Bernice is Crazy!

This is a great story! It definitely made me think twice about being mean to my annoying cousins. Before she becomes vindictive and attacks her cousin, I sympathize with Marjorie because I can definitely recall a time or two when my family members came to town and it ruined my social life. Family is family, and even though you love them, you don’t have to like them all the time. Although I sympathize with Marjorie, Bernice’s character is fun too. I think that it’s really funny that she chops her cousin’s hair off at the end.
This story is in a sense Fitzgerald’s rendition of the ugly duckling. Bernice (being the homely and anti-social woman that she was) once introduced to Marjorie’s friends and suitors becomes very well liked and even admired by some of them. Bernice agreed to let Marjorie change her into someone who would be better received by the other young people. Bernice changed in many ways, and I think that this is an analysis of identity that implies that it can be fickle and ever changing. In the beginning of the story, Bernice seemed very quiet and nice, but in the end she acts in a very spiteful manner—cutting her cousin’s hair off and tossing it onto the porch of one of her cousin’s suitors. Fitzgerald’s take on identity is that identity isn’t really what defines a person because it is changeable.