Art, Music, and Memory as Resistance in Natural Beauty

Defining the Thematic Claim

In Natural Beauty, art, music, and memory function not as passive comforts but as active forms of resistance against the dehumanizing machinery of the beauty industry. The novel’s central claim is that the artificial pursuit of beauty—epitomized by Holistik’s products and Victor Carroll’s obsession with controlling women’s bodies—alienates individuals from their own histories and selves. Music, by contrast, privileges being heard over being seen, and it carries the narrator’s memories of her parents, her heritage, and her own pre-corporate identity. When the narrator’s body is violently transformed by the very products she once sold, she turns back to the piano as a way to reclaim her voice, honor her parents, and refuse the surgeries that would erase her new reality. Music becomes the suturing that reconnects her to a past that the beauty industry tries to sever.

Music as Inheritance and Healing

The narrator’s relationship with music begins as an inheritance from her parents, both pianists who survived the Cultural Revolution. In Chapter Three, we learn that Ma and Ba were sent to labor camps, and after emigrating to America, they taught piano from home. The narrator describes how her parents communicated through music, playing songs from their youth that depicted a country she had never seen. She recalls that “music was the suturing that connected them to their home” and that learning those songs by ear gave her “a part in the healing of our family.” This early framing establishes music as a lifeline—a way to bridge displacement, loss, and generational trauma. The narrator’s desire to play is not merely artistic ambition; it is a longing to enter the language in which her parents “communicated most deeply.”

This inheritance becomes a form of resistance against the erasure that the beauty industry will later attempt. When the narrator is at the Conservatory, she carries her parents’ unconventional technique—the “oboe edge” that Ba taught her, a small nail scratch at the end of each note to add resonance. This technique marks her as different, and it becomes a point of both ridicule and admiration. In a studio class, Professor Zsaborsky praises her unusual sound, but the narrator knows it comes from her father’s secret method. Her playing is thus a living memory of her parents, a way to keep them present even as she is far from home. The music is not just notes; it is a repository of family history and resistance to the homogenizing pressures of the elite conservatory world.

Music as Site of Persecution and Loss

The Conservatory years complicate the theme, because music becomes a site of both persecution and resistance. The narrator faces relentless bullying from classmates who pour hot tea on her hand, destroy her sheet music, and steal the only photograph of her parents. She plays through the pain, and her performance is praised as her best yet—but the trauma accumulates. The loss of the photo is described as a turning point, after which she resolves to stop chasing approval. Music, which had been a source of connection, becomes entangled with loss and ugliness. She reflects that where her peers found beauty in music, she could find only “loss and ugliness” and the ephemerality of notes that cannot sustain themselves.

This ambivalence deepens after her parents’ death. In Chapter Eleven, the narrator confesses to Helen that she has not played since the last time her parents came to watch her perform. The memory of that final concert is so painful that she cannot sit at the piano without being “swallowed by the shadow of my grief.” Her muscle memory, she says, now remembers only trauma. This period of silence is a form of resistance in itself—a refusal to let music be co-opted by the beauty industry that employs her. Yet it also represents a severing from her own history, leaving her vulnerable to the very alienation that Holistik exploits. The narrator’s job at the store, with its promise of social currency and beauty, fills a void that music once occupied.

Reclaiming Music After Transformation

The novel’s climax of resistance comes in Chapter Thirty-Four, after the narrator’s body has been grotesquely altered by the experimental products she was forced to test. She is webbed, greenish-skinned, and barely recognizable. In this state, she returns to the piano. She develops a new technique for her altered hands, learning the Ryabov by ear and layering her hands over Ba’s recording. She uploads videos that go viral, and she plays for her parents, keeping their photograph above the piano. This act is explicitly framed as resistance: “I am the throat by which my parents are sung and sustained.”

The narrator’s new playing is not an attempt to conform to classical beauty standards. She embraces the ugliness of her hands, describing them as “beaks,” and she plays Adès, Britten, and Crumb “the way I want to hear them—not as pieces but as experiences.” She tries to sound like worms in damp earth, birds squawking, moonlight on pavement. This is a radical redefinition of music, one that rejects the conventional aesthetics that Victor Carroll worships. The narrator notes that Victor applied his limited perception of beauty to music, only appreciating Haydn and Bach, and she contrasts his rigidity with her own openness. Her music becomes a form of self-acceptance: “I look barely human, and yet I’ve never felt more myself. I am as undefinable, as other, as music.”

Crucially, the narrator’s resistance is not passive. She burns the anonymous letters that urge her to undergo surgeries, including the tempting desyndactylization that would allow her to play Mozart again. She refuses to erase her transformed body, even though she knows people watch her videos on mute for the spectacle. She acknowledges the co-optation but continues anyway: “I know, and still, I play.” This persistence is the core of the theme—music as a defiant act of memory and identity, even when it is misunderstood or commodified.

