nights at the circus

There is definitely a discrepancy between the way Sophie Fevvers sees herself and the different ways that others see her.  During her shows, Fevvers puts on this completely regal act full of carefully rehearsed showmanship. The dramatic buildup to the show with her in a cage, the elaborate costume and hair, the corny show music, and the end when she seems to stay on stage waving and blowing kisses for so long. "Look at me! With a grand, proud, ironic grace she exhibited herself before the eyes of the audience as if she were a marvelous present too good to be played with. Look, not touch.... Look! Hands off! Look at me!" She puts on this really over it and confident persona onstage because she knows that "on the street, and the soirée, at lunch in expensive restaurants with dukes, princes, captains of industry and punters of like kidney, she was always the cripple, even if she always drew the eye and people stood on chairs to see." She is self conscious because she knows she's a freak. However, because Jack Walser is investigating her and trying to figure out if she is real or not, the way he sees her is completely different from the way her audiences do. While they see her as a kind of enigma, he scrutinizes and judges everything about her. We can tell that he is really trying quite hard to figure her out because of the amount of long passages in which he is going over and analyzing her every more, trying to find somewhere where he can poke a hole in her identity. He questions the fact that she has arms, analyzes the unnaturally slow speed of her flips, and ponders whether or not she has a belly button. Unlike her audiences who suspend their disbelief for entertainment's sake, Walser sets out to expose her as a fraud, so her can never really take her at face value and will always be questioning something.