Sympathy for Charlotte

I would like to comment on the Collegian's review of Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons. The reviewer notes, “What is most irritating about Charlotte's character is her anxiety to fit in.” At a fraternity party, she “lets boys feed her copious amounts of liquor. She gets drunk,” and “keeps her virginity only because another frat boy is ‘using' the room.” The reviewer has confused the fraternity house party and the fraternity formal (separated by about 250 pages), as well as the details of the fraternity party. Above all, the reviewer misses the import of the crucial linking episode.

At the fraternity party, though the loutish Hoyt does try to get her drunk, Charlotte takes only a few sips of wine (p. 217). She realizes his ulterior motives when Vance, the other frat boy, interrupts Hoyt, who occupies the room (not vice-versa). Why, then, does Charlotte accept Hoyt's invitation to the frat formal 250 pages later? Because Hoyt rescues her from an even more loutish lacrosse player at the tailgate party (p. 312). It is at the formal that Charlotte gets drunk and loses her virginity (p. 480).

The point is that, while Hoyt is a cad, he does possess some manly virtues—he is more like what Charlotte thinks a man should be than the weak-kneed Adam. The rescue also reminds Charlotte (in my reading) of her father's warding off of an unwanted high school lout at the opening of the novel.

It is important to recognize that, while Charlotte is engaged in a work of self-definition (more than just being anxious to “fit in”), expressed in the novel's title, so are the other characters. Hoyt ultimately fails to be a real man (and suffers appropriate retribution), but his vices are related to—they are perversions of—genuine manly virtues.

Paul Moreno