Staying Alive: A Family Memoir

By Janet Reibstein

They were three beautiful, promising sisters, daughters of Jewish immigrants - Mary, Fannie and Regina, young women during the pre-war depression. In a tragic twist of fate, all three were to be diagnosed with breast cancer. Fannie died first, a young mother of three, then in the next decade, Mary, both lonely, painful deaths; while Regina struggled against her recurrent cancer until she was 64. Told by Janet, Regina's daughter, STAYING ALIVE is the story of the sisters - their battle with what seemed an invincible foe and the toll it took on their personalities, their sisterhood, their marriages and their children, particularly their daughters who, too, were likely to be victims. At the centre is the intense relationship between Regina and Janet bound by love and a genetic curse - and ultimately, Janet's momentous and far-reaching decision to be free of it.Candid and deeply moving, STAYING ALIVE is a truly inspiring story of survival, of hope and the possibility of overcoming destiny.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
• Release date: Dec 8, 2008
• ISBN: 9781596918917

Janet Reibstein

Janet Reibstein is a US-born, UK-based psychologist, therapist, coach and broadcaster. She wrote the UK Parenting Plan – a guide given to all divorcing couples on how to manage their relationship – and is Professor Emerita at the University of Exeter. Janet is also the author of the Bloomsbury books, The Best Kept Secret and Staying Alive.

Book preview

STAYING ALIVE

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

The Family Through Divorce: How You Can Limit

the Damage

Love Life: Making Your Relationship Work

Sexual Arrangements: Marriage, Monogamy and Affairs

STAYING

ALIVE

A FAMILY MEMOIR

Janet Reibstein

BLOOMSBURY

Copyright © 2002 by Janet Reibstein

Lyric excerpts of 'Bali Ha'i' and 'Happy Talk'

by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II

Copyright © 1949 by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II

Copyright Renewed. WILLIAMSON MUSIC owner of publication and allied rights throughout the world. International Copyright Secured.

Reprinted by Permission. All Rights Reserved.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the Publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address

Bloomsbury, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010

Published by Bloomsbury, New York and London

Distributed to the trade by Holtzbrinck Publishers

eISBN: 978-1-59691-891-7

First published in the United States by Bloomsbury in 2002

This paperback edition published in 2003

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Polmont, Stirlingshire, Scotland

Printed in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

Acknowledgements

The kindness of friends, family, and colleagues helped make this private story public. The book really began with the legacy left to me of my mother's unfinished journal, its next step a gentle suggestion from my agent, Araminta Whitley, to try a journal of my own. Like Topsy, it growed and growed. Araminta and her colleagues at Lucas, Alexander, and Whitley have been my cheerleaders, their cheers a tonic throughout. My husband, Stephen Monsell, and then my friend, Michelle Spring, each read a fledgling version of Staying Alive. Their warm encouragement meant that this first version did not remain locked in a drawer, unfinished and messy. Early versions and sections were read, in turn, by many friends and family — including my brothers, my sisters-in-law, Cathy and Lauren Reibstein and Stephanie Brody, and my cousins. While too numerous to name them all here, I hope each friend and family member will recognise his or her contribution. Some of them also gave me important information or verified facts. Notably these include my brothers, Gene, Rick, and Mark Reibstein, my cousins, Joyce Pomerance, Barbara Klein, and Jerrilyn Marston, and my mother's and my dear friends, Phyllis and Irvin Stock, Evelyn Prieto, and Dr Leona Laskin. I also benefited from medical friends' input, including Drs Ashley Moffett, Jill Haslehurst and Vanessa Lloyd-Davies, and Professor Theresa Marteau, and from an enlightening consultation with the clinical geneticist, Dr James McKay. My thanks to all who helped and encouraged me feels a paltry exchange for their belief in both me and the book.

Various medical journals and books helped me try to make sense of the medical aspects of my story. Particularly helpful were the books Breakthrough: The Race to Find the Breast Cancer Gene by Kevin Davies and Michael White (NY: Wiley, 1995); The Breast Cancer Wars: Hope, Fear, and the Pursuit of Care in Twentieth Century America, by Barron H. Lerner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), and Dr Susan Love's Breast Book: Second Edition, by Susan M. Love with Karen Lindsey (Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1995) as well as the editorial entitled, 'Prophylactic Mastectomy for Women with BRCA1 and BRAC2 Mutations: Facts and Controversy' (New England fournal of Medicine: Vol. 345, July 19, 2001, pp. 207-208).

