Brooklyn

The motif of the bathing suit directly represents Eilis’s experiences with Brooklyn as a Source of Social Possibility. Eilis has not brought a bathing suit with her to Brooklyn from Ireland, and when Tony invites her to the beach at Coney Island, she scrambles to find one. With Miss Fortini, she selects one, and is given much advice from her and the boarders on how to dress with it and to shave and accessorize with sunglasses. This experience is very different from her times at the beach in Ireland, and she recognizes this even more when she is told to wear her bathing suit to the beach: “Italians had carried to America with them the custom of putting their bathing suits on under their clothes before they set out, thus avoiding the Irish habit of changing on the beach” (166). At Coney Island, the swimsuit is an emblem of modernizing attitudes toward the body and of rapidly changing fashions. Eilis buys sunglasses to go with her swimsuit, as these are apparently a must-have accessory that summer. The speed with which fashions come and go matches the pace of cultural change in this tumultuous environment. Eilis’s arrival on the beach is seamless, and when she goes into the water unbothered by the cold, unlike Tony, she recognizes another difference between Ireland and the US.