How women think: Curtis Sittenfeld’s novel “Prep” drove me crazy with its obsessive heroine and creepy male lead. But the idea that Lee Fiora is a realistic depiction of a teenage girl is terrifying.
Years ago I worked alongside a young woman who, long before, had had a relationship with a man. He now worked in the same building we were in. Whenever she spoke of him, her voice quavered and her eyes brimmed with tears. She was sure he was in love with her, but was dismayed that he showed no interest. She longed for him, but had not spoken to him for years. At certain times of day, when he might be due to leave work, she would go to the window and gaze out. She hoped to catch a glimpse of him in the distance.
The cover of my (borrowed) copy of Prep
I thought of that colleague when I read “Prep” by Curtis Sittenfeld, published in 2005. The book follows a 14 year-old girl, Lee Fiora, who leaves her family home in Indiana to take up a scholarship at Ault, an elite boarding school on the US East Coast. Through her four years at the school, she obsesses about her relationships and develops a crush on a boy.
What a crush.
Lee Fiora is maddening
I found Lee maddening. I was crazed by her passivity, particularly her relationship with the object of her desire, Cross Sugarman. Her rejection of, and suspicion towards, any attempts at friendship or normal relationships with nearly everyone else in the book drove me nuts. Her obsessive analysis of what everyone thinks of her and how her actions might or might not impact on that, drove me nuts.
Here, for example, is Lee wondering whether to visit Cross after he has injured his ankle:
I looked at myself myself in the mirror and sat down at my desk. How could I go to Cross’s dorm? Who knew who’d be there – presumably Devin would – or what if Cross was just hanging out in the common room, maybe he’d ordered pizza and was watching TV and the other guys sitting around wouldn’t understand why I was there, and there was a good chance that neither would Cross. So either he’d be not outright rude but aloof, or else he’d be polite, he’d try to make me feel comfortable, and his trying would be the worst part – the effort of it all. And what were the chances of his being a little woozy but clearly glad to see me, of scooting over and then, when I sat next to him on the couch, resting his arm around my shoulders, of neither of us needing to explain anything except that I’d ask how his ankle was?
A conscious commentary?
At the same time, as with Orhan Pamuk’s powerful but imperfect novel “The Museum of Innocence”, which I reviewed on these pages in 2016 (“A man repeatedly lies to and harasses both his fiancée and his young lover, while pontificating about the “unpalatable anthropological truths” which plague relations between the sexes”) I felt that the author was well aware of the awfulness of the protagonist.
I hoped that Pamuk was offering a critical commentary on men in general with his vile protagonist Kemal. I hoped Sittenfeld was doing the same for women (or teenage girls) in her depiction of Lee Fiora. Lee is crippled with self-hatred, bitterness and self-consciousness. But is she depicted as typical? Or is she an extreme, obsessive example?
How women think?
A few quotations may help illustrate Sittenfeld’s depiction of Lee’s character.
Here Martha, Lee’s room-mate, and Lee describe themselves in a welcome flash of self-awareness: “But I’ve heard Martha is kind of a bitch,” Martha said. “Actually, Lee is the horrible one,” I said. “She’s totally insecure, and she complains all the time. And she’s so negative. I can’t stand negative people.”
Yet later Lee is furious – aged 17 – because her younger brother, not her, rides in the front of the car and her father makes fun of her rage: They laughed uproariously then, and I hated them. I hated them because they thought I was someone to mock and insult, because of the way they brought out the worst in me and it felt so familiar, it felt like the truth – it made my life at Ault seem like pretence. This was what I was, fundamentally: a petty, angry, impotent person. Why did I even care who sat in front?
Valentine flowers
Lee’s obsession with what people think of her surfaces in the school’s Valentine flowers exchange: Probably I had started thinking seriously about the Valentine’s flowers months before – even as a sophomore and junior, I’d wondered each year if there was any chance, if there was the remotest of possibilities, that Cross would send me one.
