The Cloisters

Rachel is an academic scholar who comes from a world of enormous privilege. However, she has still had to work devoutly and, at times, sacrifice her personal morals to get ahead. When Rachel meets Ann, she serves as Ann’s gateway to the intimidating world of professional scholarship. Rachel is comfortable in the Cloisters environment, yet personable and approachable to an outsider like Ann. Even as multiple characters warn Ann of Rachel’s hidden depths, Rachel feeds Ann’s desire for a real friend.

The novel gradually reveals Rachel’s tragic background as an orphan who lost her parents in a boating accident. Ann and Rachel’s shared loss creates a connection between them; both have experienced the untimely disconnection from a parental figure. Later, the novel suggests that Rachel was responsible for her parents’ deaths, creating another parallel between the two women.

Rachel suffers from a fear of divination because of her experience attending a tasseomancy reading with her mother. This fear grows into a divide between her, Patrick, and Ann—Ann and Patrick come to believe the oracle cards have true power, while Rachel sees them only as an artifact and a way to climb the ranks of Renaissance scholarship. This divide grows until it’s reflected in the way she and Ann both see the nature of choice, fate, and free will.

Rachel is calculating and manipulative, a master of human psychology. It’s implied that she was indirectly involved in the death of her roommate and that she encouraged her to die by suicide. She also manipulates Patrick’s emotions to secure her position in the Cloisters, and later to murder him so she and Ann can continue their work uninhibited. She believes firmly that every human being chooses their own path, and thus she cannot be held responsible for the choices of others.

Despite her apparent self-assurance and independence, Rachel is starved for affection and companionship, which becomes increasingly apparent when Ann begins spending time with her new friend Laure, leaving Rachel feeling overlooked. When Rachel and Ann are together at social events, Rachel exhibits her intense need for Ann’s friendship. This attachment suggests that many of Rachel’s actions come from a deep loneliness and an inability to feel truly accepted by others. In the end, her actions lead her to her worst fear: Ann removes her name from their article and moves forward without her, erasing her from existence.

Patrick is an older man who enchants Ann from the start. He saves her from an uncertain future and acts as a deus ex machina, a Latin term that translates to “God from the machine.” A deus ex machina is a plot device where an outside person or force appears and solves a seemingly insoluble problem, the way that Patrick saves Ann after the administrative error at the Museum of Modern Art.

While a relationship between them never develops, it’s clear she sees him as part of the enchantment of the Cloisters environment. Unlike Ann and Rachel, Patrick is driven not by the prestige of scholarship but by true belief in and longing for the unknown. This initially brings him and Ann closer together, as he encourages her to look beyond the world she thinks she knows. He believes that “while scholarship is a valuable and important thing, it cannot be the only thing. It does not sustain us” (34). He encourages Ann to not only do her best work, but to examine honestly why that work matters in the first place.

He becomes a mentor and surrogate father figure to her, but is not immune to the gender roles in place within the academic world; he sees himself as above the women and a leadership figure, rather than a colleague. When tension grows between him and Rachel, he punishes her by prioritizing Ann on his excursions. This highlights the precariousness of Ann’s own circumstances and lends Patrick more complexity than if he were simply a one-dimensional, archetypical mentor.

In the early stages of the novel, Patrick is level-headed and optimistic for the future he, Rachel, and Ann will share. As the research process drags on, however, he becomes increasingly irritable and unbalanced. He begins pushing Ann and Rachel away with his attitude and actions, which only undermines his vision further. Like many of the other characters in the novel, Patrick is on a tragic journey in which his fears bring about his own end. His increasing desperation encourages him to try mind-altering methods that might unlock the secrets of the cards. This illustrates how Patrick’s true objective isn’t academic or scholarly; rather, he wants to validate his belief in a greater power. Rachel uses Patrick’s need against him when she poisons him with a higher dosage of belladonna, later arguing that he took the toxin by choice.

Patrick’s character propels the novel’s events. His entrance pivots Ann onto a new journey, and his untimely exit shatters the relationships and belief systems that had been powering the plot. He shifts from being a symbol of possibility to one of the boundaries and limitations that Ann eventually overcomes.