Thea Kronborg cannot seem to go anywhere, meet new people, or reconnect with old friends and family, without learning something new about herself, or entirely changing the way she considers the world. In Part 3 (Stupid Faces) of The Song of the Lark (by Willa Cather), Thea is introduced to a considerably more negative person than those she had dealt with in the past. However, he is not negative in a way you would think.
Bowers is a spiteful man full of angst; jealous of the world and those who managed to get ahead where he could not. "As a boy [Bowers] had a fine baritone voice, and his father made great sacrifices for him... His cold nature and academic methods were against him. His audiences were always aware of the contempt he felt for them. A dozen poor singers succeeded, but Bowers did not." (218) So, he dislikes anything likable, and likes anything one would originally dislike in something or someone. "[Bowers] had first been interested in Thea Kronborg because of her bluntness, her country roughness, and her manifest carefulness about money... For the first time Thea had a friend who, in his own cool and unguarded way, liked her for whatever was least admirable in her." (219) He also "...took a revengeful pleasure in having his shoes half-soled a second time, and in getting the last wear out of a broken collar." (219) because the majority of his clients were often dressed up extravagantly and cleanly.
Oddly enough, Bowers manages to impregnate this this frame of mind onto Thea. Conveniently, this feat is simple for Bowers to achieve, without meaning to, after Thea's disappointing trip to Moonstone for a summer.
For two months she stayed there, and she learned all she needed from her hometown in the the first couple days. As she was no longer ignorant, she was able to notice those who disliked her, and the irritable tension that remained in the house of the Kronborg family for the duration of Thea's stay. With the help of Bowers, Thea herself learned to hate things and people in general "Thea was sitting with her chin lowered. Without moving her head she looked up at Mrs. Harsanyi and smiled; a smile much too cold and desperate to be seen on a young face, Mrs. Harsanyi felt. 'Mrs. Harsanyi, it seems to me that what I learn is just to dislike. I dislike so much and so hard that it tires me out. I've got no heart for anything.' She threw up her head suddenly and sat in defiance, her hand clenched on the arm of the chair." (224)
This change in attitude does not improve things for Thea at all, and she would have been amazed had she known at the time what was causing her such distress. "She was more influenced by Bowers than she knew." (231) Her general dislike and distaste for people caused her to move from boarding house to boarding house in a storm of anger, where her only constant was the voice lessons she took from Bowers.
Typically, a shining beacon rises out of the stupid faces (that Thea can't stand for the life of her), a man unlike those she has befriended in the past. Young, frivolous, Fred Ottenburg takes an interest in Thea for her voice at first, and gives her opportunities to sing that she wouldn't have if it wasn't for meeting him. As to be expected with this sort of thing, Thea falls for him "She moved impatiently in her cot and threw her braids away from her hot neck, over her pillow. 'I don't want him for a teacher, she thought, frowning petulantly out of the window. 'I have had such a string of them. I want him for a sweetheart.'... " (248) As if planned out ahead of time, Fred offers Thea an escape from the bedraggled and dull city of Chicago that seems to have been dragging her down; an escape to a land of the sun, of canyons and ruins. She humbly declines, at first, as she sees it as far too easy, perhaps a trap. Of course, she accepts and goes along in the end. Who can blame such a maiden to go along with a suggestion by her fair prince?
