46 pages • 1 hour read
Kathleen RooneyLillian Boxfish Takes a Walk
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Lillian Boxfish
Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses mental health conditions.
The protagonist and narrator, Lillian, goes on a geographical and temporal journey through New York City. The former highest-paid ad woman in America, Lillian cares about the way things look and appreciates when others do as well. She dresses well, in her youth enjoying the admiration of others and in her old age taking care and pride in her appearance. For her walk through the city, she dresses carefully in an emerald green dress, bright yellow tights, a blue hat, and her favorite “Helena Rubinstein Orange Fire lipstick [...] stockpiled in the 1950s” (15). Her frequent references to colors and the brands she uses highlight The Influence and Illusion of Advertising, but she also displays pragmatism in her choice of outerwear, donning her mink coat and practical boots.
She is in many ways the archetypal picaro, or main character of a picaresque novel. Her sentences are declarative and convey a forthright and even conspiratorial tone, but she frequently admits to small untruths, such as when she tells Skip the limo driver that she has people waiting at her destination. One lie is central to her identity, her age: “born in 1900, I always say. I’m lying, though, because my real birth year, 1899, made me sound like a grotesque relic, even when I wasn’t. A woman can never be too rich or too thin or too young, truly. So I revised” (17). Lillian’s lie and the adage that goes with it in many ways encapsulate her values and her self-worth.
Another attribute that is deeply connected to Lillian’s characterization as a picaro is the way she distinguishes her values from those of society. In flashbacks, Lillian conveys a willingness to disregard social conventions and admires those who break the rules, noting that “[i]t’s hard to deny that a willingness to risk prison imparts a certain magnetism in social settings” (109). Lillian’s independence and personal ambition make her a symbol of The Evolving Roles of Women in 20th-Century America. In 1984, she defies norms for people her age and explains that her “true religion is actually civility” (123), noting repeatedly the differences between people who pretend to be high-minded and what she perceives as the rot they have allowed to take place in society. Society takes the place of any individual antagonist, opposed at every turn to Lillian’s view of how things should be.
As a round character, Lillian demonstrates empathy, compassion, personal struggles, and poignant memories. However, as a traditional picaro, she is also largely static: While she does recover from depression, her central beliefs and views are unchanged from past to present. Her constancy is underscored by her memories—in retrospect, she sees the events of the past in much the same way as she did when they happened. Her reflections demonstrate The Power of Memory Versus the Inevitability of Change; the changes happening around her emphasize her unchanging nature even further. Rooney emphasizes Lillian’s position as the protagonist of the novel when she reflects, “[d]eath, I suspect, will likely be unsatisfying because I will no longer be present to feel the achievement thereof” (34). Lillian’s potentially imminent death underscores the reflective nature of the text.
Helen McGoldrick
Helen is Lillian’s best friend and roommate, whom she describes as “lovely, ingenious [...] blonde as a sunrise and just as warm” (31). Helen is a flat character who reflects all the traits that Lillian most admires, even literally reflecting her ad copy by creating the illustrations to go with it. Like Lillian, she is witty, independent, ambitious, and unconcerned with social propriety. She is also a steadfast friend and a witness to Lillian’s most important memories. They double-date together, their professional fortunes rise alongside each other, they both marry and have children at similar times, and both refuse to leave New York in their old age. Unlike Lillian, however, she has a happy and lasting marriage.
When Lillian is sent to Silver Hill to receive treatment for depression, Helen is her first (and only, aside from Johnny) visitor. Reflecting on that visit, Lillian notes that Helen has always been “impressive” and “elegant, but now her application of patience and poise had somehow made her formidable: [...]” (209). In all of Lillian’s descriptions, Helen is at once a comfortable sidekick and an idealized figure, someone whom she admires and aspires to be more like.
Max Caputo
Massimiliano Gianluca Caputo is Lillian’s husband, then ex-husband. As her recollections place him more and more at the center of her past, it is revealed that the day she met him was the turning point in her life. Max is only portrayed through Lillian’s memories of him, and his direct characterization thus develops with the trajectory of their relationship.
Early on Lillian, admires him physically as a “strong-jawed, tan, and beautiful man, polished and attractive, but not too perfect” (132), but also mentally and emotionally, calling him “charming and dependable” (140). Her descriptions of their marriage paint him as a good match and a progressive man for the time: He wants her to continue working, will occasionally do dishes and change diapers, and confers with her on big decisions.
Later, Max comes to represent all of those stereotypes she had wished to avoid. Eventually, he cheats on and humiliates her, “cast[ing her] suddenly in some cinematic melodrama where the score hits the unflattering key of the woman wronged” (99). After their divorce, Max becomes a “heel” and a “hypocrite” who is not as dependable as she had believed, someone who thinks only of himself when she is most in need of his support. However, Lillian’s own admission and her often yearning tone make it clear that she has never stopped loving him.
Gian/Johnny Caputo
Johnny is Lillian and Max’s son, also affectionately referred to as Gian; he functions as a symbol of Lillian’s role as a mother, having little of his own characterization. As both a baby and a grown son, Johnny primarily demonstrates how opposing desires and forces pull at Lillian. Though she loves him fiercely from the moment he is born, she admits that she cannot say that he has categorically made her life better. When he is a baby, Johnny represents The Evolving Roles of Women in 20th-Century America by reflecting on how motherhood has thwarted much of Lillian’s independence and ambition.
When Lillian speaks on the phone with the grown-up Johnny early in the novel, he also demonstrates opposite forces: the pull of suburban family comforts versus the vitality of New York City. He has grown cautious and frightened of New York; when he begs Lillian to move because of growing crime, she observes that “he’s quick to spot changes in the world, slow to note shifts in his own perspective” (9). However, she also concedes that Johnny “gets” her sense of humor and understands the way she sees things.