When the Valentines flowers come she is up at 3 a.m. to see what she has received. At first she finds none, until… And then I saw one with my name, the letters all in caps, in blue ink, and I felt a crazed glee, a balloon of exhilaration. I was ripping it open, and it was taking way too long – it must have taken less than a single second – and I was thrilled and hot and shaking with gratitude, thinking Finally, finally, finally, and these feelings spilled over into the point of recognising that the flower was not from Cross but from Aubrey – from Aubrey? Aubrey?
Lee: a rare flash of intuition
Lee does have another rare flash of intuition. Like the others, it appears to have no impact on her subsequent behaviour. Here, Lee recognises her own passivity about Cross. She sees how she always waits for him to make a move, never doing anything herself: I realise now: I ceded all the decisions to him. But that wasn’t how it felt! At the time, it seemed so clear that the decisions belonged to him. Rules existed; they were unnamed and intractable.
It is clear to the reader from the outset that Cross has little interest in Lee except for sex. She, for no discernible reason, believes she is in a meaningful relationship with him. This for me is a strong point of the book. It made me think of The Museum of Innocence whose protagonist Kemal is beyond creepy but sees himself as a good person. My review is at the link. The descriptions of how creepy Cross uses Lee are sickening (the pressure of his palm on the back of my head).
Cross Sugarman and Kemal would probably get on well.
How women think? Lee cannot learn
Yet when Cross’s ghastliness is revealed to Lee, she still hungers for him. Even after she has, for once in the book’s 400 pages, shown some dignity and told him what she thinks. For example, his room-mate, Devin, tells her: You’ve got to hand it to him. He gets the grades, he gets the positions, he gets the girls, but most of all, he gets the respect. I bet you hardly know the guy. This is an accurate summary of Cross and Lee. Yet a couple of pages later, when she sees Cross, her thoughts are: I was wearing a cotton skirt and a linen blouse, but all I wanted was for him to embrace me. Cross, characteristically, tries to blame Lee for her own unhappiness. You’re the one who set the terms. You can’t deny that. Kemal would admire Cross for his skills in manipulation.
Even after this, Lee crawls after Cross again. In my imagination he’d been reading in bed and he’d sat up when I entered and I’d crawled onto his lap and wrapped my legs and arms around him. And at first I’d be weeping and he’d stroke my hair, he’d murmur to me, but of course it would quickly turn sexual.
Lee’s subservience
I find Lee’s subservient sexual behaviour towards Cross, and his casual acceptance of this, about the hardest thing to read in the book. That, and her mean attitude even towards the girlfriends, such as Martha, who try to help her: “You’re my best friend, Lee. I can disagree with your choices and still care about you.” Well, aren’t you complex? I thought.
For: a forensic analysis of a teenager’s four years at a prep school, thought-provoking in its detail and apparent realism.
Against: I found the first two-thirds of the book dragged a bit. The way Lee seems not to change, or to learn from her experiences, is frustrating but perhaps that is by design.
Your views?
The first person I discussed the book with said that she found Lee’s character uncomfortably realistic. “I recognised many of her behaviours”, she said. Is Lee a realistic depiction? An extreme case? Or a fictional monster irrelevant to how most women feel about themselves and their relationships? What do you think?
Finally, is anyone aware of any other comparisons between The Museum of Innocence and Prep?
P.S. I hope you enjoyed this review of whether “Prep” really depicts how women think. If you enjoy fresh, original writing, you can follow me on Facebook or sign up for my newsletter (you can unsubscribe anytime you wish).
P.P.S. Lee’s infatuation with Cross actually reminds me of Anna, the heroine of great movie “The Third Man“. In the film, Anna is deeply in love with Harry Lime, the abominable yet charismatic villain, to the extent that she continues to love him even when it is clear that he a) has betrayed her, and her love, and her life, to the Russians; and b) is dead. Yet this comes across as noble and tragic, not pathetic. Is this because Anna has dignity? Discuss.
5 responses
Prep is a hard book to figure imho. I do respectfully disagree with you on Cross though.
