Rosemary Cooke

Rosemary is the protagonist and narrator of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves. Born in Bloomington, Indiana, she is the daughter of academic parents, and has an older brother, Lowell. From one month of age until aged five, Rosemary is raised alongside a young female chimpanzee, Fern, in a family project supervised by her psychologist father and graduate students. As a result, she develops quite uniquely, acquiring both human and chimpanzee behaviours; bullied in school, she takes the label ‘monkey-girl’ into her sense of self. Rosemary loves her sister Fern but is, at times, jealous of the attention she receives, and competes with her for her parents’ attention and that of the graduate students. She invents an imaginary friend, Mary, also a chimp, who Rosemary believes will ‘even the score’.

Rosemary is intelligent and inquisitive, and possesses an advanced vocabulary. As a child, she is constantly studied and learns that her talkative nature is of value however, after Fern leaves, she sees that the opposite is true, and grows quiet in her communication. Her brother also leaves the family and the remainder of Rosemary’s childhood takes place in an ‘odd silence’. She attempts to eradicate the chimp-like behaviours for which she is bullied at school.

In college, Rosemary finds her unique development inhibits her ability to make friends and interpret social cues though she finds affinity with Harlow, whose wild, impulsive manner mirrors Rosemary’s own animalistic tendencies.

For a large part of the novel Rosemary struggles with a confusing sense of self-blame over her role in the loss of her siblings when she was young. Her grief is somewhat assuaged when, through the unfolding of the story, Rosemary receives clarification around these traumatic events and some level of restoration in her sibling relationships upon seeing them both again.

By the end of the novel, Rosemary is in her 40s and working as a kindergarten teacher in South Dakota from where she is able to make regular visits to see her sister Fern.

Rosemary Cooke Quotes

The middle of my story is all about their absence, though if I hadn’t told you that, you might not have known. (Rosemary, about her brother and sister) Part 1 Chapter 1

‘It comes of being tested so often when she was little.’ My mother spoke directly to Bob. ‘She’s a good test-taker. She learned how to take a test, is all.’ (Rosemary’s mother to Rosemary’s uncle about Rosemary) Part 1 Chapter 3

Once, at a parent-teacher conference, my kindergarten teacher had said that I had boundary issues. I must learn to keep my hands to myself, she’d said. I remember the mortification of being told this. I’d truly had no idea that other people weren’t to be touched; in fact, I’d thought quite the opposite. But I was always making mistakes like that. (Rosemary confused on how to respond to Harlow’s breaking in) Part 1 Chapter 4

And I just didn’t think I could do it anymore, this business of being my parents’ only child. (Rosemary happy at the idea her brother has returned) Part 1 Chapter 6

Please assume that I am talking continuously in all the scenes that follow until I tell you that I’m not.
Our parents, on the other hand, had shut their mouths and the rest of my childhood took place in that odd silence. Part 2 Chapter 1

‘Monkey girl’, Russell said, a phrase I would come to know well when I started school. (Lowell’s brother’s friend to Rosemary) Part 2 Chapter 5

I saw her everywhere, but I never said so. (Rosemary, about Fern) Part 2 Chapter 6

Lowell Cooke (Travers)

Rosemary’s older brother, Lowell, develops a strong sense of justice over the course of his life, especially in relation to animals, and his scientific views depart strongly from those of his father. As a boy he spends time with a Christian couple, and later has a Mormon girlfriend, perhaps exploring alternative worldviews to those of his family who were not religious. He confesses he values education and would have liked to have gone to college, but his fundamentally good qualities of justice, compassion and empathy and the knowledge he acquires regarding the fate of research animals compel his life in another direction.

He is caring towards Rosemary, whom idolises him, and fiercely protective of Fern. Lowell never recovers from the loss of Fern and from the knowledge of her fate. While on the run from the FBI for the majority of the novel, Lowell visits Rosemary when she is in college in Davis, and also meets Harlow. It is assumed that Harlow is the ‘female accomplice’ with whom he undertakes the animal activism that will characterise his life.

By the end of the novel, Lowell is in police custody in relation to a planned attack on an animal entertainment venue and is in a state of poor mental health.