At various stages certain people made key suggestions that substantially directed its course or shaped its progress. They include my friend, Angela Neustatter, and also Marsha Rowe and Gideon Weill. But most of all, my amazing editorial team at Bloomsbury — Alexandra Pringle, Marian McCarthy, and Chiki Sarkar, and my chief supporter in the US, Karen Rinaldi - pulled out of me a book immeasurably better as a result of their acute and sensitive work. I hope it has earned their pride as much as they have earned my thanks.

Finally, I hope this book repays my family's and relatives' support, and that I have succeeded in balancing their right to privacy with the demands of the story I have tried to tell.

Janet Reibstein, Exeter, UK, March 2002

A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR

Janet Reibstein is a university lecturer, clinician, writer and broadcaster on the psychology of relationships. Born in America, she lives in the UK with her husband and two sons, and is currently teaching at the University of Exeter.

CONTENTS

Prologue

PART I: INNOCENCE

1 Three Sisters

2 Separations

3 Fannie's Story

PART II: LEARNING

4 Regina's Long Story Begins

5 Regina: Living with the Enemy

6 Mary's Story/Regina's Story

7 The Curse

8 Regina's Story: Attempted Life

9 Regina's Story: Fighting Back

10 Shadows

11 Regina: Ending: I

12 Regina: Ending: II

PART III: DECISION

13 Facing Facts

14 Decision

15 The Operation

16 Almost There

17 Staying Alive

To the next generation:

Adam and Daniel Monsell; Zack and Luke

Reibstein; Josiah and Rebecca Reibstein;

Lena Reibstein; and Tim and Lynn Kaufman

Prologue

In November 1995 I stood alone in my bedroom in front of the mirror and scrutinised my naked body. It was slim, not in bad shape for its age, if marked by ragged tracks — scars from a Caesarian birth and infertility surgery. Sags were beginning to soften its edges. It was a body of middle age, its shape shifted both by the babies it had carried and by the gravity of years. Those years, and those babies sucking with their fierce, tiny mouths, had pulled and lowered my once firm breasts. I had loved my breasts, the source once of sexual ecstasy as well as maternal bliss. Now they were my enemies. Soon I would defeat them. This was to be their last day on earth. Out loud I bade them farewell. 'Well, guys, that's it,' I said, then I turned from the mirror, the ritual done. I dressed, collected my bags, and went downstairs for my last breakfast as the woman I was. I was due at the hospital.

I am a member of a breast cancer family, the most recent woman in it to face that fact. Like rising numbers of women today (but still too few), I have defeated breast cancer. I am no longer waiting to die of it, no longer living with the conviction that my killer is known to me, lurking inside, waiting to strike. The threat of that killer is now virtually erased. I learned what my options were. I took charge. It was possible because I live when, where and how I do. Tragically, this wasn't so for my two aunts or my mother. Today women, even those without a known cancer gene, can and do take charge. Increasingly, those who do so early enough survive.

In the time of my mother, Regina Reibstein, in the time of my aunts, Mary Kaufman and Fannie Pome ranee, women with breast cancer died. Today breast cancer is not all-powerful. It does not have to be a killer.

PART I

INNOCENCE

1

Three Sisters

Paterson, New Jersey, January 1920

In the winter of 1920, Paterson, New Jersey, was a town of mainly greys and browns — brown trees, grey pavements, brown and grey painted on to the wood-frame and brick houses lining the new streets of its comfortable Jewish East Side. Neat, small squares of scraggly green grass stood, like sentries, fronting proud new homes. Weeds had not yet pushed through the few cracks in the pavements. Square, sturdy houses hid, like pigeons, behind the peacocks of thrusting white mansions with sculpted hedges and long lawns. Within twenty years Paterson, the old mill town — briefly famous when the newly arrived Jews led the Paterson silk strikes — had grown moderately prosperous. On this dingy spot along the Passaic river, just west of Ellis Island where they'd first landed, the now better-off Jews built these homes.

