Robert Cohn's move to Europe

Robert Cohn's move to Europe is the decisive transition that carries him from an unstable literary venture in the United States into three years of travel and residence abroad. Urged by Frances after the magazine he financed failed to prosper, Cohn crosses the Atlantic so that he can write. Europe offers him a new social and artistic setting, but the relocation does not free him from dependence; instead, it reorganizes his ambitions, friendships, finances, and intimate life around an expatriate existence.

Reasons for the Move

Cohn's European move follows the collapse of his publishing project. After his divorce, he went to California and used what remained of the fifty thousand dollars inherited from his father to back a review of the Arts. The magazine began publication in Carmel, California, and ended in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Although Cohn initially appeared only as a financial angel and advisory-board member, he eventually became its sole editor, discovering that he liked the authority of editing. When the review became too expensive and he had to abandon it, the enterprise left him with less money and a diminished professional outlet.

The immediate pressure came from Frances, the forceful woman who had taken charge of his life while hoping to rise with the magazine. When she saw that the publication was not going to prosper, she decided to extract what remained available and urged a move to Europe, where Cohn could write. Her education in Europe made the destination familiar to her, while Cohn's motive was tied to the newly discovered possibility of becoming an author. The move therefore combines literary aspiration with relational pressure: Europe is presented as a place where Cohn might begin again, but the decision is not entirely his own.

The European Sojourn

Cohn and Frances stayed in Europe for three years: the first was spent traveling, and the final two in Paris. The chronology gives the move a double character. Travel makes Europe an opening and a series of possibilities, while Paris becomes a more settled environment in which Cohn's habits and dependencies take shape. Even after this long residence, he would rather have been in America, a persistent dissatisfaction that prevents Europe from becoming a true home.

His life abroad is sustained partly by money from his mother, who settled an allowance of about three hundred dollars a month on him. This financial support matters because it allows him to remain in Europe after his publishing venture has failed, but it also emphasizes that his expatriate life is not based on secure independence. The move carries him across national borders without resolving the economic and emotional vulnerabilities that shaped his earlier life.

Work, Routine, and Companionship

Europe gives Cohn the conditions in which he discovers writing. He completes a novel that the narrator regards as poor but not as worthless as later critics claimed. The book becomes evidence of genuine effort rather than artistic triumph: Cohn is neither the accomplished writer he may imagine himself becoming nor the complete failure implied by hostile criticism. His literary ambition remains active because the move provides time, mobility, and access to literary people, even as the novel's limited quality places a boundary on that ambition.

His daily life in Europe is notably varied. He reads many books, plays bridge and tennis, and boxes at a local gymnasium. These activities continue the mixture of intellectual, social, and physical pursuits that has marked his life since Princeton, where he had played football and turned to boxing after painful self-consciousness. The European setting does not erase his earlier patterns; it gives them a new geography. Writing joins athletic practice and sociability rather than replacing them.

Cohn's most important friendships in Europe are divided between these spheres. Braddocks is his literary friend, while the narrator is his tennis friend. The distinction shows how his expatriate identity is assembled through separate forms of affiliation: literature connects him to one companion, sport to another. The move thus creates a network around Cohn, but not a single stable community capable of resolving his uncertainty about where or how he belongs.

Frances and the Changing Relationship

The European years intensify the relationship between Cohn and Frances. Toward the end of their second year, Frances realizes that her looks are going and changes her attitude toward him. What had been careless possession and exploitation becomes an absolute determination that Cohn should marry her. The shift turns their shared relocation into a struggle over its meaning: the journey that was supposed to support Cohn's writing also becomes the setting for Frances's demand for marital security.

Cohn is convinced that he loves Frances and, for two and a half years, does not look at another woman. He is described as fairly happy during this period, but the happiness is conditional and exposed to pressure from both the relationship and the wider expatriate situation. Frances's control, his dependence on an allowance, his literary uncertainty, and his wish to be back in America all remain within the life established by the move. Europe gives him continuity, yet that continuity is precarious.

The instability becomes visible in a small Paris scene after dinner at L'Avenue's and coffee at the Café de Versailles. Cohn has been discussing a weekend trip with the narrator, hoping to get out of town and take a long walk. The narrator suggests flying to Strasbourg and walking up to Saint-Odile in Alsace, adding that a girl in Strasbourg could show them the town. Frances responds physically before the conversation can proceed: she kicks the narrator under the table, then does so again, while her chin lifts and her face hardens. The proposed excursion reveals how quickly Cohn's European friendships and desire for movement can threaten the possessive structure of his relationship with Frances.

Narrative Significance

The move to Europe is not a clean escape but a transfer of unresolved problems into a new cultural landscape. Cohn leaves behind divorce, diminished inheritance, and the failed review, yet arrives with dependence, romantic pressure, and uncertainty about his vocation. Europe brings travel, Parisian residence, literary contacts, a novel, and new routines, but it does not grant the belonging he seeks; even after three years, he would rather be in America.

The episode also establishes mobility as both promise and entrapment. Cohn crosses from New York wealth through California publishing and Massachusetts literary production into European travel and Parisian life, while money, writing, sport, and intimacy move with him. The Strasbourg proposal makes the pattern concrete: his instinct is to escape the city for a walk, but Frances's bodily intervention closes that possibility. His move has widened the map of his life without giving him command over it, making Europe the setting in which his ambitions and dependencies become most clearly visible.