Lowell Cooke (Travers) Quotes

When we were kids, my brother was my favourite person in the whole world. He could be, and often was, awful, but there were other times. (Rosemary) Part 1 Chapter 6

We each carried the weight of Fern’s disappearance and our mother’s collapse, and occasionally, for short periods, we carried it together. (Rosemary, about her and Lowell) Part 2 Chapter 4

Ms Delancy said that the qualities making Lowell hard to live with were all very good qualities, some of his best, in fact – his loyalty, his love, his sense of justice. (Lowell’s counsellor) Part 3 Chapter 2

‘That’s my sister in that cage.’ (Lowell about Fern, to his girlfriend) Part 3 Chapter 4

‘I’m seeing so much of America today … ‘ (Lowell’s catchphrase on learning new things in society that oppose his values) Part 5 Chapter 2

‘The world runs,’ Lowell said, ‘on the fuel of this endless, fathomless misery. People know it, but they don’t mind what they don’t see. Make them look and they mind, but you’re the one they hate, because you’re the one that made them look.’ Part 5 Chapter 3

Rosemary’s Father

Rosemary’s father is a psychologist and professor at the University of Indiana, Bloomington. The only mention of his name comes when he is called ‘Vince’ in conversation otherwise his name is not provided. Cynical of other fields of psychology he views as unscientific, Rosemary’s father is portrayed as less of a loving father and more of a teacher. He uses every opportunity with Rosemary as a teaching opportunity, even into her college years, and has a tenuous relationship with his son, Lowell, their views on animals used in research diverging strongly. After the family project ends, Rosemary’s father’s professional reputation suffers and he starts drinking. He dies from a heart attack at age 58.

Rosemary’s Father Quotes

So the middle of my store comes in the winter of 1996. By then, we’d long since dwindled to the family that old home movie foreshadowed – me, my mother, and, unseen but evident behind the camera, my father. Part 1 Chapter 1

My education, my father liked to point out, was wider than it was deep. He said this often. (Rosemary) Part 1 Chapter 1

My father was himself a college professor and a pedant to the bone. Every exchange contained a lesson, like the pit in a cherry. To this day, the Socratic method makes me want to bite someone. Part 1 Chapter 1

Dad apologized by letting me see the damage on my x-ray. (When Rosemary’s breaks her arm during a study and her father is preoccupied with observing Fern so doesn’t notice) Part 2

I felt my worries slipping from me like skin from snake. My father often had this effect on me. The more irritated he was, the more I became smooth and amused, which, of course, irritated him all the more. It would anyone, let’s be fair. (Rosemary speaking to her father from the police station) Part 2 Chapter 2

Dad gave me some tips designed to improve my social standing. People, he said, like to have their movements mirrored. (when Rosemary starts a new school) Part 3 Chapter 2

Rosemary’s Mother

Rosemary’s mother is also a scientist, however Rosemary never articulates her work in this regard. Like her father, Rosemary never provides her mother’s name. Rosemary’s mother is very attached to Fern and documents her development alongside Rosemary’s in journals she preserves and later gives to Rosemary. Following Fern’s departure, Rosemary’s mother suffers an emotional breakdown, then recovers only to be emotionally devastated again when Lowell leaves the family.

By the end of the novel, Rosemary and her mother are living together in South Dakota and her mother’s journals have been published into a book. She is reunited with Fern and volunteers at the laboratory where Fern lives.

Rosemary’s Mother Quotes

Here are some of things my mother worked with me on; prior to sending me off to school: standing up straight, keeping my hands still when I talked, not putting my fingers into anyone else’s mouth or hair, not biting anyone, ever, no matter how much the situation warranted it, muting my excitement over tasty food, and not staring fixedly at someone else’s cupcake, not jumping on the tables and desks when I was playing. Part 2 Chapter 7

… Mom took Lowell’s disappearance hard, worse even than when we lost Fern … I don’t have the words for what it did to her. She’s never even pretended to recover. Part 3 Chapter 2

Next time, I’ll give Mom the fair share of blame for Fern that her collapse forestalled this time around. I won’t drop the whole of it onto Dad next time. (Rosemary) Part 6 Chapter 3

