The chap­ter opens with the artist G, who begins paint­ing upside down as a rad­i­cal response to his artis­tic and exis­ten­tial cri­sis. Ini­tial­ly, his invert­ed paint­ings appear acci­den­tal, but their delib­er­ate nature is con­firmed by his sig­na­ture. This inno­va­tion earns crit­i­cal acclaim, rein­forc­ing G’s rep­u­ta­tion despite his lin­ger­ing resent­ment toward the art world, which had harsh­ly crit­i­cized his ear­ly work. G’s wife observes that his inver­sion tech­nique inad­ver­tent­ly mir­rors the “female condition”—a sense of fun­da­men­tal wrong­ness beneath a sur­face of cor­rect­ness. His paint­ings, par­tic­u­lar­ly one of birch trees, evoke a para­dox­i­cal calm­ness and mad­ness, sug­gest­ing a shel­ter in dis­ori­en­ta­tion. G’s wife won­ders if his mar­gin­al per­spec­tive stems from his own vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, as he once con­fessed to rely­ing on mas­tur­ba­tion before their mar­riage, imply­ing a relin­quish­ment of tra­di­tion­al mas­culin­i­ty.

G’s ear­ly por­traits and land­scapes explore themes of vio­lence and whole­ness, with invert­ed imagery resolv­ing the bru­tal­i­ty of felling trees (and, metaphor­i­cal­ly, peo­ple). His wife rec­og­nizes in his work a reflec­tion of her own sup­pressed unhap­pi­ness, a “name­less female” anguish. The pub­lic avoids ques­tion­ing whether G paints invert­ed scenes or mere­ly flips fin­ished works, a silence that under­scores art’s com­plic­i­ty in obscur­ing truth. G’s wife becomes a reluc­tant con­fi­dante for oth­ers’ inse­cu­ri­ties, reflect­ing on how nobil­i­ty is erod­ed by unspo­ken con­fu­sion. Mean­while, G open­ly dis­cuss­es his tech­ni­cal chal­lenges, aban­don­ing pho­tographs for larg­er, dream­like abstrac­tions. His belief that “women can­not be artists” reveals a gen­dered hier­ar­chy: his wife mus­es that women’s artis­tic poten­tial is sti­fled to pre­serve men’s cre­ative obliv­ion, a priv­i­lege depen­dent on domes­tic labor. A female novelist’s awe at G’s work—exclaiming, “I want to write upside down”—hints at the appro­pri­a­tion of female expe­ri­ence by male artists.

The nar­ra­tive shifts to an unnamed cou­ple abrupt­ly evict­ed from a bor­rowed apart­ment, a loss that desta­bi­lizes their sense of belong­ing. The apartment’s ornate mir­ror, which once framed the nar­ra­tor pro­por­tion­al­ly with­in a larg­er world, becomes a sym­bol of lost ori­en­ta­tion. Their sub­se­quent homelessness—staying in tran­sient, unset­tling spaces—mirrors their psy­cho­log­i­cal lim­bo. A piv­otal moment occurs when the nar­ra­tor is vio­lent­ly attacked by a deranged woman in broad day­light. The assault, both phys­i­cal­ly and exis­ten­tial­ly jar­ring, forces her to con­front a “death-in-life” sen­sa­tion tied to her fem­i­nin­i­ty. She con­cep­tu­al­izes a “stunt­man” self—a silent, sac­ri­fi­cial dou­ble who absorbs vio­lence so her pri­ma­ry self can main­tain coher­ence. The attack frac­tures this dual­i­ty, expos­ing the stuntman’s role in sus­tain­ing the illu­sion of invul­ner­a­bil­i­ty.

The chap­ter clos­es with G’s failed attempt to paint his wife clas­si­cal­ly, as his invert­ed tech­nique now reveals his latent hatred and objec­ti­fi­ca­tion. Their vis­it to G’s tyran­ni­cal father in a retire­ment home under­scores gen­er­a­tional cycles of vio­lence and for­give­ness. G’s wife, mov­ing through the room like a “striped wild beast” in slat­ted light, embod­ies his crip­pling aware­ness of her par­tial free­dom and his own com­pro­mised mas­culin­i­ty. Mean­while, the nar­ra­tor, still reel­ing from her attack, vis­its an exhi­bi­tion by the sculp­tor G, whose gen­der­less fab­ric forms sug­gest an escape from gen­dered vio­lence. The narrator’s desire to retaliate—to “pass on” the vio­lence she endured—highlights art’s dual role as both sanc­tu­ary and con­fronta­tion. The stunt­man, now exter­nal­ized, walks in her place, embody­ing the insan­i­ty of mat­ter itself. The chap­ter weaves togeth­er themes of artis­tic inver­sion, gen­dered vio­lence, and the unsta­ble bound­aries between self and oth­er, real­i­ty and rep­re­sen­ta­tion.