Olympia's Look

Vreeland describes Suzanne Manet soon after her husband dies of syphilis in a way that depicts Suzanne’s character. There are two passages in Vreeland’s short story Olympia’s Look that strongly show this Suzanne’s personality and also how it changed in just a matter or days.

The first passage is the first section of the short story. Suzanne Manet has an unexpected visitor come to call one day and the visitor turns out to be her nephew, Albert. Albert, a promising artist, is asked by Suzanne to take her husband’s paintings and copy them because she needs to sell them for money yet has a hard time parting with his work. I found this passage interesting because it showed how much love Suzanne had for her husband even though his loyalty could be questioned. She supported his work and buy selling his work, something she tells Albert Manet wanted her to do, she is allowing the world a chance to enjoy and love the paintings as well, a very gracious act. I found it strange that Suzanne gave her husband’s paintings different names than the ones he gave himself until I thought through what her reasons could be. I believe that Suzanne gave the art work different names because being a woman she saw a different meaning or interpretation of the pieces of work. Suzanne is perceptive and smart; she thinks on her own and also gives good reasoning for the names she gives when asked. Another reason why someone could think that Suzanne is loving is because of how she tries to support Albert in his career by giving him a chance to practice and a chance to learn from the works of a master painter. Suzanne is also jealous of all the women her husband painted because he loved them in a way that he did not love her. Like she said, “He relished all of [his models] as if they were succulent fruit” (74). Yet even through her jealousy she wanted her husband to be remembered for when he was healthy and not for his sickness. Suzanne says she is Dutch and does not act like the French women. To me this makes Suzanne simpler, and less promiscuous. She is always loyal and honest.

The second passage that I felt was the most important and also the strongest was when Suzanne goes to Victorine’s house. It is here that Suzanne has a true revelation and sees that her husband had to love her more then all of the models he used. She stood by him no matter what. Suzanne was there when he was being rebuked by other artists. She had held his hand and soothed him after he awoke from a nightmare; she comforted him. Suzanne was there when the doctor’s had to remove her husband’s leg due to gangrene. She did not leave him through all the hard and trying times that they had to live through. She truly loved her husband because she was always there. While trying to make Victorine feel bad, she instead lifts herself up and becomes stronger. Suzanne can also be seen as forgiving because in the she went to Victorine’s house, an act that could not have been easy considering that Suzanne believed that her husband was intimate with this woman, and because she meant to pay Victorine some of the money that her husband had promised. (However she never had to since the painting did not sell at the auction.) I would not call Suzanne cruel for telling Victorine all the horrid details of her husband’s illness because she was stating that facts and in the end it did more good for Suzanne then bad.

Suzanne’s character grows in this short story. She starts out as an upset, grieving, unloved woman but at the end of the story she grows into a strong, loved, forgiving woman who looks at all the good her life held instead of the bad.