Jennifer

Jennifer is one of the young women who attract Judy in Rosamond Lehmann’s Dusty Answer. She matters in Simone de Beauvoir’s account less as a separately described character than as the focus of Judy’s fascination with a person and the wider world gathered around her.

Place in Judy’s Story

Judy’s love is described as generous rather than self-exalting: she does not seek to use men to magnify herself, and gives her affection to those who attract her, whether man or woman. Jennifer is named alongside Roddy as one of its objects. The passage presents this openness as compatible with Judy’s independent student life, her own projects, and a world of her own.

Jennifer and the Other

Judy’s response to Jennifer extends beyond personal affection. Jennifer fascinates her as the Other, and Judy is in love, all at once, with the young people of the neighboring family, their house, Jennifer’s sister, and the family’s whole universe. Jennifer thus connects desire to an imagined social world: Judy is drawn not only to someone, but to the life and relations that person seems to open before her.

Narrative Significance

The account holds Judy’s independence beside her posture of expectation and tenderness toward the Other. Jennifer is central to that tension: she is loved within Judy’s broad, unpossessive capacity for attachment, yet her presence also illustrates how the other person and her surrounding world can acquire a marvelous dimension in Judy’s eyes. The passage does not give Jennifer an independent arc or describe her actions; its emphasis is on what Judy’s attraction to her reveals about Judy.