In the opening monologue Lee Fiora pretty much states her desire to go to boarding school stemmed from her desire to meet “the boarding school boy” shown in the sales and markering materials sent out to prospective students by these schools. She expands on this theme and you see that she wanted to fly the coop on awful Indiana and have this “experience” and get away from the slimy, greasy, lowbrow metalhead boys of her hometown-pretty much the adolescent versions of her father.
What Lee didnt count on when embarking on this journey was the “money” aspect of this world which sadly hit her in the face like a brick upon her arrival at Ault and made her immediately an outsider.
What I think Lee does not get at all- absolutely no awareness of in the novel, is unlike pretty much everyone else at Ault she wanted to go. For the broad mass of the other students boarding school was their future, whether it was at Ault or another school, but Lee chose to go. There was power in this decision which Lee never realizes or uses to her advantage to be friendly with people, who she constanlty writes off for totally trivial reasons.
What I also see in this novel is Jewishness is also an important theme. Here first roomate Dede is in this boat. The one who neatly and strategically lays her clothes out on the floor every night (contrast this to the eff-it way Aspeth lives in her room with Horton) to prep for tomorrow. Dede is trying like the devil to “make it” at Ault like Lee, but unlike Lee, tries to be friendly with everyone, but zeroes in on the other obviously Jewish character in the novel Cross Sugarman. Lee is also completey oblivious to this dynamic in the novel.
Cross is both an insider and outsider-his parents wealth, his good looks and athleticism, and his cool persona make him an insider, his ethnicity puts him as an outsider. I feel that by the time he starts “hooking up” with Lee, Cross is used to being a guy girls want to “be with”, but not take home to meet their parents. This is pretty much how he reads what Lee tells him about their relationship as it begins-normal for him-which also stings him-probably harder (you cut me deep smalls!!!!) than with other girls because Lee, a Catholic girl on scholarship from the midwest, pretty much tells him the exact same thing all the other rich WASP girls at Ault have- and this time from a fellow outsider-and that’s a punch to his gut.
The book is like a good episode of Seinfeld- its just so frustrating to watch unfold as the foibles of this completey flawed protagonist set up this slow burn of a train wreck.
It also has these great juxtapositions of characters. You have Cross and Lee, who by the time they finally get together, eff it all up for themselves anyway.
You have Dede and Lee- two outsiders, one a try-hard (hoping everyone doesnt look at her as a future “gravely-vioced middle-aged Jewish woman in a shiny track suit”) the other an intentional no-show.
Lee and Miss Moray (who Lee mistakes for a Dartmouth field hockey player) but who also choses to come to Ault to have this experience and it blows up in her face, but after only one year.
Lee and Aspeth, who probably could have been friends- Aspeth tries to include Lee in classroom shenanigans, and then, this is the big one, actually entrusts Lee with cutting her hair!!! That’s a big circle of trust one for Aspeth- the significance of which is totally lost on Lee. Lee’s total and complete disdain for Aspeth never allows any friendship between these parties at all while ar Ault.
Lee and Martha, both of whom come to Ault to show their fathers- Lee coming to meet boys that do not exist in her Indiana world- because her father failed to provide a world in which these boys existed and Martha choosing a school her father hated attending and becoming a senior prefect.
Regionalty is also a theme- Lee mistakes Aspeth for a northeasterner because her parents have a Connecticut address, but who is actually from Texas, and rooms with fellow southerner, Horton, who is dumped at Ault when all she aspires to do is to go to Ole Miss.
Aspeth then loses the prefect battle to Martha, an Ault legacy and northerner, which I think is significant, but totally lost on Lee.
It is also significant imho that Lee hitches her wagon to Martha, who is an insider, and writes off pretty much everyone else, including Cross-until its too late, as friends.
I think Cross, from their first meeting, is infatuated by Lee, and genuinely likes her. When they both finally decide to do something about their feelings Lee relagates him to fuck-buddy at the beginning, and when she tries to change the dynamic of their relationship, he pays her out for the hurt that relegation did him and hurts her back.
Its a true to form story for high-schoolers, who are really children, and not dynamic people able to see things from anybody else’s prospective- Lee is a prime example of that.
