The Price of Salt

“A doll was a special kind of Christmas gift, practically alive, the next thing to a baby.”

Therese works in the doll section, and she compares dolls to babies, evoking the theme of Atomization and Alienation. In Frankenberg’s, the constant consumerism destabilizes the boundaries between humans and objects, detaching people (and babies) from their humanity and making them seem like commodities.

“But the feeling bore no resemblance to what she had read about love. Love was supposed to be a kind of blissful insanity.”

Therese’s definition of love involves hyperbole—an extra-dramatic feeling. She doesn’t feel this “blissful insanity” for Richard, setting up the conflict between the pair and foreshadowing Therese’s intense feelings for Carol.

“Their eyes met at the same instant, Therese glancing up from a box she was opening, and the woman just turning her head so she looked directly at Therese. She was tall and fair, her long figure graceful in the loose fur coat that she held open with a hand on her waist. Her eyes were grey, colourless, yet dominant as light or fire, and, caught by them, Therese could not look away.”

Carol and Therese meet in the department store and fall in love right away. Highsmith extends this brief moment through imagery to mimic the emotional weight of falling in love at first sight. She provides a detailed portrait of Carol here, from the specifics of her eye color to the general nature of her “fair” and “graceful” look.