On January 20, 1920, outside Barnert Hospital, Mary and Fannie Smith, aged eight and five respectively, were being led home by their Aunt Bertha. Her older sister, Rose, their exhilarated mother, lay in her hospital bed with their new baby sister, Rebecca. The little girls wore smart, matching red dresses, dark brown tweed coats and little red berets, which brought out their high colour — rosy cheeks, black curls and large, inky eyes. Rose had made the drop-waisted dresses from velvet which the girls' father, Isidore, had brought home from his mill. The girls had handed pins and stood like mannequins while Rose pressed fabric against their thin bodies. Diligent Fannie had observed the dextrous movements, then precisely threaded pins into fabric, her mother nodding approvingly. Beautiful Mary was fidgety and flighty, like a trapped bird, dropping pins and giggling, to her mother's exasperation.

Today both were angels. With his normally bustling wife out of action, Isidore remained at the hospital, taking charge. They left him handing out cigars in the waiting room, wryly enquiring whether there were any rich males among the newborns: he joked that for them he had a job lot of impoverished, pretty brides. Baby Rebecca would soon become Regina. Mary had once been Miriam. Smith had once been Schmidt. Rose had once been Yetta, and still was to Isidore, Bertha, and their Polish friends and relations. But not to the American world of which the family had become part.

On the walk home Mary and Fannie chattered about the baby. Rose, endlessly busy, would surely assign her to the girls' care. A truncated childhood, her parents dead in a disease-swept shtetl, had schooled Rose to delegate, her younger sister put in charge of a younger brother. By the time she was fifteen she had organised a passage to America, settled herself and siblings in Paterson, and a few years later found a mate — the socialist Isidore. She mothered her daughters with dutiful love, though frail Fannie elicited tenderness. Frothy Mary was Isidore's. The baby would belong to the sisters. Already they'd got out a cradle, installed dolls, and cleared her a space in their room.

Although Rose and Isidore had become American citizens, and although their daughters were born in Paterson, the spectre of Poland hovered over each birth: these girls would know neither hunger nor oppression. These girls were Americans.

Paterson, 1928: Regina

On a rainy, cold winter night Regina Smith lay alone, in bed, in the dark, in the room she shared with her sisters. Her day had been nastier than the wintry weather itself and she tossed about, trying, but failing, to be soothed by the domestic murmurings below.

In the pale-blue-walled kitchen the radio crackled, while sixteen-year-old Mary bellowed along with the singer: 'Five foot two! Eyes of blue! Oh what those two eyes can do!' She pictured Mary dancing, black eyes merry, blue worsted skirt flapping, hips swinging, hands circling daintily, cheeks sucked in so that her eyes bulged, round and popping; Regina pictured her mother knitting, tuning Mary out. Their father was half listening, peering through wire-rimmed glasses, hunched over the kitchen table, and working at figures. She heard him chuckle. Then Mary's large 'Mmmmmmmwahh!' erupted, as she threw her arms round him and collapsed in giggles. Their silent mother knitted on.

In the silence after Mary's kiss she heard Fannie, almost fourteen, in the sewing room, using the gleaming black Singer treadle machine. Her knees pumped rhythmically up and down, feeding through the machine the pink silk their father had brought home, mating one side to another till the elegant top of a scoop-necked party dress began to emerge. Fannie would look beautiful in it, though she wouldn't know it. Not in the way Mary would. Fannie wore her chic dress as if she were merely a hanger, while Mary glided around as if she were the silk itself. The sewing room Fannie was working in was always strewn with pattern pieces, decapitated, limbless paper dolls.

Regina hated sewing. Her attempts ended in bad temper: her mother exasperated, the clowning Mary, trying to cheer Regina, banished, and Fannie summoned to salvage Regina's uneven hems and jagged cutting. If her father were home and overheard, he would creep into her room later when she was in bed, and wordlessly place a small Hopje — their favourite coffee-flavoured boiled sweet — in her fist, kiss her forehead, and leave.

