Reno, Nevada

Reno, Nevada, is the setting for Claire Daniels’s effort to secure a divorce from Homer Clegg, a husband who refuses to divorce her. Reached by train in July 1934, it appears far removed from the European resorts and London hotels she misses. The city’s divorce business offers Claire a possible route toward marriage to Max von Strohheim, but only through a stay and arrangements that make the supposed convenience of Reno less simple than she had hoped.

Setting and Arrival

Claire and Georgiana Rannoch travel west after spending a couple of days in New York City. On Friday, July 20, 1934, they board the Lake Shore Limited for Chicago and, eventually, the West. The journey passes through long stretches of emptiness; after the train stops in Reno, they gather their luggage and maids and leave an otherwise deserted platform by taxi.

Georgiana describes a settlement of clapboard shacks and low brick buildings amid brown scrub, with heat, dust, and a mirage over the track. A sign on the main street advertises Reno as “The Biggest Little City in the World.” The contrast between the grand promise of that slogan and the modest town before them shapes their first impression: Claire remarks that it is dreary and dreads the prospect of spending six weeks there.

Divorce Plan and Local Arrangements

Claire has come because she has been tied to Homer Clegg, who does not believe in divorce, while her current beau, Max von Strohheim, wants to marry her. She has been told that a divorce can be arranged simply and easily in Reno. Cy Goldman cautions her that it will not happen overnight, pointing to Stella Brightwell’s experience of divorce as a reminder that the process takes time.

Cy has found a lawyer for Claire. The lawyer takes charge of the visitors, arranges for them to stay at the Riverside Hotel, and says that a bungalow at a dude ranch has been secured for the required period. He also arranges for a stand-in to report for Claire’s work when she wants to check out. The papers are filed with ceremony, but the practical plan depends on lodging, a proxy for Claire’s professional duties, and the prospect of remaining in the area for six weeks.

Life in Reno

The divorce business is visible in the town itself. Electric signs on small buildings advertise speedy marriages and divorces, sometimes from the same establishment. After the paperwork is filed, Claire and Georgiana walk along Virginia Street, visit casinos, and ensure that Claire is seen in public. Their movements turn residence into a managed performance: the stay is not only a legal procedure but also a period during which Claire’s presence in Reno must be established.

The casinos deepen Claire’s sense of displacement. She compares the smoky rooms, craps tables, and penny slot machines unfavorably with Monte Carlo and the places she associates with comfort, including a villa on Lake Lugano, her house in Nice, and Brown’s Hotel in London. She misses Max, who is in Germany, and Georgiana, too, feels far from home; at night, the sound of passing goods trains accompanies her thoughts about Darcy O’Mara and whether he has caught the gentleman cat burglar. Reno’s role in the story therefore extends beyond Claire’s legal business: it becomes a temporary setting for separation, waiting, and uncertainty.

Social Contrasts and Significance

The journey also brings expectations about class and domestic service into contact with the American setting. Before the trip, Georgiana recognizes that Queenie’s employment is shaped by low pay and the fact that few other gentlewomen would hire her. When Queenie complains about sharing a train cabin with Claudette, Georgiana briefly asserts the distance between mistress and servant, telling her to observe how a lady’s maid should behave. That hierarchy accompanies the household on its journey to Reno, even as the American divorce plan unsettles Claire’s own marital position.

On the wider American trip, Queenie invokes the idea that everyone is equal in America and challenges the assumption that a servant must remain deferential during her free time. Later, she explains that she left a better-paid position because her employer expected her to clean toilets, a task she rejected as outside her understanding of a lady’s maid’s work. Those disputes occur beyond Reno itself, but they develop the social contrast introduced during the journey: travel exposes the household’s established distinctions to different expectations about work and independence. Reno stands at the start of that American experience, where Claire’s search for legal freedom and the household’s negotiations over status unfold alongside one another.