Point of View

The novel is written from the third person point of view. Throughout the majority of the narrative, this third person narrator assumes an omniscient vantage point. This means that the narrator has access to the larger narrative world and can provide insight into details about the characters’ social, cultural, historical, and urban contexts that they might not otherwise have access to. For example, in Chapter 1, “The End of Breakfast,” the narrator delves into the history of women’s hotels in New York City and describes the Biedermeier in this context. The narrator reveals that not all of the populace sees the Biedermeier as “the first-rate of women’s hotels,” because other such establishments can “boast nearly five hundred bedrooms, many of them en suite,” “swathed in dressed stone, with a red belt of brick running between each floor” (6, 7). Such details offer the reader a more...