Mom’s notebooks are not scientific journals. Although they do include a graph or two, some numbers and some measurements, they’re not the dispassionate, careful observations from the field that I expected.
They appeared to be our baby books. (Rosemary) Part 6 Chapter 4

I told your dad I didn’t see how the two of you could be compared when your world had been so gentle and hers so cruel. But there was no turning back by then. I was deeply in love with you both. (Rosemary’s mother to Rosemary about Fern) Part 6 Chapter 5

‘… I worried about what being Fern’s sister would do to you, but I wanted it for you, too.’… ‘I wanted you to have an extraordinary life,’ she said. (Rosemary’s mother to Rosemary) Part 6 Chapter 5

Fern

Fern is Rosemary’s older ‘sister’, a chimpanzee whom Rosemary’s parents adopt from Africa as a baby, following the death of Fern’s mother by poachers. Sick and traumatised on arrival, she becomes attached to Rosemary’s family. She and Rosemary form a deep bond as sisters (from Rosemary’s point of view) with their development studied as a psychological experiment supervised by Rosemary’s father and his graduate students. Fern’s development alongside Rosemary contributes to Rosemary’s acquisition of chimp-like behaviours that will form a fundamental basis to Rosemary’s sense of identity.

Fern is removed from the family when Rosemary is five, having become aggressive as she got older, and is given to a laboratory in South Dakota where she spends the rest of her life. Fern has never socialised with other chimps, and her environment is severely curtailed through being placed in a cage with older chimps where she is ‘treated like an animal’. Fern has three children, two of which are sold to other labs.

By the end of the novel the lab is under new management and Fern’s life is somewhat improved. She still retains some behaviours learned while growing up in Rosemary’s family, such as signing, and uses these with Hazel, the daughter she was allowed to keep.

Fern Quotes

Bed-hopping was an established custom in the house – Fern and I had rarely ended the night in the bed where we’d started. (Rosemary) Part 2 Chapter 4

She was my twin, my fun-house mirror, my whirlwind other half. (Rosemary, on Fern) Part 2 Chapter 5

… she is sharing them with me – one for her, one for me, one for her, one for me. (Fern with raisins) Part 2 Chapter 5

She comes over, rests the rough shelf of her forehead against my own flat one so that I’m staring straight into her amber eyes. (Fern with Rosemary) Part 2 Chapter 5

… As I fall, I hear Fern laughing … (Rosemary, thinking Fern is laughing at her fall) Part 2 Chapter 5

Surrounded as she was by humans, Fern believed she was human. Part 2 Chapter 7

… He said she had to learn her place. She had to learn what she was. … He never once, in all the time Matt had spent there, had called Fern by her name. (when Fern is placed in a cage with four larger, older chimps in Dr Uljevik’s psych lab) Part 3 Chapter 4

Matt said they treated Fern like some animal. (Matt, graduate student, about Fern at the lab) Part 3 Chapter 4

I could smell the excitement on her, a smell sort of like burned hair. She hadn’t had a bubble bath in a long time or a good tooth-brushing. She kind of stank, to be honest. (Lowell, about Fern in the cage) Part 4 Chapter 7

The other man stayed with Fern. He stood over with the cattle prod. I think he was protecting her from the other chimps, but I know she saw it as a threat. Her signing got sloppy. Despairing. (Lowell, about Fern in the cage) Part 4 Chapter 7

Harlow Fielding

Rosemary is drawn to drama student Harlow after witnessing her in a fight with her boyfriend, Reg. Harlow’s defiant and reckless behaviour mirror her own chimp-like behaviours and she becomes Rosemary’s first real friend, despite Rosemary admittedly trying to eradicate such behaviours from her repertoire.

Upon meeting Lowell, Harlow falls immediately in love with him (although it is unclear if this is reciprocated), and Rosemary finds herself vying with her for the attention of her brother. Harlow eventually joins Lowell in his animal activism.

