“When Bellocq doesn’t like a photograph he scratches across the plate. But I know other ways to obscure a face. . .” pg. 44
This poem continues the trend of hiding what one doesn’t want to show to the world. It also revolves around the concept of hiding who one truly is underneath a glamour of something else. Between make-up and removing an image entirely, if one doesn’t like what they see, it’s all easily fixed. This becomes a running theme in the book from the moment we read the meat of the story.
We first meet Ophelia when she’s trying to find work. From the moment she begins speaking of finding work, she starts by talking of hiding her hands with gloves to hide their darkness and her trying not to notice the other dark skinned women doing housework. Countess P’s advice also delves into hiding one’s true self from the clients they take when she says:
“Become what you must. Let him see what he wants. Train yourself not to look back.” Pg. 11
After that at the auction, Ophelia only moves when Countess tells her to, showing us another way she’s made to hide her true self from the world. Emphasis is put on how well she can obey, essentially stripping away her identity and individualism and pushing her true self to the background. By the time we get to this particular poem, we’ve been given only a shell of what Ophelia’s true self is and hints of what it was before everything in the letters she sent to Constance. The only time she’s allowed to be herself is when she studies photography under Bellocq. When she’s the subject, he too only shows the world how he wants her to be seen in a way. He waits until she does something he likes and captures her like that, as he does with the other girls he photographs. If he doesn’t like it, he wipes it away and tries again. If Ophelia doesn’t like what she sees, she hides it with gloves and make-up and tries again. Hiding things is a nature one must adapt to in order to survive in the Red Light district it seems. Ophelia is only allowed to be her true self when she leaves the district and finds what she loves.