of “selected phantom literary flashbacks.” She has immersed herself in...
[The entire page is 1402 words long]
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