Character and Symbol Connections

The theme is embodied in several characters and symbols. Helen serves as a philosophical counterpoint to Victor. In Chapter Eleven, she tells the narrator that art is “one of the only things that can help people get in touch with the part of themselves and the world that’s worth saving.” Helen’s own relationship with music is fraught—she admits she was terrible at piano and hasn’t played in years—but her belief in art’s redemptive power aligns with the narrator’s eventual return to music. Helen also physically intervenes to protect the narrator from the mandala device, coating it with Vaseline to neutralize its tracking function, a small act of resistance against the surveillance that Victor’s empire represents.

Victor is the antagonist of this theme. His obsession with controlling women’s bodies is mirrored in his limited aesthetic sensibility. The narrator observes that he applies his narrow view of beauty to music, only appreciating Haydn and Bach, and she concludes that he must believe himself too hideous to be seen. Victor’s music is about order and control, whereas the narrator’s is about expression and memory. The piano itself becomes a symbol of resistance—it is the instrument that carries the narrator’s parents’ voices, and later, her own redefined voice. The photograph of her parents, which she keeps above the piano, is another symbol of memory as resistance; it anchors her to her history even as her body changes.

The mandala device represents the opposite force—the beauty industry’s attempt to monitor and control the narrator’s body and emotions. Helen’s act of coating it with Vaseline is a symbolic rejection of that control, a way to reclaim agency. The mirrors in the novel also reflect the tension between self-perception and imposed standards. In Chapter Thirty-Four, the narrator looks in the mirror and flinches but does not look away, and she connects this to music: “The music I love teaches me there is no real beauty without ugliness.” This acceptance of ugliness is a direct challenge to the beauty industry’s promise of perfection.

Complexity and Contradiction

The theme is not without its contradictions. Music can be a source of pain as much as resistance. The narrator’s inability to play after her parents’ death shows that memory can be paralyzing. Her eventual return to piano is not a simple triumph; it is accompanied by the knowledge that her videos are consumed as spectacle. She is aware that people watch on mute, interested only in her deformed hands, not in the music itself. This co-optation threatens to turn her resistance into another form of commodification. Yet she persists, suggesting that the act of playing is meaningful in itself, regardless of audience reception.

Another contradiction lies in the narrator’s own complicity. Before her transformation, she defends Holistik’s mission, arguing that beauty is one of the few ways women can access power. She relates to the young women who spend their money on products, and she feels defensive about the store that gave her social currency. This complicates the theme: the narrator is not a pure victim but an active participant in the system she later resists. Her resistance is thus a reclamation of agency, not a clean moral victory. The novel suggests that art and memory can help us resist, but they do not absolve us of our choices.

Finally, the theme of memory is complicated by the narrator’s own unreliable recollections. In Chapter Twenty-Seven, she struggles to remember her past, describing it as being “through a door, or a membrane.” Her memory is fragmented, and she relies on music to access it. This suggests that memory is not a stable foundation but something that must be actively reconstructed through art. The narrator’s playing for her parents is an act of imagination as much as remembrance—she dreams of them in the audience, singing along, even though they are gone. This imaginative act is a form of resistance against the finality of loss.

Study Questions and Answers

1. How does the narrator’s early relationship with music establish the theme of resistance?

In her childhood, music is a language her parents use to connect to their homeland and to each other. The narrator learns to play by ear, and she describes music as “the suturing that connected them to their home.” This early association makes music a repository of family history and cultural memory, which later becomes a source of strength when the beauty industry tries to erase her identity.

2. What role does the Conservatory play in complicating the theme?

The Conservatory is where music becomes both a site of persecution and a means of resistance. The narrator faces bullying and theft, yet she continues to play, even with a burned hand. However, the trauma of losing her parents’ photo and the eventual death of her parents makes music unbearable. This period shows that memory can be painful and that resistance is not always straightforward.

3. How does the narrator’s return to piano in Chapter Thirty-Four represent a new form of resistance?

After her transformation, the narrator develops a new technique for her altered hands and plays music that defies conventional beauty standards. She embraces ugliness and plays for her parents, keeping their memory alive. She also burns the letters urging her to undergo surgeries, refusing to erase her new body. This return is a defiant act of self-acceptance and memory.

4. What is the significance of Helen’s statement about art in Chapter Eleven?

Helen says that art is one of the only things that can help people connect with “the part of themselves and the world that’s worth saving.” This statement foreshadows the narrator’s eventual return to music and contrasts with Victor’s view of beauty as control. Helen’s belief in art’s redemptive power aligns with the novel’s thematic claim that music and memory can resist dehumanization.

5. How does the novel address the co-optation of resistance?

The narrator is aware that her viral videos are watched on mute for the spectacle of her hands. She acknowledges this but continues to play, saying “I know, and still, I play.” This suggests that resistance can be commodified, but the act itself retains meaning. The novel does not offer a pure victory; instead, it shows that resistance is an ongoing, imperfect process.