The Magnolia Palace

Veronica’s story begins in 1966, when she is 18 years old. Veronica is from London. She has a twin sister, Polly, born with developmental disabilities, who lives in a home because Veronica and her mother cannot afford to take care of her. At the beginning of the novel, Veronica’s motivation is to make enough money to be able to bring Polly home. By the end of the book, she has accomplished this goal and is working toward a career about which she feels passionate.

Her modeling career begins by chance. An agent discovers her in her uncle’s pawnshop because of a haircut her mother gave her to save money: “Veronica’s thick bangs, cut in a straight line almost to her ears, were her ‘defining’ feature” (16). Veronica basically stumbles into the modeling opportunity, the Vogue shoot in New York City, not as a long-held career objective but as a way to bring her sister home. When the modeling does not work out, she decides on another approach to securing the money for her sister—finding the Magnolia Diamond. Her decisions, especially in the beginning of the book, reflect her single-minded ambition to support her family.

Veronica shows herself to be resourceful and insightful, qualities that Helen recognizes when she says, “You’re a smart lady. You helped solve a mystery that had long stymied my family” (328). As her story continues, her character develops greater empathy and her single-mindedness expands to include other priorities. Although she is tempted to steal the Magnolia Diamond, her conscience wins out, and Joshua’s opinion of her matters. In the end, Veronica’s story arc has her overcoming the 1919 milieu’s notion of a woman’s place, bringing Polly home, enjoying a satisfying career, and like the other characters, following her passion to become an archivist.

Joshua is an intern at the Frick Collection when he gets locked in the mansion overnight with Veronica. He has an undergraduate degree in art history from Brooklyn College and wants to pursue his graduate degree at Columbia University. Joshua’s mother is an artist, and his father is a history professor at Brooklyn College. His parents named him after Joshua Johnson, a portrait painter recognized, as Joshua says, as “the first documented Black artist in America” (168). He has followed in both his parents’ footsteps by becoming an art historian, highlighting the Need to Please One’s Parents but also following his own passion.

Joshua feels pressure to please his parents and yet, in 1966, finds himself caught between “the world that [my] highly educated parents live in, where we are tolerated by the white majority, and the world inhabited by most young Black people, which is burning up” (219). He illustrates a different facet of the theme The Toll of Societal Double Standards: Joshua, so educated, knowledgeable, and passionate, feels like an outsider in the art world and is a target of racism, as when the photographer of Veronica’s shoot assumes that he is the janitor at the Frick Collection. While Lillian faces gendered double standards, Joshua faces racial ones. Accordingly, Joshua parallels Lillian’s subversion of Society’s View of a Woman’s Place in that he shatters 1966 societal views of what a Black man should do and be professionally.

Joshua’s character acts as Veronica’s conscience, as his opinion matters to her; when she takes the Magnolia Diamond, she worries about what he will think of her. He is thoughtful, moral, kind, and understanding of why she took the diamond, forgiving the impulse.

Helen, or Miss Helen, is the daughter of wealthy steel magnate Henry Clay Frick. At the time the story begins in 1919, she is 31 and unmarried. Helen is as passionate about the Frick Collection as her father is, and she eventually decides against marriage, instead devoting her life to creating the Frick Art Reference Library. Helen’s unmarried status, however, is contrary to a woman’s prescribed place in 1919 society; it bothers her parents, and she nearly marries Richard Danforth for the sake of pleasing a parent.

Helen is awkward in social situations, one reason why Mr. Frick feels it is necessary to pay Lillian to facilitate Helen’s relationship with Richard. She is also intelligent, competent, and hardworking, evidenced by her time with the Red Cross refugee camps during World War I. The experience was meaningful to her because “[i]t was the first time [I] felt a part of something. That [I] was a useful member of society” (100). The Red Cross experience also demonstrates Helen’s passion toward working hard and being useful, a passion that, when combined with art, she ultimately follows into her life’s work, the reference library.

The Helen of 1966 is the culmination of the decisions she makes in the 1919 storyline. The reader is witness to Helen’s evolution and the product of her hard work in the finished library. However, despite having a unique personality and key place in the story, Helen is a relatively static character. She is eccentric, demanding, stubborn, generous, and passionate in the beginning of the novel and remains relatively unchanged in the end. Her purpose as a character is to move the plot forward and underscore the themes of passion, pleasing a parent, and a woman’s place.