Whenever she couldn't sleep, like tonight, she stared at the pink cabbage roses splodged in a repeating pattern on the brown wallpaper. The paper was an accompanying theme to her life, announcing she was home, in her cosy room, soon to snuggle near her sisters. Tonight it provoked her: she found herself trying to remember a time when it wasn't there — her first home, an apartment; they had moved when she was two. Her two sisters would share a memory: 'Remember when . . .' and Regina couldn't giggle with them. They teased her about it - 'Oh, you're so little. Your life's only in single numbers' — and grabbed her and kissed her messily, as if gobbling up her cheeks.

'Isn't she adorable?' Mary used to demand of the myriad friends she dragged home after school. Mary and Fannie liked to dress her up in costumes their mother had sewed, or to arrange her hair in elaborate styles. Expertly they brushed back her thick black curls, their deft, comforting fingers sweeping across her scalp as they scooped the curls into ringlets. Then Mary would turn Regina round carefully, like a waxwork doll, preserving their work of art, inviting applause: ta da! Cute, pliable Regina.

When Regina was four Fannie taught her to read. Before bedtime Fannie would park her tiny sister on her lap. Holding her tight and kissing the top of her head, she'd point to a word. Word reproduced, both Fannie and Mary would delightedly sweep Regina into their soapy-smelling arms. Then one would read to her. Or Mary would stretch next to her, murmuring made-up adventures. Proud of their protegee, the older two moved on to family recitals, schooling her in orations they themselves had learned. At family gatherings she recited Hiawatha, or the Gettysburg Address. Sometimes Mary inserted gibberish; 'Four score and seven years ago,' Regina once warbled to assembled relatives, 'our mothers brought forth on this continent a new baby', while Mary and Fannie fell about. No matter what, Mary and Fannie clapped loudest and longest of all.

As well as Mary's numerous friends, and Fannie's fewer but constant ones, her parents' cronies from the Old Country were in and out of the house. The men played pinochle and canasta, ate pistachios, and drank schnapps from shot glasses. The grown-ups spoke Yiddish, which to Regina was background noise. Her parents did not teach the girls Yiddish, though Mary and Fannie could understand some because before Regina's birth her parents, unsteady in English, spoke Yiddish to them despite themselves. Now they spoke strictly English to their American girls. Regina was guiltily ashamed of her parents' accents. Why couldn't they hear that 'very' is not 'wery'? That 'this' is not 'dis'?

The bracing blast of her mother shouting 'Vot you saying you haf no verk, Mary? No homeverk? You nefer haf no verk?' bounced her out of her reverie. She flopped around angrily, pushing the bedclothes about, wishing for sleep, but instead was pursued by visions of the humiliation she'd suffered that day at school. She'd never been reprimanded before — only boys were told off, or the one bad girl, Adele Rosenberg. Last year's teacher had nominated her 'most diligent'. She yearned for lightning to strike this year's teacher. Little Miss Moskowitz was the dark opposite of her lumpy sister, Big Miss Moskowitz. Both taught at Regina's school. One was kindly but dull. The other delighted in making children quake as she strutted her tiny frame about her high-ceilinged, blank-walled classroom. Little Miss Moskowitz had today unleashed her venomous tongue upon Regina.

Regina's shame was so great that she wanted no one — not Fannie, not Mary, certainly not her parents - to know. With none of her usual reluctance she went to bed before her sisters, relieved to be alone at last. In the snatched privacy before Fannie and Mary came to bed, Regina at last released the tears she had stored up all day. Her sobs were so absorbing that she did not hear Fannie's soft footsteps coming down the corridor. Fannie reached out to the small, shaking body, and began rubbing gently in ever-increasing circles on Regina's back. 'Shah,' she soothed and soon Regina's resolve broke, first making Fannie swear not to tell their mother. To which Fannie promised, 'I'll handle Ma,' which was all Regina needed to hear. She knew Fannie could, indeed, manage Ma.

Slightly calmer, Regina sat up, her black curls a wiry halo round her small face, a face remarkably like Mary's and Fannie's, but with rounder, softer features, lighter, pinker skin — as if any sharpness the others might possess had been removed from her. She raced through her tale, hoping speed would blur its ugliness.

