The Perfect Stranger
I’ll be looking at the physiological approach and mainly focusing on the emotional problems. In the book, Disclaimer, Catherine Ravenscroft hides her secret for 20 years, after which a self-published book The Perfect Stranger appears on her nightstand and it is about her and her long kept secret. The secret itself is an emotional problem for Catherine as she carries the burden for 20 years and when it is almost reviled she is unable to handle it.
The Perfect Stranger recounts events that happened twenty years earlier -- the gist soon revealed in Disclaimer, though the details are only slowly filled in, and the full picture only emerges very late on. Disclaimer shifts back and forth between Catherine Ravenscroft and Stephen Brigstocke, a retired …show more content…
Twenty years earlier, Catherine failed to tell her husband what had happened on the family vacation in Spain after he had to leave early. The number-one reason people keep secrets or lie is to “keep the peace.” They hold onto secrets to keep other people happy, safe, set in their vision of the world, and in their vision of the person. She doesn't immediately come clean in the present-day, either and when she wants to, Robert refuses to listen saying either he does not have the time or he doesn’t want to know. Similarly, when she goes to confront Stephen, early on, he refuses to come to the door. It extends throughout the novel: even when everything has been wrapped up, Catherine comes to a major, life-changing decision and, of course: "She hasn't told him yet."
Our main character keeps telling people that she needs to explain what really happened, but when given the chance, she unnecessarily stalls. This is due to her not knowing how to word her secret and her being afraid of what people will think. This is emblematic of the book itself: it unnecessarily stalls. In the revelation of the truth also leads a character to take the most extreme of steps yet another immoral twist. Arguably the truth may set them all free, in one form or another, but it shakes up their lives pretty much as much as the misinterpretations of the secret
The Perfect Stranger recounts events that happened twenty years earlier -- the gist soon revealed in Disclaimer, though the details are only slowly filled in, and the full picture only emerges very late on. Disclaimer shifts back and forth between Catherine Ravenscroft and Stephen Brigstocke, a retired …show more content…
Twenty years earlier, Catherine failed to tell her husband what had happened on the family vacation in Spain after he had to leave early. The number-one reason people keep secrets or lie is to “keep the peace.” They hold onto secrets to keep other people happy, safe, set in their vision of the world, and in their vision of the person. She doesn't immediately come clean in the present-day, either and when she wants to, Robert refuses to listen saying either he does not have the time or he doesn’t want to know. Similarly, when she goes to confront Stephen, early on, he refuses to come to the door. It extends throughout the novel: even when everything has been wrapped up, Catherine comes to a major, life-changing decision and, of course: "She hasn't told him yet."
Our main character keeps telling people that she needs to explain what really happened, but when given the chance, she unnecessarily stalls. This is due to her not knowing how to word her secret and her being afraid of what people will think. This is emblematic of the book itself: it unnecessarily stalls. In the revelation of the truth also leads a character to take the most extreme of steps yet another immoral twist. Arguably the truth may set them all free, in one form or another, but it shakes up their lives pretty much as much as the misinterpretations of the secret