“The reason Miss Ramchadin paid me no attention was that, to her mind, the outfit was not something to either congratulate or scorn-it simply was. She was not one to manacle nature, and I sensed she was permitting mine its freedom (pg 77).”
This quote comes after Tyler tries on women’s clothing for the first time. He expected Miss Ramchadin to react, and as this quote demonstrates, she did not. The punctuation emphasizes this moment. This sentence reads at a slower pace than the previous sentences, when he is trying on the dress, due to the use of commas and a dash. The previous sentences are all jumbled and full of details of how he was feeling when putting on all the components of the dress. Now that he has it all on, he has had time to gather himself and reflect on his feelings of the dress, and prepare for the reaction of someone other than himself. The commas are used so the sentence reads at a slower, calmer, pace, while also emphasizing that it is only Miss Ramchadin who would accept Tyler in this dress. The sentence would still make sense without that phrase “to her mind” stuck in between the commas, but Tyler needed to emphasize this acceptance was just from Miss Ramchadin and not everyone else, because he is treated so poorly by every other character in the novel. By neither congratulating or scorning this moment in his life, just ignoring and acting as if this action is normal and nothing to make a fuss over, Tyler for the first in this novel is simply able to be the person he wants to be without being judged. The use of the dash “-it simply was” demonstrates that Tyler feels relief that he is not being judged. He is able to take a deep breath, bask in this moment, and simply be.
The next sentence is what intrigued me most about the passage. To me, from the language in this sentence, it is my understanding that Tyler felt like a prisoner in his own body. The words “manacle” and “freedom” are extreme opposites, and each have associations with those whom are imprisoned. The definition of manacle is to fetter a person with shackles. By saying that “she was not one to manacle nature” it demonstrates that Tyler has felt, by the actions of others in his life, that his natural state of being has been trapped inside him unable to be expressed, shackled like a prisoner of his body. This reminded me of “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”. Just as Dr. Jekyll was unable to express his true self, Tyler was unable to express his true self. Instead of having evil grow inside him due to lack of acceptance like Jekyll, Tyler had Miss Ramachadin to accept him. Now, finally, because Miss Ramachadin is not passing judgment on Tyler, she permitted his nature to be freed. She didn’t react to him, chastise him for the way he was being, and at this moment he was freed from his imprisonment from his body. For once in his life, he could express himself in any way he desired. He was free at last.