CC and Hillary Grow Up by Letter, Explained

What happens

CC Bloom and Hillary Whitney write letters to each other over many years. Hillary spends summers at a beach house, rides horses, and says she is tired of being 'proper' and 'well-bred.' CC studies singing in the Bronx, complains about her hair, and jokes that she is now on her own. Their letters carry them from school to college and beyond.

What's really going on

The letters do two things at once: they tell the story of two lives and they draw the contrast between them. Hillary grows up inside wealth and manners, and the language she is handed — 'proper,' 'well-bred,' 'cultured' — is exactly what she cannot stand. 'I go through life thinking everyone's watching me. Are they?' she writes, exposing the loneliness inside a life that looks perfect. CC has the opposite problem: no money and no breaks, learning in a cellar studio where, as she jokes, 'you only graduate when you're tall enough to hit your head on the ceiling.' Their letters are where each can say what she cannot say at home, which is why a friendship kept at a distance still holds. The chapter moves from childhood nicknames to adult worries — law school, protest marches, no agent, no work — and the joke about Vitamin A lands because by then both women know what it is to want to give up.

Key lines & what they mean

“I go through life thinking everyone's watching me. Are they?”

Hillary's confession of lifelong self-consciousness: she feels judged at every moment and wonders whether the audience she imagines is real.

“He doesn't understand the whole world's falling apart while he's playing golf.”

Her frustration with her father: he keeps playing golf while she believes the larger world is coming apart, and the two cannot see it the same way.

“I was just about to commit suicide by taking an overdose of Vitamin A when your letter arrived telling me I'm a genius and don't lose heart.”

CC's dark joke about almost giving up, lifted by Hillary's letter calling her a genius — the friendship literally keeps her going.

“The studio's in the cellar, which means you only graduate when you're tall enough to hit your head on the ceiling.”

A wry image of the cramped cellar studio: students only 'graduate' once they are tall enough to bump the ceiling.

Theme

• Friendship — A friendship survives distance and years, and the letters are the only place each woman can be fully honest about her life.
• Class — Hillary's world of 'proper' and 'well-bred' contrasts with CC's Bronx apartment, mace and magazine, and the letters keep both worlds in view.