But her appearance of respectability gets her nowhere, and she is fined.
Back in the 1800s, to be accepted as a resident, "a lady had to be over 60 and bring satisfactory testimonials of the propriety of her conduct and the respectability of her character," according to an article in The Fort Greene Association Newsletter, published in 2001, the year the building was converted into 25 condos, "and come provided with a good bed and furniture for her room".
She is the owner of a penny arcade, which she runs with an avarice only equalled by her devotion to bourgeois respectability and her son, Cagney, a sniveling, dependent coward.
In addition to some backhanded compliments about his estranged wife, he talked up his new girlfriend's respectability, calling her almost 40 and complimenting her musical skills.
Merivel has just agreed to marry the king's mistress in order to preserve her respectability and conceal her continuing relationship with him.
"She wanted a race all to herself". Next the household welcomes Jensy, a black maid of such ferocious respectability that her tirades against less upright members of her community "could have been lifted from Klan literature". Jensy is drawn in cartoon-like strokes, as are Miss King's obscenity-ridden mother and stiffly cerebral father.
While trying to represent the world of her imagination, Wilson had to contend with the voices of respectability in her head.
(Lord Asriel is one of the very few characters ever to call her "Marisa" – otherwise, she retains her honorific at all times, remaining distant, elevated and intimidating, with a hint of widowed respectability, despite her chequered past.
It turns tragic when the woman's stepmother, trying to preserve Jenufa's respectability, drowns her daughter's illegitimate baby son.
The film's most wrenching encounters are Eunice and Desiree's embittered, walking-on-eggshells dialogues that reveal how the mother's strait-laced morality and obsession with respectability drove her beautiful, rebellious daughter to become pregnant at 15.
