The Correspondent

“Felix, I got into a little scrape last night. It was nothing, really, I’m fine, but the Cadillac is in the shop.”

In this passage, Evans gives a first signal that Sybil has a self-diminishing tendency that marks her as an unreliable narrator. Though she is not maliciously dishonest, she nevertheless omits any indication that she is, in fact, frightened by her declining eyesight. This minimization inaugurates a pattern of avoidance that will harden into The Stagnation Within Fear.

“[I]t was wonderful to read such a complex woman of her vintage, bold with her intelligence and dignity as well as her errors, and the layers upon layers of her. […] I saw some reflection of myself in her.”

Here, Sybil demonstrates how profound her relationship to words is, as she allows herself to be swept away in a narrative and finds part of herself within its characters. Evans, however, also signals how Sybil deliberately looks for herself in the adventures of others as she confines herself to remain stationary in her home. The self-recognition in fiction functions as a safe proxy for risk, reinforcing The Stagnation Within Fear while foreshadowing later travel.

“I [Sybil] live alone, and furthermore, I only ever go upstairs to clean after I’ve had company, so it’s completely private.”

In this excerpt, Evans heavily implies Sybil’s denial of how lonely she feels, as she does not realize she isolates herself even from parts of her own house. Likewise, Sybil does not recognize that her invitation to a complete stranger (the author Ann Patchett) is in fact a desperate desire for company and companionship. The upstairs becomes a spatial emblem of self-sequestration, an architecture of fear disguised as preference.