Dear Dan,
Thanks so much for this comprehensive analysis. Fascinating. Lots of things I missed – much like Lee! Have you read the book several times, or studied it, or is this on the basis of just one reading? Respect, either way.
LT
Thanks for your response. I have read it three times so far – because there is so much in there: Lee’s arrival at Ault with un-pierced ears – which was, for a long time, the mark of old-line old-money women like Eleanor Roosevelt where that simply was NOT the done thing. On a first read you take this in as a boy-meets-girl convenience – but the more you read you feel this undercurrent in the book and then I felt there was significance in this event.
Here is another: when Lee meets Asbeth in her dorm to cut Asbeth’s hair. Asbeth take a dirty pair of jeans from her HAMPER loaded with laundry because her clean jeans have not dried yet…. because Asbeth does her own laundry and either did not have the extra money to continue to dry them for the occasion, or wanted to be “on time” to meet Lee, who Asbeth is trying to befriend.
Martha, on the other hand is dropping her dirty laundry into laundry bags to send out to be cleaned by Ault staff – but Asbeth is doing her own! And then the white cotton panties – because Asbeth may have some of that nicer underwear on hand mentioned in the opening of the book, but not everything Asbeth has is the nicer variety- totally lost on Lee who sees it with her own eyes – right in front of her face but totally misses it – is that intentional because Lee disdains Asbeth? Why does Lee disdain Asbeth?
Martha is a legacy with magazine subscriptions and fancy clothes and pillowcases to spare – Asbeth may have a pool at her country club, but Martha has a pool at her house. Asbeth is on a budget, Martha is not.
I even wonder if Asbeth’s father was fired by Conchita’s father and then went east to find work in the financial sector – hence the move to Connecticut from Texas? Was the falling out between the two men why Asbeth began to distance herself from Conchita? Who wants to be friends with the girl whose father is pressuring you father and family? Do I read too much into the story? I just never know because so much is left unstated by the author, but it seems to hang over the narrative like a spectre.
Another question I have is does Lee somehow manage to ingratiate herself with all the richest girls at Ault – Gates, Martha, and Chochita Maxwell? It’s my opinion that both Martha and Lee discard Conchita because both see Conchita is intentionally a misfit- she is not going to uphold the statue quo -beginning with her wardrobe. Also interesting is that Lee missed the bodyguard at the lunch – which is where it hit me that Lee misses a lot and when I decided it was a read-twice book.
Both Martha and Lee are enforcers of the status quo at Ault – which they blur the lines on as being loyal to each other to the point where Martha, who sits on the Academic discipline committee knowingly and willingly assists Lee in cheating on a test.
I also think Lee is a character primarily driven by infatuation – with boarding schools, Ault, Gates (Lee wants to be Gates, the daughter of baller potato-farmers from Idaho, so bad she actually wonders if she is attracted to her – hence the pamphlet), and Cross. Speaking of Cross -the fact he compares Lee to his sister means Cross is actually genuinely attracted to her – and the reason the author makes it a point to state how well the physically fit together as a couple.
Where Lee really gets herself into trouble is with the reporter, who is a bitter, agenda-driven shark who finds in Lee the perfect useful idiot in that Lee is so vapid and self-absorbed she hand-delivers the narrative the reporter wants about Ault even though Lee’s intention is to defend the status quo at Ault – which is the perfect paradox of Lee. I also think Cross doesn’t care about the scandal Lee caused at Ault, because he agrees with what the article said – and why his relationship with Lee is so painful for him because Lee is not what he hopes she is – it literally leaves him soul-searching – which also can just as easily read is dickhead-indifference to Lee, another notch on his belt so to speak, but is it? Was Lee the one who but a hole in his heart? Cross can accept antisemitism from the upper-class WASP establishment, from from scholarship Catholic Lee too? It also hangs with why Dede likes to think in the window between floors – is this a metaphor for Jews is the upper echelons of society? They may have enough money to be at the top, but they will never be “in the club” so to speak.
