Cleo Character Analysis in Cleopatra and Frankenstein

Overview of Cleo

Cleo, a twenty‑four‑year‑old British painter, is one of the two central characters in Coco Mellors’ debut novel Cleopatra and Frankenstein. She enters the story as a young woman carrying the unresolved grief of her mother’s suicide, a strained relationship with her father, and an expiring U.S. visa. Her impulsive decision to marry Frank, an advertising executive nearly twice her age, sets off a chain of events that tests her artistic identity, her mental health, and her capacity for connection. By the novel’s end, Cleo has survived a suicide attempt, separated from Frank, and begun a tentative journey toward recovery through therapy and art.

While the title pairs Cleo with Frank under the mythic nicknames “Cleopatra” and “Frankenstein,” the novel refuses to reduce either character to a single archetype. Cleo is neither a seductive queen nor a passive victim; she is a complicated, sometimes contradictory figure who longs for intimacy yet fears it, craves artistic validation yet sabotages her own work, and ultimately must learn to rely on herself and on the women around her rather than on romantic rescue.

Plot Role

Cleo is the catalyst for the novel’s central marriage and its unraveling. Her meeting with Frank on New Year’s Eve (Chapter One) sparks a whirlwind romance that culminates in a City Hall wedding only six months later (Chapter Two). That marriage becomes the axis around which the other characters—Frank, Quentin, Zoe, Anders, Eleanor—revolve. Cleo’s choices ripple outward: her affair with Anders fractures his long friendship with Frank; her suicide attempt forces Santiago and Frank to confront hard truths; and her eventual separation from Frank clears the way for Frank’s new relationship with Eleanor.

At the same time, Cleo’s role is not limited to that of a wife. She is an artist whose creative block mirrors her emotional paralysis. Her journey from promising painter to non‑producing artist and finally to a maker of confrontational installations traces the novel’s concern with the tension between art and commerce, authenticity and performance. The title itself—Cleopatra and Frankenstein—hints at the way Cleo and Frank each create and are created by the other, for better and worse.

Motivations and Traits Shown Through Actions

Cleo is driven by a deep, often unspoken need for security and belonging. Her mother’s suicide left her untethered; she tells Frank on their first meeting that she has “no close family back home” and feels “untethered but also completely free.” That freedom is also a loneliness she tries to fill through relationships.

• Impulsivity: She marries Frank partly for a visa but also because he offers a promise of stability. Within months she has an affair with Anders, again seeking connection outside a failing marriage.
• Artistic insecurity: Despite a fine‑art degree, Cleo stops painting regularly after quitting her textile‑design job. When Frank brings home a sugar glider as a gift, she is initially delighted but then becomes absorbed in research about the neglected painter Berthe Morisot, revealing her anxiety about being overlooked herself.
• Emotional volatility: She cries, rages, and withdraws in cycles. In Chapter Eleven, after a fight with Frank, she swallows her wedding ring and lies on a mound of earth with a knife—a direct echo of her mother’s suicide.
• Resilience: After her hospitalisation, she cuts her hair, enters therapy, and completes an installation titled Life Lines that confronts her suicide attempt. By the time Frank visits her in Rome, she is sober, working, and able to discuss their divorce with calm.
• Loyalty to friends: She rushes to Quentin’s side after his breakup with Johnny, and she later accepts Zoe into her life, kissing Zoe’s palm in a gesture of tenderness (Chapter Five).

Chronological Arc

1. December–June (Chapters 1–2): Cleo meets Frank, they marry. She is hopeful but already showing signs of dependence—she goes off her antidepressants because she believes Frank’s love has “cured” her, against Quentin’s warning.
2. July–September (Chapters 3–7): The marriage shows cracks. Frank takes a dangerous diving bet on their honeymoon; Cleo walks alone at night and is rescued by him. She begins to feel trapped.
3. October–January (Chapters 8–9): Cleo bonds with the sugar glider, reveals her mother’s bipolar disorder and suicide to Frank. Frank’s drinking worsens; the pet drowns when he leaves a bathroom door open.
4. February–May (Chapters 10–15): Cleo begins an affair with Anders. She attempts suicide, is hospitalised, then stays at Frank’s upstate cabin where they argue bitterly. She separates from Frank and moves in with Audrey.
5. May–January (Chapters 15–17): Cleo confronts Anders at an art party, then watches a fire with Zoe and Audrey, beginning to accept female support. Six months later, in Rome, she is in therapy, has created Life Lines, and agrees to a divorce.

