This is a piece that really caught my attention, and while we talked about it in class, I wanted to continue the discussion about on particular topic: Paul and Mary, and the system of unseen “social castes” that were present at the time of the story as well as today. The way in which Mary casts Paul aside due to the fact that she feels that she is somehow a higher social rank than Paul due to her race (even though she is a former prostitute, the lowest of the low so to speak) made me stop and think for a moment. I came to the realization that I found it so shocking because A. it didn’t happen in the American South (a place where I’ve grown up around racism, and feel almost desensitized to stories of race tensions) and B. it didn’t happen somewhere where it was illegal to be in an interracial marriage. So even though Paul had moved to what he thought was a more socially liberated society, he still faced the same discrimination he found in the American South. It was just better hidden in France.

My question is whether or not anyone else thinks that this ‘illusion” of social liberation is something that we still struggle with in modern day society, since (at least in the past year or so) many stories have come out about the marginalization of African Americans in the U.S.