Also Lee sitting on the mattresses as he contemplative place – is she the Princess and the pea? Is this a metaphor? Does Lee see this for herself that is that why she will not read her material to the class because it will expose her, not as poor, but show her true colors?
I think we only build sympathy for Lee because of her insecurity, self-consciousness, and her status as an underdog – but really Lee is a snobby, self-absorbed, vapid asshole – and she really may be the villain of the book (the book may a Cobra Kai narrative – did the creators of that series read this book and think what about from the viewpoint of Johnnie?) – because Lee literally hurts everyone who ever tried to be a friend to her – Ault, Conchita, Asbeth, Dede, Cross, and maybe even Martha. Lee makes no apologies for using David Bardo to prepare herself to go for Cross. Or Ault to distance herself from her “not-good-enough” parents – she is a cold, calculating and strategic – which the author successfully disguises from us because we are so in Lee’s head, we, like Lee, miss the obvious.
Lee leaves Ault not happy, but not bitter. She tried something at Ault and it kinda didn’t work out like she wanted (her only regret may be IMHO not been staying in contact with, or being the same age as the younger boy she was tutoring because he turned out to be the perfect Prep school boy), but it did give the ability to tell off her looser, tin-can Datsun-driving father to the point he slapped her – the person who nicknamed her Flea, not intentionally because but aptly so as she is really a blood-sucking pest, and becomes the person she actually wanted to be – a mean girl – somebody who can look down her nose at people for not using correct grammar, having low-brow humor, crying, and not attending an elite boarding school like Ault.
Sorry for another long long response – but for me this book may be a painful, gut wrenching read – especially when she and Cross finally get together – but it always makes me think if I am reading too much into it, or not enough – its the only book I have ever read that has hit me like this – how long did it take the author to write? You read it and feel like LDR “is it by mistake or design?” – Born to Die
Thanks so much for these valuable insights. I still can’t like Cross much – he seems like an archetype of an objectifying, indifferent man – but perhaps we should agree to differ on that. Fascinating stuff.
I agree Cross is mostly indifferent. Cross is not not dynamic or winning in any sense of dynamic or winning – he is not the male lead in a Hallmark movie.
I also agree that Cross is not likable – I just feel the way he treats Lee is understandable -being how the characters are setup and the multiple layers of backdrop in this story are painted – and how Lee initially sets up the relationship with him. I do not see Cross as taking advantage of Lee – leading her on so to speak – and he seems to be somewhat respectful of her too. She is the one who starts sending off he smoke signals, and he sees them, and acts – but that is what Lee wants.
However, I do not feel Cross is a bad person, he’s just a mixed up kid, like everyone else in the book. Its like the song, “Night moves” by Bod Seger –
I was a little too tall could have used a few pounds
tight pants points hardly renown
she was a black-haired beauty with big dark eyes
points of her own settin way up high
way up firm and high…..
I used her, she used me, but neither one cared
we were gettin our share
workin on our night moves
tryin to lose the awkward teenage blues
workin on our night moves
The song is actually very descriptive of both Lee and Cross – was the author influenced by the song in these characters and writing the book?
What hits me is how the author captures how children, boys and girls, think, feel, and act in these relationships/situations so well its just gut-wrenching. She also explores how girls are, in many ways, are just as big instigators as boys are in kicking things off – which really resonates with me at least – and the fact that children when they begin to have sexual relationships are really in many ways, just using each other because they far from fully actualized adults capable of forming long term partnerships with other people.
I think what you see – is when Lee initially sets up the relationship to be a secret one, she sells us on it being because she is not good enough for Cross – but Cross may not see it that way – he is never pictured as they guy who is walking campus with a girl holding hands, or with a girl in the library of chapel – not even with the junior! He may see this as more of the same because of his Jewishness – because we never really see what he thinks or feels. When Lee wants more from him, wants a public relationship with him, he will not give her that, and that is what makes him villianous – but he is also a child too, full of his own insecurities, pride, and prejudices – but he is no Darcy!
It’s been good talking with you on this topic, and I did really like the time and effort you put into your writeup.