55 pages • 1 hour read
The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks
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Symbols & Motifs
Neglected Positives
Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses sexist attitudes and the objectification of women.
Frankie learns about neglected positives when she reads P.G. Wodehouse’s The Code of the Woosters. She finds his wordplay creative, unexpected, and clever, since it draws attention to things that should be noticed and acknowledged but, somewhat arbitrarily, are not. Frankie’s use of neglected positives represents her dissatisfaction with the social rules that dictate acceptable female conduct; it is a linguistic strategy that sheds light on what typically goes unspoken and unchallenged. Just as her behavior is policed by “watchmen”—men and women who challenge her when she transgresses cultural boundaries—so is her language. Matthew, for instance, feels the need to correct Frankie’s language, telling her that her use of “gruntled” in a sentence is a false neglected positive. Additionally, Trish says that Frankie is not a “normal person” when she uses neglected positives like “parage” or “sheveled.” Therefore, neglected positives are a motif that highlight The Inflexibility of Unwritten Social Rules About Female Conduct. Additionally, negative positives are considered acceptable and witty when they are used by Wodehouse, a man, and not when they are used by Frankie, an adolescent girl. This double standard draws attention to The Impact of Patriarchal Privilege on Interpersonal Dynamics.
In the novel’s penultimate chapter, the narrator says that Frankie Landau-Banks is similar to a neglected positive, which is “[a] word inside another word that’s getting all the attention” (330). Similarly, Frankie is “[a] mind inside a body that’s getting all the attention. Frankie’s mind is a word overlooked, but when uncovered—through invention, imagination, or recollection—it wields a power that is comical, surprising, and memorable” (330). Frankie doesn’t look like a powerful person; she’s a “sweet-looking girl” with large breasts and a desire to be accepted. When she becomes more conventionally attractive, her “visibility” increases—something Ruth and Trish identify—but her intellect, her “brilliance” even, is overshadowed by her appearance. For this reason, the motif also points to The Influence of Covert Misogyny on Female Identity, highlighting that women are valued for their appearance rather than their intellect.
Alabaster Preparatory Academy
Alabaster Prep is a motif that highlights The Inflexibility of Unwritten Social Rules About Female Conduct and The Impact of Patriarchal Privilege on Interpersonal Dynamics. The school is a microcosm of Western society that functions like a panopticon: People within it follow the rules for fear they are being observed, and they observe and police others’ behavior to acquire the power of the “watchmen.” When discussing the panopticon, the narrator says that “everyone in the panopticon knew they could be watched at all times, so in the end, only minimal watching actually needed to happen. The panopticon would create a sense of paranoia so pervasive that its inhabitants became practically self-governing” (54). This description holds true of Alabaster Prep, as well.
When Alpha and Matthew invite Frankie to leave campus to get pizza, she declines as she’s not allowed to leave. Alpha says that no one will know, and Frankie realizes he’s right because “security at Alabaster was lax. The feeling of being watched generated by the panoptical nature of the boarding school institution was enough to keep most of the students obeying the rules without the need for any serious levels of surveillance” (66). However, leaving campus to get pizza on a Sunday morning is a relatively low-level infraction, as is throwing a boring party on the golf course for a few dozen students. Alabaster students don’t tend to break major rules or cause major disruptions since most of them are aligned with the ideas of patriarchal privilege and power that the school represents.
Additionally, the panoptical nature of the school compels students to follow an unwritten social code. When Frankie sits by herself at the senior table, she feels the thrill of rebellion. She is pleased to have “broken a rule so entrenched in everybody’s mind that it never occurred to anyone that it wasn’t actually a rule. That she had defied the sense of surveillance created by the panopticon of her boarding school” (157). Frankie enjoys disobeying this unwritten standard for female conduct. However, she is punished for this with Matthew’s disapproving silence and Elizabeth’s rudeness.
After Frankie confesses to masterminding the Order’s activities, she assesses whether she’d like to remain at Alabaster. While she wants to retain the privilege it affords her, “she also hated the boarding school panopticon, the patriarchal establishment, the insular, overprivileged life” (323). However, she recognizes that participation in the panopticon means that she can continue to subvert and, perhaps eventually, change the “rules.”
Nicknames
Characters’ nicknames reveal a great deal about their personal priorities and their culture’s values. Frankie’s family nickname for her, “Bunny Rabbit,” is infantilizing, demonstrating that her relatives think of her as childlike and innocent; they refuse to see her as a person with complex ideas, nuanced emotions, and a keen intellect. This nickname functions as a symbol of the role she is expected to play in society, highlighting her family’s relative comfort with The Impact of Patriarchal Privilege on Interpersonal Dynamics. Frankie is a nickname, too. Her given name is Frances; she was named for her father, Franklin, who never had the son to whom he hoped to pass on his own name. Her nickname, Frankie—which is as close to Franklin as her parents could get for a girl—already indicates her status as a second-class citizen. She isn’t the hoped-for boy who could carry on her father’s name; her nickname, a modified, babyish, and debased version of Franklin, emphasizes the covert misogyny that threads Western society.
For his part, Frankie’s father is called “Senior” once Frankie is born, and his name calls attention to his stunted mentality—characterized by his status as an “Old Boy”—as well as the cultural authority Alabaster seniors enjoy. The narrator says that “Senior’s boyhood days were still the largest looming factor in his conception of himself” (19). He attended Alabaster, then Harvard, just as his father had attended Alabaster, then Harvard. Senior longs to enjoy the privilege and authority his own father possessed; however, as a father of girls, he cannot, because girls are not privileged or championed in the same ways boys are. By calling himself “Senior,” he recalls his student days, which were the time in his life when he enjoyed the kind of authority he longs to retain.
Alpha and “the dogs” of the Loyal Order of Basset Hounds earn their nicknames for their leadership and loyalty, respectively. As the de facto organizer of his circle of male friends and a boy whose girlfriend “always follows” him, he is called “Alpha” to signify his dominance and authority. This is a quality other boys admire, and it confers additional authority on the girl he happens to be dating. Alpha’s given name is Alessandro Tesorieri, which sounds foreign and fails to align him with the family privilege so many of the boys at this elite prep school have. Thus, he chooses to forgo it for “Alpha.” Matthew Livingston and Porter Welsch’s names, on the other hand, sound distinctly “American” and convey their relationship to powerful fathers. Not only does Alpha’s nickname highlight Western culture’s preoccupation with male dominance, but it also disguises his real name, which fails to signify other types of privilege, such as financial privilege and family connection. The “dogs” of the Order are so nicknamed because of the Order’s emphasis on loyalty to other males at the expense of any other relationship or identifier. This highlights the Order’s real purpose: to foster loyalty among the boys who will grow up to occupy positions of power.
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