The novel’s first-person narrator, Cathy, is 12 years old at the outset of its action, and almost 16 at the end. Cathy, who hopes to become a prima ballerina, is beautiful, graceful, and vain about her looks, especially her blond hair, which “cascaded down past my waist, and I knew it gleamed from all the brushing I gave it every day” (204). Aware that she is Corrine’s doppelgänger in looks, Cathy regards her mother enviously and suspiciously when Corrine treats herself to a second coming-out at Grandfather’s expense, while she keeps Cathy locked away in the attic. Cathy’s entertainment of romantic fantasies in the books she reads and the television she watches cause her to seek male approval for her beauty, and blossoming sexuality. As a result, while she does not directly seek out sex from Chris, she invites his comments and reactions to her changing body. Ultimately, however, Cathy, who has a premonition that she will fall in love at first sight, longs to go out into the world and meet the men in it. However, confined in the attic, Chris is her only option, and she is destined to repeat her mother’s pattern of falling in love with a relative.