57 pages • 1 hour read
Florence Adler Swims Forever
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Themes
Grief and Loss as Catalysts for Change
Content Warning: This section discusses antisemitism, infant loss, and loss of children
Grief and loss is the most predominant theme of Florence Adler Swims Forever, which explores how those closest to Florence navigate the aftermath of her death. The novel, however, is expansive in its definition of both grief and loss; Rachel Beanland is quick to underscore the ways in which grief over a loved one is complex and often in conversation with other grieving—over futures, relationships, cultures, identities, and stability. Alongside secrets, grief drives the novel, with grief in particular propelling the emotional growth of the characters.
As Florence’s parents, Esther and Joseph experience her death most directly and intensely. Joseph copes with his grief through structure—the structure of religion, the structure of work, and the structure of family—but Esther cannot distract herself in this way because she is the primary emotional caregiver for the family. The loss of Florence propels her into a deep depression that the discovery of Joseph’s secret past compounds. She must contend not only with the grief of child loss but also with the grief of lost stability and lost control; the repeated references to her sudden awareness of her age underscore the many ways in which the life she built for herself seems to be slipping away from her. However, Esther does not accept this sense of powerlessness but rather reclaims control of her life by confronting her husband about his secrecy. The resulting renewed intimacy between the two exemplifies the new beginnings that the novel suggests can come from loss.
By contrast, Fannie’s, Anna’s, and Isaac’s grief does not primarily center around Florence’s death. Fannie grieves the loss of Hyram and her relationship with Isaac. Anna never allows herself to grieve. Instead, she worries about the Adlers and her own parents. Isaac primarily grieves himself: his lot in life, his potential, and sometimes his inability to act selflessly. How these characters respond to grief differs. Anna, for example, overcomes her shyness and sense of duty to pursue Stuart, whereas Isaac’s departure from his family is both selfish and selfless, his transformation less complete.
Notably, Anna, Fannie, Isaac, and Stuart belong to Florence’s generation, which explains why the resolutions of their arcs break more dramatically with their origins than either Joseph’s or Esther’s storylines do. Florence herself is a countercultural character in the novel’s world, but that impulse for change does not die with her; rather, it transfers to the novel’s other young adults. Fannie, for example, becomes a single mother who stands to inherit her father’s business, while Stuart and Anna become an interfaith couple, breaking both generational and cultural taboos. Such actions carry on Florence’s legacy by challenging the status quo, symbolically underscoring that change is often born of loss.
The Costs and Benefits of Secrecy
Florence Adler Swims Forever questions whether secrecy ultimately does more to protect or hurt love. The novel is full of secrets: the secret of Florence’s death, the secret of Joseph’s relationship with Inez, the secret of Anna and Florence’s bedroom kiss, Anna and Stuart’s secret love, Isaac’s secret self-hatred, and the secret society that Stuart, Gussie, and Anna form named after Florence’s swimming journal. The novel takes an ambivalent position on these secrets. Secrets save Fannie’s baby, but they also threaten to tear apart the family, and by the end of the novel, the only secret that remains is Anna and Florence’s kiss. In exploring the tension between truth and the desire to protect loved ones, the novel explores the vulnerability required to admit fear and to embrace loss.
For instance, Joseph keeps his past with Inez secret from Esther because he is afraid of hurting and ultimately losing her. Embedded in that fear is also the fear of facing himself; he is ashamed that he only acted on his intention to break his engagement with Inez after meeting Esther, and he cannot speak the truth of his own vulnerability. Similarly, Isaac cannot speak the truth of his own failures and runs away from each of them without ever speaking them aloud. Esther keeps Florence’s death a secret to protect Fannie and her baby, but the plan is also a way to deny the full reality of Florence’s death. In one of the last sentences of the novel, Esther questions whether she will feel better or “just feel like Florence is really gone” after revealing the truth (256). The novel therefore suggests that the protection of loved ones is often also self-protection. Anna is an exception to this model when she is honest with Stuart about the advice she received to marry an American, choosing to protect Stuart with the truth rather than their relationship with a secret.
That the novel ends with nearly all secrets revealed would seem to imply that truth is in fact preferable. However, two details complicate this portrayal. The first is Anna’s decision to keep the secret of Florence’s potential queerness, which runs counter to Anna’s general honesty. Unlike other instances of secrecy, though, Anna’s secret is not a way for her to avoid being honest with herself; if anything, the secret of the kiss enhances its value for Anna. Moreover, she is partially open with Esther, truthfully telling her that Florence and Stuart were not involved. This blending of truth and lies also appears in Isaac’s forged letter to Fannie. Here, the intent is to communicate a truth (that Florence loved Fannie) via a lie (that Florence actually wrote a letter saying as much). The novel therefore condemns secrets largely when they serve as excuses to hide from vulnerability; it suggests that, wielded selflessly and with emotional honesty, secrets and fictions have their place.
The Complexity of Gender Expectations
The gender expectations that characters challenge, accept, and navigate in Florence Adler Swims Forever exist within the context of Jewish culture, the Jewish immigrant experience, the growth of American cities, and the Great Depression.
Florence and Anna are foils regarding gender expectations. Florence willfully breaks gender norms. She is one of the few Jewish girls in her community who know how to swim, to the extent that she ends up the top swimmer in Atlantic City. Her dreams drive her, and she is able to make them happen, convincing people like her father and Stuart to help her achieve her goals. Her kiss with Anna also suggests that she is at least curious about her orientation. She does not meet any traditional expectations for a Jewish woman, who at this time would be expected to be an educated, vocal, and active community member, but first and foremost a wife and mother. Anna, on the other hand, seems to follow expectations, helping with childcare and chores. Her pursuit of a university education, though not the norm for women of the era, is nevertheless in line with her family’s wishes and thus suggests a dutiful nature. However, she also thwarts expectations by choosing to marry Stuart, a non-Jewish person; her choice to forgo her education likewise signals independence.
Similarly, Joseph and Isaac contrast with one another in their navigation of gender norms. As the family’s eldest male member, Joseph’s role is to lead the household and to solve problems. He does so as the patriarch, but he is not patriarchal. Instead, he is vulnerable, often honest, and accommodating of both Fannie’s and Florence’s desires. Although his position does not require him to perform emotional labor, he nevertheless overcomes his dislike of hospitals to visit and support Fannie. Isaac, on the other hand, imagines himself as a patriarch and feels entitled to be treated as one. Yet he repeatedly shirks responsibility: He does not provide Fannie or Gussie with the steady financial support expected of a man of this era, yet he feels emasculated working for his in-laws and believes that he deserves more. His predicament would not have been uncommon during the Great Depression, and the novel hints that Isaac’s sense of victimization may also owe something to the ancestral legacy of antisemitism. However, Isaac proves largely unable to negotiate the pressures of masculine gender roles; it is telling that the most selfless thing he does for his family is to leave them, surrendering his position as husband and father.
The novel therefore suggests that the ways in which people navigate gender expectations are complex and often in conversation with economic and sociopolitical events. For this reason, extricating oneself entirely from gender roles is impossible: Florence, the character who tries hardest to do so, dies in the attempt. Nevertheless, storylines like Anna’s and Joseph’s suggest that it is possible to build meaningful lives within the constraints of gender expectations—and even, occasionally, to step outside of them.
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