Miss Moskowitz had accused Regina of dipping Bernice Malkin's pigtail into her inkwell. Meekly but still indignantly Regina protested that the offending, swinging pigtail had dipped accidentally. The frightened class tittered. Like a fox Miss Moskowitz thrilled as she sniffed fear. An evil smile crossed her bony face and she delivered the sentence. Regina was to stay after school. But first she was to stand at the blackboard till her fingers ached, and scratch T will be a good girl' in white chalk one hundred times. Regina pleaded for justice. Miss Moskowitz smiled wordlessly. Under the glare of Miss Moskowitz's triumphant, unyielding gaze, Regina bravely fought back tears as if she would burst. And then she did burst. To the sound of her teacher's harsh 'Tut tut', Regina felt a shaming tell-tale warm trickle down her leg, and the class howled with laughter as it spread below her in a pale yellow pool.

Fannie had to catch her breath. How dare that tyrant! She gazed with determination at her sister's wet almond eyes. She was only eight! She carried on rubbing and assured Regina - she was lying — that she wouldn't tell anyone.

The next morning Regina pretended she had a stomach ache. Fannie, dressed, kissed her cheek and urged, 'Come on. Out of bed.' Mary tickled her ribs under the bedclothes and whispered, 'Up you get.' Finally Ma bustled in. She gently forced Regina's nightgown over her head, dressing her as if she were a baby. Regina went limp.

At her seat with the offending inkwell Regina morosely pushed her pen across columns of numbers, hoping for the usual buzz she got from solving puzzles, when suddenly the door to the silent classroom flew open. The class shot up in their seats, startled. Bursting in was —Oh my God - her short, broad-bosomed mother.

'Miss Moskovitz,' her mother boomed, staring at the teacher in her thick brown chair, 'shame on you.' She paused. There was no sound, apart from Mrs Smith's sterterous breath. 'Bullying a chi-ilt!' Regina's eyes widened. 'Nefer again.' Her mother shook her fist. The class was hushed. No titters today. Miss Moskowitz stretched her small frame as if to gain a height advantage. Her stammered protest was drowned by an indignant 'No excuses!' Yesterday's enormity diminished to tininess, Miss Moskowitz stared stupidly at Mrs Smith, who turned on her heel, marched down the aisle and gently coaxed her daughter out of her seat.

'She leaves mit me.' Regina rose. At the door her mother hissed a final shot: 'Da principal next.' Today Regina was a heroine, reflected in her mother's glory.

***

'Haf votefer.' Her mother gestured magnanimously, positioning herself on the swivelling red leather stool at the drugstore counter. There were clear glass domes over plates filled with slices of seven-layer chocolate cakes, apple and cherry pies, ruggelach and other Jewish pastries. 'An egg cream? Yes?' Regina had hardly spoken. She nodded. Her mother ordered two.

'Ma,' Regina eventually said, between sips of exquisitely mixed sharp seltzer, milk and sweet chocolate, 'thank you.' She fought the hated tears. She was a crier. Her sisters were tougher. Her mother smiled, pleased by her pride. 'Mammele. No vun bullies a Smit.'

That afternoon and evening Regina was buoyant. After the drugstore she immediately wrote a story, which came out in a rush. When Fannie arrived they made a cover for the book. When Mary, a wonderful artist, came home she drew illustrations. Fannie presented it to their mother as she was putting a chicken in the oven. Ma wiped her hands, reached for her glasses, and sat down at the table. 'Veil! Wery nice,' she clucked. She thumbed through it, pausing every few pages. Regina rested her chin on her mother's shoulder, and read silently along, savouring the look of the words on the page. When they finished, her mother regarded the book as if it were a specimen, turning it over and back again. 'Wery nice. Fannie, you make dis?' she asked, pointing to the cover.

Fannie winced. 'Yeah, Ma, but it's Regina's story,' she prompted. 'Wery nice,' their mother repeated, to no one in particular. 'Mary! Dat face — dat, dat . . .' she gestured in circles round her head, to show curls, 'you tink dat's me?' she joked. Mary appeared discomfited. She put her arm round her mother, and pecked her on the cheek. 'It's a swell story, isn't it, Ma?'

Regina waited. 'Wery nice. Yah, wery nice.' Her mother was already turning her back, on her way to check the chicken; absent-mindedly she patted the top of Regina's head.