Relationships

• Frank: The marriage is passionate but toxic. Frank’s drinking, Cleo’s violence (she becomes physically aggressive during fights), and their mutual inability to communicate lead to a slow collapse. Yet they share genuine tenderness—the “Pinch Punch” game, the memory of the snowstorm first date—and Frank identifies Cleo as one of the five people he “watches,” affirming an enduring, if broken, bond.
• Quentin: Cleo’s closest friend, almost a sibling. He resents Frank for taking her away, but he is the one she calls after fights. When she attempts suicide, Santiago visits her in hospital, and she begs him to keep it secret.
• Zoe: Initially hostile, Zoe becomes a surprising ally. After the fire at Danny Life’s party, Cleo stands between Zoe and Audrey, learning to accept comfort from women.
• Anders: Her brief affair is built on the fantasy of escape. Anders, however, cannot commit to her without her leaving Frank, and he breaks off contact. Cleo later realises she clung to him out of fear rather than love.
• Peter and Miriam: Her father is distant; her stepmother Miriam is condescending and cruel, forcing Cleo to reveal her marriage in a tense lunch scene (Chapter Six). Frank defends her, but the encounter deepens her sense of family estrangement.

Key Decisions and Consequences

Themes and Symbolism

• Love and Marriage: Cleo and Frank’s marriage is both a genuine love story and a cautionary tale about how need and fear can masquerade as love. The novel never romanticises their destructiveness, but it does honour the real affection between them. See the love and marriage theme page.
• Addiction and Recovery: Cleo does not struggle with substance abuse as Frank and Quentin do, but she is addicted to the idea of being saved by another person. Her recovery process mirrors Frank’s AA journey in its slow, uncertain progress. More on addiction and recovery.
• Mental Illness and Trauma: Cleo’s mother’s bipolar disorder and suicide haunt her. Cleo’s own suicidal gesture is an inherited response, yet the novel shows that recovery is possible through professional help and honest connection. See mental illness and trauma.
• Gender Identity and Performance: Cleo’s nickname “Cleopatra” casts her as an archetypal seducer, but the novel subverts this by showing her vulnerability and her eventual turn toward female community. The parallel with Quentin’s gender dysphoria gender identity and performance expands the theme of performance in daily life.
• Art and Commerce: Cleo’s struggle to make art that feels authentic versus work that sells is a central conflict. Her final installation Life Lines directly engages with her trauma—it is art made for herself, not the market. See art and commerce.

For the novel’s resolution and what Cleo’s ending means, see the ending explained page.

Frequently Asked Questions About Cleo

1. Why does Cleo marry Frank so quickly?
She marries him for a combination of practical and emotional reasons. Her student visa is expiring, and Frank offers security. But she is also drawn to his attention and care—he is the first person since her mother’s death to make her feel “seen.” The marriage is impulsive, but it arises from real connection, not mere convenience.

2. Is Cleo a sympathetic character?
The novel presents her as flawed but deeply human. She can be selfish, volatile, and self‑destructive, yet her pain is rendered with compassion. Readers may not always like her, but they are invited to understand her. The epigraph from Christie Tate in the praise section notes the “compassion with which trauma is handled,” and that extends to Cleo.

3. Does Cleo really love Frank?
Yes, but her love is complicated by need and fear. She loves the version of Frank who rescues her—from the dark road in France, from her loneliness—but she cannot sustain a partnership with the alcoholic, sometimes dismissive man he becomes. By the end, she loves him enough to let him go.

4. What prompts Cleo’s suicide attempt?
A combination of factors: the unraveling of her marriage, Frank’s drinking, her own shame about the affair with Anders, and the unresolved grief over her mother’s suicide. The immediate trigger is a fight with Frank, after which she feels “a great roiling of feeling” followed by numbness. She swallows her wedding ring and lies on earth with a knife, re‑enacting her mother’s act.

5. How does Cleo change by the end of the novel?
She moves from dependence on men to self‑reliance and female friendship. In Rome, she is sober, in therapy, and producing art that is honest about her trauma. She cuts her hair short—a physical symbol of shedding her old self—and is able to meet Frank as an equal, without bitterness. Her final gesture is to watch a murmuration of starlings with him, accepting the beauty of what they had without trying to reclaim it.

For more discussion of these and other questions, visit the questions and answers page.