51 pages • 1 hour read
The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern
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Character Analysis
Augusta “Goldie” Stern
Augusta is the chief protagonist and most frequent point-of-view character in the novel. She is the second daughter of Irene and Solomon Stern, a Jewish couple from Brooklyn, who live in the neighborhood known as Brownsville. As a girl, Augusta is close to her older sister, Bess, and to her mother. When her mother dies of diabetes when Augusta is 14, Augusta has her first confrontation with The Limits of Medical Knowledge. Her later refusal to swim in the ocean, which is an activity she associates with her mother, indicates the extent to which Augusta feels broken by this loss.
Loyalty is one of Augusta’s strongest character traits, and when her mother’s aunt Esther comes to stay with the family, Augusta at first resents the changes that Esther makes to their household routine. However, she comes to admire and respect Aunt Esther when she witnesses her intuitiveness about people, her compassion, and her skills as a healer. Esther is the one who nicknames Augusta “Goldie,” and while she first resists this, too, Augusta comes to like the nickname in time, especially when Irving uses it. When Irving breaks her heart, Augusta puts aside her nickname to try to distance herself from her pain.
Augusta tends to be self-contained and cautious. Irving thinks of her as “a matchless being—rare, exotic, wary, exceptional” (162). She has walnut-colored hair and gray eyes. While she takes after her mother in looks, she inherits her keen intelligence and eye for detail from her father. Growing up in an apartment above the pharmacy, and to some extent inside the pharmacy, Augusta closely observes her father’s role in the pharmacy business and in the community. He considers himself a trained professional and takes his work seriously, but Augusta also sees the way he advises and listens to his patients and customers. After Irene’s death, Augusta regrets that her father grows distant and immersed in his work. She wants to learn more about pharmacy in part to be closer to him and in part because she has a real interest in medicine. Both Augusta and Bess are expected to help in the store, and this teaches Augusta a sense of responsibility as well as obligation to others.
As a young woman, Augusta is tenderhearted, compassionate, and optimistic. She views Esther’s abilities as a type of magic. Augusta’s combination of tenderness and reserve also shows in the way she slowly falls in love with Irving. Augusta is deeply proud, however, and her pain when Irving leaves New York is exacerbated by her deep sense of humiliation that she misinterpreted his feelings. The love elixir that she puts in his drink is the first time Augusta tries to manipulate another person, as she has learned from Esther that she should only treat people with their consent. She views Irving’s departure as a betrayal, assuming he must have loved Lois Diamond all along; she also interprets it as a punishment for her actions.
After she is unable to save Esther from death, Augusta punishes herself by rejecting Esther’s inheritance of the apothecary case and the mortar. Instead, following her father’s example, she throws herself into pharmacy school and work. She treats her work not just as a profession but as a vocation and a refuge from her pain. While Augusta would have liked to have a husband and children, she could never trust another person or herself to form a lasting attachment. Instead, she turns for affection to Jackie, Bess’s daughter. When Jackie brings Esther’s case and mortar to Augusta, she restores Augusta’s heritage to her. Augusta’s character arc in the novel entails revisiting her younger, optimistic self, becoming vulnerable by falling in love with Irving all over again, and forgiving herself for past mistakes. The final scene shows Augusta following in Esther’s footsteps. She once again believes there is magic in the world. Her full identity has found expression and she no longer denies or buries parts of herself.
Irving Rivkin
Irving is the second protagonist and another point-of-view character. In 1987, Irving is 82 years old, and when Augusta first sees him, he is “gray-haired and shirtless, still broad-shouldered, but now with a prominent potbelly that was slick with sunscreen and impossibly tan” (6). However, she sees that his eyes are the same as they were when she was in love with him 62 years ago; they are “heavy-lidded, naproxen blue, full of timeless boyish mischief” (6). His unchanging personality through the years underscores the theme of The Persistence of Identity.
Irving is a few years older than Augusta and comes from a family that struggles to make ends meet. In his childhood, his father left the family, and his mother was often ailing. Irving has an older brother in college, but he took longer than average to complete high school. As a youngster, Irving identifies himself as having street smarts instead of book smarts, but he admires those who are scholarly. He tells Augusta he enjoys watching her do homework because he can see her mind at work, and that is beautiful to him. Augusta tells him, “You’re smart about people. You know how to ask the right questions and say the right things to make people feel good” (55). She recognizes that he is intuitive, perceptive, and rarely judgmental.
