Sometimes they seem to be placed in difficult, even ungainly, poses, and it is interesting to read in a published interview with the artist that she never places a model in a position that she hasn't first assumed herself.
Who does she think she is, visiting Paris, looking at the tombstones of people with whom she should never assume herself to be worthy of mingling.
She has so much knowledge of the music she loves that people assumes she herself plays.
In fact, Alice is much more richly drawn than Maggie, a character with whom one might assume Sullivan herself (also a young writer of fiction based in Brooklyn) could most identify.
But the Anti-Defamation League also highlighted the way Minaj herself assumes the role of Führer in the video.
Pandora, who has put on some weight herself, assumes the role of Edison's sponsor and sergeant, and together they embark on a liquid diet.
And a line Rose utters toward the show's end, speaking of why she didn't become a star herself, assumes disquieting echoes: "I was born too soon and I started too late".
Ms. Judd quits her cushy job and assumes the defense herself, aided by Mr. Freeman as a broken-down lawyer with a special expertise in military matters and a drinking problem.
The theme of suicide (Mr. Gray's mother also killed herself) assumes physical weight and pain as Mr. Gray drifts further and further into shadows after a crippling automobile accident in 2001.
Weldon's mother had a "gift for prophecy"; her maternal grandfather was a member, along with W. B. Yeats, of the secret cabalistic Order of the Golden Dawn; and she herself assumes "telepathy between members of a family," periodically protesting disbelief in ghosts even as she contemplates another poltergeist or a sobbing presence on the far side of the door.
