Brent has a Ph.D. in American Culture, specializing in cinema studies, from the University of Michigan. She is a freelance writer and teaches courses in American cinema. In the following essay, Brent discusses the conflict between personal relationships and political perspectives in Boyle's short story.

Critics have long debated whether or not Kay Boyle's short story, "The White Horses of Vienna," is sympathetic to the Nazi-activist family with which the young Jewish doctor comes to stay. In the following essay, I examine the characters of the wife of the Nazi-activist doctor and Heine, the Jewish student-doctor, in order to discuss the relationship of each character to the political context in which the story takes place. I will first discuss the nature of the wife's anti-Semitic prejudice against Heine, and then discuss Heine's own response to the anti-Semitic sentiment which surrounds him. Through these characters, Boyle's story...