When Irving is young, he often goes hungry. He is grateful when people supply him with food—for instance, when George slips him extra sandwiches or Esther invites him to dinner with the family. Irving has a nurturing side and likes to take care of the people he loves. He saves up his money to help his family and tries to buy his mother a new coat when he realizes hers is threadbare. He buys Augusta a necklace as a graduation present and is embarrassed when he realizes how cheap it is. Irving can be impulsive, but he is also principled and fair, as demonstrated when he intervenes to stop Freddie Schecter from bullying the young boy who turns out to be Sammy Diamond.
Like Augusta, Irving is also proud. He is too proud, for instance, to ask for a raise from Solomon Stern, which is why he turns to Zip Diamond. When Nathaniel steals Irving’s moment and proposes to Evie the night Irving meant to propose to Augusta, Irving is so hurt and angry that he storms off. This impulsive action, as he reflects later, changes the course of his life when he witnesses Mitzi Diamond committing a murder. While he fulfills his promise and marries Lois, Irving is still too full of remorse and resentment to take the chance to reconnect with Augusta in 1946. Instead, seeing her with Jackie, he assumes she is happily married and better off without him.
Later in life, Irving realizes he has underestimated his own abilities. He turns to the book of poetry Augusta gave him, and the practice of swimming, to feel closer to her, but he realizes he enjoys literature and ends up taking continuing education classes at the university near Rallentando Springs. Irving is a loyal friend, if not overly perceptive about people, since he unintentionally leads on Vera. However, when he sees that he has a second chance with Augusta, Irving takes it. He still loves and admires her, and he has grown wise enough to realize that being honest about his feelings is worth the risk of appearing foolish or being rejected.
Aunt Esther
Esther is a secondary character but is a profound influence on Augusta. She is a Russian Jewish woman who is around 88 years old when she comes to stay with the Sterns. Augusta finds her “peculiar and old-fashioned” (19), with out-of-date clothing and a terse, somewhat intimidating manner. She has been living in the US for several years, staying with different family members. She wears a black babushka that accents her “owl-like eyes and her heavy silver brows” (19). In Russia, where Esther stayed long after her brothers and sisters emigrated, she was considered the apothecary of her village, though she had no formal training.
In her youth, Esther was impetuous and used the love elixir on the man she loved, who then rejected her. As she matured, Esther grew more patient and disciplined. She also realized that she was perceived differently for her skills and accorded less respect than that given her male colleague. As a mature adult, Esther has a deep understanding of people and what motivates them. She is not expressive or affectionate, but she becomes a mentor to Augusta once she determines the girl has a real interest in and skill for healing. Esther is reserved but not unkind; she never turns away someone she believes she can help, but she also refuses to be bullied or manipulated. Despite her no-nonsense ways, Augusta sees a softer, nearly supernatural aspect to Esther when she is preparing her remedies, expressed through her blue robe that shifts in color as she works. Esther is practical about giving aid and about the limits of her ability. She tries to caution Augusta that no one lives forever and that she cannot fix everything.
Mitzi Diamond
Mitzi Diamond is a secondary character who serves to bring Lois and Irving together, thus changing the course of both their lives. She also acts as a foil to Esther in her status as a maternal figure. Whereas Esther works to help others, Mitzi works to secure her own family’s position and power, and she can be cold-blooded in these aims. Solomon Stern proves correct when he guesses that to survive marriage to a man like Zip Diamond, Mitzi must be quite ruthless.
Mitzi is described as beautiful, and Augusta sees her as more glamorous than the usual Brownsville housewives, but she notes that “[h]er beauty was like the ocean in winter—cold and splendid in its austerity” (189). Irving notes that Mitzi’s eyes “were as hard as the shiny black buttons sewn to the front of the ‘free’ wool coat” (169). She is intelligent, manipulative, and cunning. While for the most part Mitzi seems strategic about her plotting, she also has a moment of vulnerability when she is dealing with the symptoms of menopause, which make her feel ill and not herself. She also claims she overreacted when she killed Freddie Schecter. Mitzi does show moments of care and protectiveness toward her children. However, on the whole, her practicality and selfishness win out when she moves the family to Chicago and takes over Zip’s lucrative racketeering schemes so she may continue to enjoy wealth and relative security. Notably, despite being unethical in other respects, Mitzi keeps her promise to Irving and makes sure other gangsters in New York City do not bother Solomon Stern, his pharmacy, or his family.
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