Atonement

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Cecilia is without any doubt one of the main characters of Atonement written by Ian McEwan. He is able to show the reader her passionate, pensive and passive state through her behaviour and attitude in various scenes. Her character is not as deep as Briony's or Robbie's as the reader does not get many chapters in which one can hear her thoughts and feelings. Nevertheless Cecilia's actions say a lot about her; how she took of her her clothes to get to vase manifests her stubborness and well. More over her character is further developed through her interactions with Robbie from the letters she sends him.
The reader feels that Cecilia is idle at the start of the novel. She goes to her home however she is not enjoying her stay and her family does not seem to enjoy her company She expects everyone to be pleased to see her and involve her in things, yet her times seems empty. Even her mother does not pay attention to her; this might be because of Cecilia's decision to go to Cambridge to try and pursue a career. Her mother holds the idea that women are supposed to look for a good husband, thus she wants her daughter to be a realistic product of the low regard in which girls were held during those times. This shows that Cecilia is somewhat tired of her mother because she does not approve of what she wants to be. Thus one can conclude that Cecilia is uncomfortable and at odds with her home and family: she feels alienated from her whole family.
Her ideas of Paul Marshall and Danny Hardman make her seem as judgmental. When she meets the former character she wonders why her brother bothered introducing her to him if she is not going to marry him. Her ideas about Danny Hardman; that he could possibly be the rapist for he belongs to a low...

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...lance to the awkward, slightly snobbish and self-important young woman of Part One. She has grown up. She has suffered by being separated from Robbie, alienated from her parents, despising her once-loved sister and living the hard life of a nurse. Through the whole novel, the reader does not hear about the defects of this character. One must bear in mind that Briony never met Cecilia before she died and so she has no personal experience of her as an adult, so she must conjure her up. Thus Cecilia's near-perfect character is part of Briony's atonement.
This might be the reason why the readers find it difficult to pin Cecilia's character down. Briony knew Cecilia intimately only the in the First Part of the novel, then she had to imagine the rest. She wanted to give Cecilia the life she never had and this may account for Cecilia's change in the last part of Atonement.

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