“Miss Adele Amidst the Corsets”, a short story by Zadie Smith illustrates the plight of a New York City drag queen dealing with a recent tragedy: a broken corset. The author helps capture a masterful depiction of the protagonist, a woman who after many years of experience refuses to subject herself to the surrounding cultural influence. Most of the story takes place on the West Side of New York City, where the protagonist seeks a replacement amid a cacophony of sound, conversation, and mostly hatred. In the midst of shopping for corsets on the East Side, the narrator provides various examples of long term resentment experienced by Miss Adele. Throughout “Miss Adele Amidst the Corsets”, the protagonist, Miss Adele, struggles with the ever-changing contemporary societal norms in New York City through gentrification and resentment.
“Miss Adele Amidst the Corsets” is exceedingly contemporary, with New York City references to millennials such as, Downtown Abbey, the Naked Cowboy, fracking, and gentrification. “She’d had the same sunny rent-controlled studio…show more content… Throughout the text, the narrator accentuates Miss Adele’s highly opinionated behavior. From the narrator’s perspective, Miss Adele uses her opinions as the guiding factor of her outlook on life and most importantly her mentality. “Miss Adele had a right to her opinions. Thirty years in a city gives you the right” (Smith). The narrator further elaborates Miss Adele has a lot of seniority over the area and, because she has this level of experience her ideas should be followed through. As the narrator continues, “And now that she was, at long last, no longer beautiful, her opinions were all she had. They were all she had left to give to people” (Smith) The narrator does establish Miss Adele did feel a lot of resentment that no one valued her
