How was Buttercup portrayed in Chapter 1? 1) How does the author describe her? (Her appearance, personality) 2) How do others vi
ew her? (How do they feel about her?) Why?
chapter 1
THE YEAR that Buttercup was born, the most beautiful woman in the
world was a French scullery maid named Annette. Annette worked in Paris for
the Duke and Duchess de Guiche, and it did not escape the Duke's notice that
someone extraordinary was polishing the pewter. The Duke's notice did not
escape the notice of the Duchess either, who was not very beautiful and not
very rich, but plenty smart. The Duchess set about studying Annette and shortly
found her adversary's tragic flaw.
Chocolate.
Armed now, the Duchess set to work. The Palace de Guiche turned into a
candy castle. Everywhere you looked, bonbons. There were piles of
chocolate-covered mints in the drawing rooms, baskets of chocolate-covered
nougats in the parlors.
Annette never had a chance. Inside a season, she went from delicate to
whopping, and the Duke never glanced in her direction without sad
bewilderment clouding his eyes. (Annette, it might be noted, seemed only
cheerier throughout her enlargement. She eventually married the pastry chef
and they both ate a lot until old age claimed them. Things, it might also be
noted, did not fare so cheerily for the Duchess. The Duke, for reasons passing
understanding, next became smitten with his very own mother-in-law, which
caused the Duchess ulcers, only they didn't have ulcers yet. More precisely,
ulcers existed, people had them, but they weren't called "ulcers." The medical
profession at that time called them "stomach pains" and felt the best cure was
coffee dolloped with brandy twice a day until the pains subsided. The Duchess
took her mixture faithfully, watching through the years as her husband and her
mother blew kisses at each other behind her back. Not surprisingly, the
Duchess's grumpiness became legendary, as Voltaire has so ably chronicled.
Except this was before Voltaire.)
The year Buttercup turned ten, the most beautiful woman lived in Bengal,
the daughter of a successful tea merchant. This girl's name was Aluthra, and
her skin was of a dusky perfection unseen in India for eighty years. (There have
