On Beauty

Kiki is Howard’s wife of 30 years. She is a strong, resilient woman who is in touch with her inner self and complications. Kiki is the glue that holds her family together. She is intimately entuned with her children’s conflicts and provides a stabilizing force for them. When she and Howard’s marriage implodes because of his infidelity, Kiki attempts to forgive and create a new space for a different kind of marriage. Kiki is surer of herself than other characters, even though she mourns the loss of her youth. Kiki likes herself and respects that she is in a new chapter of her life. Kiki’s strength and her commitment to herself juxtaposes the self-consciousness of other characters. Her friendship with Carlene proves that Kiki, unlike Howard, can make genuine connections with people who are different from her. Kiki is the humanizing character who models empathy.

Monty Kipps is Howard’s nemesis. In many ways, he’s a foil to Howard’s political ideology. Monty is conservative and religious, and he doesn’t believe in censoring anything that might be seen as offensive. But Howard and Monty are similar. They are both academics who study Rembrandt, they are both fathers, both have inappropriate sexual relationships with women, and both hyper-focused on their careers and ideologies. Monty stands as a secondary character who is inaccessible and therefore mysterious, who others use for comparison, but not for true connection.

Jerome is one of Kiki and Howard’s sons. He is the oldest child of his family, and in many ways the wisest. Jerome is a middle ground between the Kippses and the Belseys. He embraces the Christianity that defines the Kipps family ethos and finds their way of thinking refreshing. He is also loyal to his family and extremely empathetic. Jerome symbolizes hope for the future; without dogma and extremism, he goes about his life as honestly and authentically as he can.

Zora is Kiki and Howard’s daughter. A sophomore in college, Zora spends too much effort following in her father’s footsteps at the expense of her own happiness. In trying to find herself, she finds solace in her natural talent for academia. But this sacrifices Zora’s social life. Her peers keep her at a distance because she is a professor’s daughter. Zora is also so entwined in faculty drama that she manipulates the dean into allowing her into Claire’s poetry class, in which admittance is usually up to Claire’s careful evaluation of students’ creative writing. Zora becomes fixated on Carl, and instead of confronting her feelings for him, she disguises her emotions through advocacy for Carl’s attendance at the school. But this advocacy is thinly veiled pity and evident of a superiority complex she’s developed through her education. Zora has the potential to be multi-layered, but her journey to discover her identity is burdened by her self-conscious attitude to her body and her blocks of empathy.