55 pages • 1 hour read
Kate QuinnThe Briar Club
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Parts 5-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 5: “Two Years Earlier. January 1953.” - Part 6: “One and a Half Years Earlier. July 1953.”
Part 5, Chapter 5 Summary: “Bea”
The chapter includes recipes for Harland’s Fried Chicken and Bea’s Ragu.
It is now January 1953, and the novel follows the story of 28-year-old Bea Verretti. She has permanently damaged her trick knee after slipping on a patch of ice. This means she can no longer play baseball professionally. During World War II, the US promoted women’s baseball to fill the gap left by men who were fighting overseas. Bea played for eight years for several teams in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) and became known as the Swinging Sicilian. Grace has nicknamed her Slugger. Bea loves the sport with all her soul and hates being sidelined. As the chapter begins, she is the girls’ physical education teacher at Gompers Junior High School but still dreams that someday she might return to the game. She even keeps a baseball bat in her room to stay in practice.
One day, the principal asks Bea to fill in as the home economics teacher for the rest of the term. The Briar Club finds this highly amusing since Bea doesn’t know the first thing about the domestic arts. She announces this fact on the night that Arlene’s boyfriend, Harland, is cooking fried chicken for the group. Because Arlene is being particularly insufferable, Bea confides to Harland that his girlfriend got Reka fired from her job. By March, Bea hears the news that Joseph Stalin is dead, which puts everyone in a celebratory mood. She encourages Pete to play baseball out in the sandlot, but his mother has him planting tomatoes in her greenhouse instead. The tenants have started calling Mrs. Nilsson “Doilies” because she’s so prim and places doilies on all her furniture.
One day, Bea bumps into Harland at Griffith Stadium, where she’s gone to watch a game between the Senators and the Yankees. They sit together, and Harland learns about her baseball career. He confides that he’s broken up with Arlene because she got Reka fired. He also admits that he’s become disenchanted with working for the FBI under Hoover. Bea offers a listening ear and thinks, “Men jutted their chins and insisted they were absolutely fine […] and after two months of being absolutely fine they were ready to shatter over the nearest consoling shoulder, poor things” (240). Later, they begin a sexual affair, but Bea warns Harland not to propose to her.
By Memorial Day, Bea suggests that the Briar Club should have a picnic. She spies the tomatoes that Doilies forced Pete to grow, which are earmarked to be sold at a local market. Instead, Bea decides to make ragu out of them for everyone to share. Lina’s baking is coming along well, and she contributes two apple pies to the feast. Harland arrives along with Grace’s latest boyfriend, JD. He is an assistant pitching coach for the Senators. Fliss has even invited Sydney, whose family is away. JD and Harland get into a debate about the Red Menace. JD claims that he fought with the Russians during the war in an all-female regiment. He says, “Look, the Russkies I knew weren’t going around quoting Marx and harping about the proletariat. They were just doing a job, pushing back an enemy who invaded them first” (252). Harland isn’t convinced that they don’t pose a threat.
After the meal, everyone plays a game of baseball—the men against the women. The two Brits seem mystified by the rules, but Bea is in her element. She thinks, “She never understood why people wanted to get drunk. No gin buzz ever felt as good as this, the buzz of doing what you adored” (255). Later, Grace hints that Bea should try to find work with a baseball team, perhaps as a talent spotter. Bea considers the role of scout, and Grace uses JD’s contacts to get Bea an interview with the owner of the Senators. Once she gets the job, Harland takes Bea out to celebrate and proposes marriage. She turns him down. He tells her she doesn’t yet know how patient he can be.
Part 5, Interstitial 5 Summary: “Thanksgiving 1954, Washington, D.C.”
On Thanksgiving 1954, the house is fretting about Mrs. Nilsson’s threat to sell the building. The house also wants to protect its boarders, knowing that any of them might face the electric chair if accused of murder.
Part 6, Chapter 6 Summary: “Claire”
The chapter includes recipes for Sydney’s Fried Bananas with Bermuda Rum & Brown Sugar and Claire’s Potato Pancakes.
It is now July 1953, and the narrative turns to Claire Hallett. She is plump and blond with a brusque attitude, but the other tenants still like her more than they do Arlene. Claire works in the secretary pool at the Senate and admires Senator Margaret Chase Smith, who is one of the few people willing to stand up to a bully like McCarthy. Claire’s big dream in life is to buy her own home: “Claire Hallett was only here for the paycheck, and she wasn’t going to be here forever. The moment her savings account hit eight thousand, she was gone” (272). Claire isn’t above stealing small items from the tenants at Briarwood, either. She will do anything to get the money she needs, including posing for pinup photos and working as a sex worker when necessary.
Claire’s upbringing partially fuels her desire for money. The Great Depression took her parents’ life savings. They moved from one shabby apartment to another before they were evicted. Claire’s mother died by suicide, and her father died a year later, leaving her an orphan at 16. She committed herself to doing, stealing, or screwing anything if it gave her food or money. She changed her name from Clara Halecki so that she wouldn’t be rejected for a job as a “dirty Pollack.” During one of Claire’s house-hunting expeditions, she crosses paths with Xavier Byrne. He is now out of prison and wants to sell his home. He still has feelings for Nora, but she has not indicated that she wants him back.
