Sex and Vanity: A Novel

Lucie is the protagonist of the novel. Her parents are Marian and Reginald Churchill, and her brother is Freddie Churchill. Lucie grew up in New York City on the Upper East Side. As a member of the ultra-wealthy, elite class, Lucie learned from a young age to negotiate her identity according to social and familial expectations. Her father’s death when she was young quickly changed her role in the family and how she saw herself. Her Chinese American mother believed that she “got plenty of Chinese influence with her at home” and thus “sacrificed[d] her own family so that [Lucie] […] could spend as much time as [she] could with [her] Churchill family” (336). However, spending time with her paternal grandmother, Consuelo Barclay Churchill, did not afford Lucie the childhood freedom she wanted. Her grandmother subjected her “to hours of etiquette lessons, speech lessons, [and] bizarre Victorian-era posture exercises” that constricted Lucie and compelled her into a demure, submissive role (291). She never resisted these lessons or modes of behavior, however, because she felt desperate to please her grandmother and prove herself a worthy member of her rarefied society. These aspects of Lucie’s childhood and coming of age bleed into her psyche and distort her sense of self throughout adulthood.