Years later, when it was my mother, Regina Reibstein, who cuddled her small children - my brothers and me - on her lap, stroking our hair, nuzzling our necks, telling bedtime stories, our favourites were the 'when you were little, Mommy' ones. Most requested was the story of Little Miss Moskowitz. She told it with gusto, the teacher evil incarnate, her mother bold and strong. The story had a moral like a fairy tale. It started with Miss Moskowitz's twisted accusation, skipped straight to the next thrilling day, omitting Fannie's intervention, and ended with the happy embrace at the soda fountain. Over time, facts from other relatives filled spaces I didn't know were there. Fragments from a different narrative, they didn't fit the official bedtime story.

Paterson, January 1934: Fannie

Another cold day; Fannie, recovering from what seemed to be her millionth cold of the season, lolled in the large, claw-footed bath. Bathing during the late afternoon was a sneaky, ridiculous luxury. She'd also stolen her father's razor, hers lost in a clutter of cosmetics, most left behind by Mary. The house was much quieter now, though considerably less alive, for Mary had recently married and moved to a terrible, dirty tenement in the Bronx, with views of ribbed metal garbage cans and fire escapes winding into dark alleys.

To add to the gloom, Mary had that weekend jubilantly announced her pregnancy. No one begrudged her the impending child — they shared her joy. The problem was her husband, Murray, an undependable earner and an intermittently faithful husband. The rest of the family had recognised 'bounder' at once, as if it were printed in neon on his forehead, but Mary had always failed to spot envy, meanness or ill motives in anyone.

Despite Fannie's warnings, not to mention their mother's, and even Regina's baffled question 'But why, Mary? You're too good for him', Mary had fallen in love with and married Murray, whom she'd met at a dance the year before her graduation. Murray himself never graduated. In her innocence Mary had even tried to fix Fannie up with Murray's good-looking, long-limbed younger brother. The conversation between them ran out after two sentences: the first about the weather and the next about their engaged siblings. Mysteriously to Mary, Fannie preferred quieter men. Mary's final year of high school, when she knew she would be getting married, had been marked by their mother's wailing pleas to finish, just finish, just get the diploma, while Mary insouciantly blanked her out. But Mary clearly possessed an uncommon intelligence, for, in spite of her selective attendance and her erratic reading, on graduation day there she was, on stage with the other new graduates. She'd triumphantly squeaked through.

Now Fannie had graduated from high school, her romantic vistas widened. She was coming into her own, realised she was good-looking — though convinced she trailed behind the true beauty, Mary, and even the still awkward Regina. All shared their mother's high-cheek-boned, delicate-featured face, although Fannie had inherited her father's longer nose. But Fannie had style, studied from her mother's pattern books.

In her new world, a textile-factory office, she shone. Her stenography was good, she took dictation fast and well, and she excelled at figures. She was dating Irving, a Russian-born skilled cutter in the factory. He was sophisticated, polite, reserved and perfectly groomed. Regina, who shyly, then more comfortably, chatted with him in the front room while Fannie got ready for their dates, shared Fannie's admiration. Or Fannie thought she did.

One day shortly after she'd begun seeing Irving, as Fannie was folding away a cashmere sweater Regina had borrowed, the bond between them was threatened, Irving being the cause. Fourteen-year-old Regina languidly watched Fannie perform the ritual of tidying. Regina had falteringly entered adolescence: her thin legs and arms pushed out of too-tight clothing, her short, wide nose spread out of proportion to her eyes and mouth, and small spots sprayed her forehead. Fannie tried to summon the spontaneous adoration she'd felt formerly, tried to put together this sprouting girl-woman with the delicate child of only months before. Lately, with the onset of her adolescence, both recoiled from cuddles and hugs. And lately Regina had been questioning everything, from Fannie's taste in clothes to their parents' hard-line socialism. She'd become prickly, hard to adore. Unlike Fannie, Mary accepted everything about Regina — and about Fannie, and their parents, for that matter. The adolescent Regina, who pulled away from embraces and who was full of tactless criticism, however honest, was as wonderful to her as the baby Regina had been.

As Fannie laid the sweater in the drawer, Regina idly asked, 'Doesn't it bother you he speaks badly?'

Avoiding Regina's gaze, Fannie pretended airiness. 'Not at all,' she replied. Protective loyalty to Irving welled up, but also in that instant she was, internally, defending Regina, despite her gauche snobbery.