Aside from her work at the Capitol, Claire takes odd jobs running errands for politicians’ wives. During this time, she meets Sydney Sutherland, and the two begin an affair. Claire pretends she has a boyfriend named Sid, but she is in love with Sydney and upset by Barrett’s brutal treatment of his wife. Sydney says, “He was very charming and very kind, and he said he’d take me away from London […] He never gave me a single smack until we’d been married six months, and by then he held all the cards” (284). Sydney is worried that her son will grow up to be just like his father, but she doesn’t see a way out of her dilemma. Claire decides to use the money she saved to get Sydney and her son away from Barrett. They will flee to the West Coast. The plan goes into operation on Halloween, and Claire plans to meet Sydney at Union Station. She remarks that, “All Sydney had to do was come. Lead her little Lone Ranger by the hand through Union Station, reach out her other hand toward Claire, and take hold of the future” (322).
Part 6, Interstitial 6 Summary: “Thanksgiving 1954, Washington, D.C.”
On Thanksgiving 1954, the house continues to worry as it watches the detectives call the boarders into the kitchen to answer questions individually. The detectives are sure that Xavier Byrne is the culprit, but he admits nothing. They are wary of questioning Harland because he works for the FBI. They ask how well he knew the tenant in the attic apartment—Grace March. He replies, “Not very well, as things turned out” (324).
Parts 5-6 Analysis
This segment highlights the lives of Bea, the baseball player, and Claire, the Senate secretary and thief. Once again, the book foregrounds the themes of Navigating American Identities and Societal Restrictions Amid McCarthyism and The Struggle for Freedom. Before she moved to Briarwood House, Bea was living her version of the American dream. Unfortunately, a knee injury ends her athletic career, and Bea spends a few years struggling to redefine herself. Her injury serves as a physical foreclosing of her dreams, something she increasingly feels as a woman whose societal roles are dictated by patriarchal norms. Even if she had been fit to play, the broader culture was returning to male baseball teams; the Swinging Sicilian is expected to retire to domestic life and start a family. Bea’s American identity shifts to meet the new needs of the culture, but her desire for personal expression has not diminished. She faces an identity crisis when she contemplates the teams she once played for and says plaintively, “No easy identity: ‘I’m a Daisy,’ ‘I’m a Peach,’ ‘I’m a Belle.’ If she wasn’t any of those things, what was she?” (222). This highlights the conflict between her aspirations and societal expectations. Without baseball and lacking a desire to settle into the domestic sphere as expected, Bea feels she lacks a place.
Harland mirrors Bea’s identity crisis. When they start dating, he is still working for the FBI but has seriously begun to question its activities. In the previous segment, Arlene and Harland were both antagonistic to anyone who didn’t follow the party line. After Arlene gets Reka fired, Harland realizes that stringent dogma shouldn’t supersede care for others. This moment of realization marks a significant turning point for Harland, illustrating how interpersonal experiences can lead to broader ideological shifts. He is attracted to Bea precisely because she is committed to her independence while he continues to agonize over his situation. He looks the part of an agent for the government, but he finds it increasingly difficult to blindly follow orders. Ironically, although Harland is attracted to Bea’s free spirit, he intentionally tries to curtail her autonomy by proposing to her just as she wins her dream job as a talent scout for the Senators. By this time, Bea has discarded all pretense of fitting into the post-war ideal of a family and a house in the suburbs and will continue to reject Harland’s multiple offers of marriage.
The text depicts a more dangerous display of Navigating American Identities and Societal Restrictions Amid McCarthyism and The Struggle for Freedom in the chapter describing Claire’s love affair with Sydney. The latter superficially looks the part of a young politician’s wife and plays the role of a doting mother. In private, her husband physically abuses her, and Sydney must disguise the injuries and lie about them to her son. Sydney’s experiences further develop the symbol of abusive authorities, which plays a repeated role throughout the novel. This façade she feels she must maintain highlights the pressures society places on women to conform to traditional roles of dutiful wives, even at great personal cost.
Sydney’s secret affair with Claire places them both in jeopardy if others discover their relationship. Claire has also adopted a false identity by appearing as a model employee in the secretarial pool at the Capitol. In reality, she lies, cheats, and steals to secure her future. In a society that demands conformity, Claire also decides to uphold a façade to achieve financial safety. Once she falls in love with Sydney, however, she attempts to secure freedom for them both. After Barrett physically assaults Sydney yet again, Sydney tells Claire, “He was the best I could get, and I was raised to be married, Claire” (284). Despite the pervasive nature of Barrett’s abuse, Sydney still views her current relationship as the best she could receive. This resignation emphasizes the damaging effects of physical abuse and violent consequences of patriarchy, which can trap women in dangerous situations. Claire takes it upon herself to help free Sydney.
Claire idolizes Margaret Chase Smith, who faces down a bully like McCarthy despite the risk to her political career. Margaret’s willingness to call out McCarthy in the halls of Congress inspires Claire to take a stand against an abuser like Barrett Sutherland. By equating McCarthy with Barrett, the text highlights the danger men in various institutions, from government to marriage, pose to women. Both McCarthy and Sutherland purport an all-American identity when, in reality, their actions violently suppress the freedom and safety of others. In this segment, Bea, Harland, Claire, and Sydney all reject this practice and choose to fight against it. Their resistance underscores how true safety and fulfillment necessitate the reclamation of personal freedoms and the dismantling of oppressive structures.
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