The opening photograph of the Cowan twins at age four captures the novel's central contrast: one twin sits forward with composed visage and unmeddled curls, while his brother scowls from the back, his curls mussed by a raging hand. This image, displayed in the Foto Art Shop window, foreshadows a story built on differences within sameness. The narrator immediately situates the twins in a town that is itself caught between eras—Newbern Center, where a biplane circling the golf course draws only a resentful wave from a player who once scoffed at telephones and horseless carriages. The tone is wry and observational, fond of small ironies.

Twin Portraits and the Camera's Truth

The twin photograph is more than a prop; it becomes a lens for character. One twin “had not meddled with his curls,” while the other fought the camera “to the bitter end.” The narrator uses the image to establish that from age four, the twins presented opposing temperaments to the world. Later, when the twins are older, the camera reappears in the form of palm reading—a different kind of image-making. The girl with the turquoise necklace reads Wilbur's palm, “disclosing to him that he had a deep vein of cruelty in his nature.” The novel repeatedly frames identity as something captured, interpreted, or performed: a photograph, a palm, a reputation.

Winona's Anxious Refinement Project

Winona Penniman, the twins' troubled mentor, is introduced as “troubled lest they should not grow up to be refined persons.” Her anxiety surfaces in small, telling details. When Wilbur arrives at the Whipples', she is “instantly glad she had been particular as to Wilbur's outfit” and watches him “unconcerned under the chatter of the three girls,” hoping he is not “gauche”—a word she has lately learned. Her perspective filters much of the social comedy: she misreads Wilbur's genuine boredom as a practiced pose, and she flusters at Merle's “man-of-the-world air,” remembering she once drenched his handkerchief with perfume. Winona's concern for appearances drives the narrative's tension between authentic behavior and social performance.

Small-Town Modernity and Its Discontents

The novel's setting is a town in transition. The opening chapter contrasts the old Newbern—where a “dingy way train” took a day to reach New York—with the modern one where a biplane circles a golf course. Old Sharon Whipple, who once called the telephone a “contraption” against “the laws of God and common sense,” now putts unaware of the plane overhead. The narrator notes that “Sharon has grown modern with the town,” but the process is uneven and comic. The twins themselves are part of this shift: their father, Dave Cowan, is a “widely travelled printer” who derides the citizenry as “small-towners.” The story uses the twins' divergent paths to explore how small-town life both constrains and shapes its inhabitants.

Readers attentive to the novel's early details—the photograph, Winona's vocabulary, the Whipples' tennis party—will find a story less about which twin is “wrong” than about how identity is shaped by perception, performance, and the relentless pressure to be refined. The narrator's dry humor rewards close attention to what characters reveal when they think they are being observed.