City of Girls

“To be honest, I didn’t understand what I was doing at college, aside from fulfilling a destiny whose purpose nobody had bothered explaining to me.”

Vivian’s wry comment indicates her estrangement from her family. Her parents have already assigned their daughter a specific role in life. She is to follow a set path for no better reason than its being traditional.

“Perhaps I had not been such a terrible student, after all. Perhaps I had merely been sad. I am only realizing this possibility at this moment, as I write to you. Oh, dear. Sometimes it takes a very long while to figure things out.”

Vivian makes this observation seventy years after flunking out of Vassar. She only understands the significance of the experience as she describes, suggesting that both Angela and Vivian will be affected by the telling of Vivian’s story.

“It was all grandiose, it was all crumbling. The Lily reminded me of Grandmother Morris—not only because my grandmother had loved gawdy old playhouses like this, but also because my grandmother had looked like this: old, overdone, and proud, and decked to the nines in out-of-date velvet.”

Vivian draws a parallel between Peg’s theater and her grandmother, who taught her to sew. In doing this, Vivian foreshadows that she will come to love the Lily as much as she loved her grandmother. Both represent the kind of family she yearns for.