Harlow Fielding Quotes

.. I could see that Harlow was fundamentally untrustworthy. Simultaneously, she seemed like someone with whom I could be my true self. I had no intention of doing so, and with an equal and counterbalancing intensity, a great longing for it. (Rosemary, on Harlow as a potential friend) Part 3 Chapter 6

Sometime between my salad and crepe, I’d stopped wanting to be Harlow’s friend and started wishing I’d never met her. I felt bad about this – my jealousy, my anger – what with her saying all those nice things about me. Though I was pretty sure she didn’t like me nearly as well as she was claiming. (Rosemary, on Harlow talking with Lowell) Part 4 Chapter 6

But I was still angry with her. Harlow, I felt, had no right to such grief, no real claim on Lowell. She’d known him for what? Fifteen minutes? I’d loved him for twenty-two years and missed him most of that time. Harlow should be taking care of me, is how I saw it. (Rosemary, on Harlow sick and missing Lowell) Part 5 Chapter 4

‘But it’s just not like her,’ her father said over and over again … ‘Breaking in somewhere. Taking things …’ (Harlow’s parents on finding out Harlow had been trying to release monkeys from their cages with Ezra) Part 6 Chapter 2

Grandmas Fredericka and Donna

When her mother has a breakdown, Rosemary is sent to live with her paternal grandparents, Grandma Fredericka and Grandpa Joe. Most of Rosemary’s memories from childhood, following Fern’s departure when the family stop communicating, are formed through Grandma Fredericka.

Rosemary’s maternal grandmother, Grandma Donna, takes care of Rosemary’s home after Rosemary returns from her paternal grandparent’s home and while her mother is still incapacitated. Grandma Donna speaks derogatorily about the work of psychologists and would have preferred her daughter to have married someone who worked in a more reputable field. Grandma Donna dislikes Fern because she ate the last photograph of her husband, Grandpa Dan.

Grandmas Fredericka and Donna Quotes

Grandma Fredericka was the sort of hostess who believed that bullying guests into second and third helpings was only being polite. Yet we all ate more at Grandma Donna’s, where we were left alone to fill our plates or not, where the piecrusts were flaky and the orange-cranberry muffins light as clouds … Part 1 Chapter 3

Grandma Donna passed the oyster stuffing and asking my father straight out what he was working on, it being so obvious his thoughts were not with us. She meant it as a reprimand. Part 1 Chapter 3

If Lowell was angry that Fern had been sent out of our lives, Grandma Donna was angry that she’d ever been let in. I’m sure she’d deny this, say that she’d always loved Fern, but even at five I knew better. Part 2 Chapter 3

Todd

Todd is Rosemary’s roommate, whose lawyer mother provides legal assistance to Rosemary, Rosemary’s apartment manager, Ezra, and later, Lowell. Todd does not particularly like Harlow but he and his girlfriend Kimmy are impressed with Rosemary’s brother after they find out he is wanted by the FBI. Other than Harlow, Todd is Rosemary’s only real friend.

Todd Quotes

He rubbed my shoulders. This was so kind, since Todd wasn’t a toucher. And I do like to be touched; it’s a monkey-girl thing. (When Rosemary collapses and cannot breathe after watching The Man in the Iron Mask). Part 3 Chapter 5

Weeks later, I asked Todd if we were friends. ‘Rosie! We’ve been friends for years,’ he said. He sounded hurt. Part 5 Chapter 7

Ezra Metzger

Ezra manages the building in which Rosemary and Todd’s apartment is located. He has a strong sense of duty and has applied to work for the CIA, Rosemary describes him as having a ‘very real jungle-commando skill set’. Ezra does not appear to have strongly-held convictions about animal abuse and thus it is assumed that Ezra’s affection for Harlow is what motivates him to help her free laboratory monkeys. Ezra is arrested and spends eight months in prison.

Ezra Metzger Quotes

Ezra had told me once that he didn’t think of himself as the manager of the apartment house so much as its beating heart. Life was a jungle, Ezra said, and there were those who’d like to bring him down … Ezra saw conspiracies. (Rosemary, on Ezra) Part 1 Chapter 4

Ezra had parlayed his paranoid delusions into a very real jungle-commando skill set. It was frightening to think about the things he could do. (Rosemary, on Ezra) Part 3 Chapter 6

‘The secret to a good life,’ he told me once, ‘is to bring you’re A game to everything you do. Even if all you’re doing is taking out the garbage, you do that with excellence.’ (Ezra) Part 6 Chapter 2