Frankie and Berenice’s relationship

Frankie and Berenice’s relationship is presented through a brief episode in which Berenice’s protective but evasive response leaves Frankie unable to understand what she has witnessed. The scene illustrates how adult silence and euphemism can shield a child from explicit knowledge while making sexuality seem strange, shameful, and unreal.

The Marlowes’ Room

On a summer Sunday, the door to the Marlowes’ room stands open. Frankie sees only fragments of the room: part of the dresser, the foot of the bed, and Mrs. Marlowe’s corset. A sound she cannot identify draws her across the threshold. She glimpses Mr. and Mrs. Marlowe naked together, but the sight has no intelligible sexual meaning for her; startled, she runs to the kitchen crying that Mr. Marlowe is having a fit.

The limits of Frankie’s view matter. She encounters disconnected details and an unfamiliar sound before catching a glimpse of the adults, and she translates the whole scene into the only explanation available to her. Her mistake is not treated as childish foolishness so much as evidence of how little the child can make of adult sexual life when no one has explained it.

Berenice’s Evasion

Berenice hurries through the hall and looks into the front room. Rather than explain what Frankie has seen, she purses her lips and shuts the door. She calls the Marlowes “common people,” adding that with a certain party in the house they ought at least to know enough to keep the door closed. Frankie recognizes herself as the party being referred to, but still cannot understand the rebuke.

When Frankie asks what kind of fit she saw, Berenice answers, “Baby, just a common fit.” The phrase repeats Frankie’s mistaken explanation instead of correcting it. From Berenice’s tone Frankie senses that something is being kept from her, but receives no further account. The exchange establishes a relationship shaped here by adult authority and a child’s dependence: Berenice can close the door and control the explanation, while Frankie can only ask and infer that the answer is incomplete.

What Frankie Remembers

The episode does not give Frankie the knowledge she seeks. Instead, she remembers the Marlowes as “common people,” carrying forward Berenice’s moral label while the sexual event itself remains obscure. Her attention settles on the adults’ supposed impropriety and on the mystery in Berenice’s voice, not on an understanding of what the couple was doing.

Simone de Beauvoir uses the scene to show how children can be protected from sexual knowledge by explanations that make an incident seem anomalous or indecent rather than comprehensible. Frankie’s relationship with Berenice is therefore central to the episode’s contrast between what a child witnesses and what an adult will say: Berenice’s silence contains the disclosure, but also leaves Frankie to preserve a distorted account of it.