42 pages • 1 hour read
Laura MoriartyThe Chaperone
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2012A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 1, Chapter 5-Part 2, Chapter 9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1, Chapter 5 Summary
The story returns to 1922 during Cora and Louise’s train journey to New York. Cora awakens from a nap to find Louise gone and tracks her down in the dining car at a table with two strange men. Horrified, she sits at the table with the three to salvage the situation. It turns out that the men are from the town where Cora grew up with the Kaufmanns. This allusion to Cora’s life with the Kaufmanns foreshadows the next chapter’s flashback.
Cora eats the leftovers from Louise’s lunch to shorten their encounter with the men and then takes Louise back to their seats, where she tries to tell Louise that she shouldn’t associate with strange men. She says, “Men don’t want candy that’s been unwrapped. Maybe for a lark, but not when it comes to marriage. It may still be perfectly clean, but if it’s unwrapped, they don’t know where it’s been” (71). Louise laughs at Cora’s comparison of maidenly virtue to candy and pointedly offers Cora a homemade lollipop. Later in the novel, Louise reveals to Cora that she was sexually molested by grown men as a child; these experiences explain her cynicism about sexual purity.
Cora is angry at Louise’s refusal to listen to her warnings. Cora wears a corset, which makes it hard for her to eat very much in one sitting and prevents her from picking up her book that’s fallen to the floor of the train. She asks Louise to get the book for her, telling her she has a bad back, but Louise tells her she knows Cora wears a corset.
Part 1, Chapter 6 Summary
This chapter is another flashback, this time to Cora’s life with the Kaufmanns. Once they take her in, they quickly become like parents to Cora, especially Mrs. Kaufmann. Mr. Kaufmann has children from a first marriage, two sons and a daughter, but Mrs. Kaufmann longed for children of her own and cherishes Cora as if she were her biological daughter. Cora goes to a country school where the other children are told by their parents not to associate with her because of her unknown origins. Because she was given up for adoption, many assume that her parents were unwed or that her mother was a prostitute. As a result, Cora doesn’t have any friends and is lonely, until Mrs. Kaufmann teaches her a playground game that helps her become acquainted with other girls and makes school more bearable.
When Cora is 16, the Kaufmanns both die in an accident on their farm. Mr. Kaufmann’s daughter tries to cut Cora out of any inheritance from the farm since Cora was never legally adopted by the Kaufmanns or included in their will as an heir to their property. Cora, who’s been staying with the Kaufmann’s neighbors, meets Alan for the first time when he agrees to challenge the Kaufmann daughter on Cora’s behalf. He’s about 30 and seemingly single. Cora opens up to him because of his kind demeanor, and he seems to show some interest in her. He quickly wins the legal case against Mr. Kaufmann’s daughter, and Cora writes him a note to thank him. Alan comes back to the neighbors’ house and begins to court her, eventually introducing her to his parents and sister in Wichita. Alan’s family is kind to Cora and doesn’t treat her any differently because she was adopted, which she appreciates after her previous exclusion by her classmates.
Part 2, Chapter 7 Summary
The chapter moves back to 1922. Cora and Louise arrive in New York, and Louise is elated to be in the city. They find their apartment, which has one bedroom and one bathroom, and Louise immediately wants to go out and explore. Cora is tired from traveling and insists that they stay in the apartment, making Louise sulk. As Cora is finishing a bath, two men arrive to deliver their trunks from the train station, and since Cora is not properly dressed to receive male visitors, Louise lets them in and offers them a drink of water after they bring in the trunks. Cora uneasily monitors the situation from the bedroom, not trusting Louise around strange men after the incidents on the trip to New York. She’s struck by Louise’s kindness in offering the men water, however, and they leave without incident.
The next day, Cora accompanies Louise to her first dance class. Even to Cora’s unexperienced eye, the teenager is talented, yet she is scornful of her teacher. Though they’re not the day-to-day instructors of the dance class, Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn—together called “Denishawn”—are the founders of the dance school and are there for the first day. St. Denis addresses the class, warning them that they represent the school and that any improper conduct in or outside of class will not be tolerated. St. Denis then approaches Cora and says that the classes will take five hours each day and that Cora should feel free to explore the city while Louise is in class.
Cora has the address of the orphanage from an old letter and decides to make good use of her free time to go try to find out about her birth family. The letter reveals that Cora has previously tried to inquire about her birth parents but that she was told the information would not be disclosed to her.
Part 2, Chapter 8 Summary
Cora goes to the orphanage to ask about her past and talks with the orphanage’s handyman, Joseph Schmidt, while she waits for the nuns to finish their Mass. Joseph brings Cora a drink of water, mirroring Louise’s gesture toward the moving men. Cora meets with one of the nuns, who, like in the letters she’s received, tells her that she cannot view any records that the orphanage has about her or her parents. The nun is disappointed that Cora was not adopted by Catholic parents and that she is now Presbyterian. She tells Cora that the secrecy of the records is meant to protect her from the likely tragic circumstances under which she was abandoned to the orphanage. Cora leaves, disappointed.
Part 2, Chapter 9 Summary
Cora and Louise go to the theater. They don’t have a good view from their seats, so at intermission Louise convinces an usher to give them box seats. Cora watches her, worried that Louise’s meek, submissive body language and demeanor are means of flirtation that will give the usher the wrong idea, but Louise doesn’t seem to have been trying to seduce him.
Inspired, Cora returns to the orphanage when she knows that the nuns will be at Mass and tries the same techniques on Joseph to convince him to give her access to the orphanage records. Unlike the usher, he accuses her of trying to seduce him, but he agrees to help her. She tells him that she’ll come back on the following Monday. While the two are talking, she sees that he’s fixing a discarded radio so that the orphanage girls can listen to it and is touched by his kindness, although she also incorporates her admiration into her botched attempt at flattery.
Part 1, Chapter 5-Part 2, Chapter 9 Analysis
These chapters portray the relationship between Cora and Louise as they navigate their new surroundings. The bustling, progressive city is new to both of them, and their reactions to it reveal contrasts in their characters and their outlooks on life. Louise is exhilarated and stimulated by the city, as she generally is by any kind of novelty. She immediately feels a sense of belonging in New York. Cora, conversely, is guarded and cautious, with reactions that mirror her initial trepidation about most new or potentially “improper” situations. She feels a responsibility to keep Louise safe and try to protect her from the negative consequences of the girl’s impulsivity and disregard for social customs.
Symbolizing this dichotomy is Cora and Louise’s choice of clothing. Louise is firmly in the flapper era, with short hair, shorter dresses, and lower necklines than those of a previous generation and a desire to wear makeup, which was quickly becoming more socially acceptable within the artistic and progressive communities in the United States. Cora, meanwhile, is still wearing a corset—first popularized in the Victorian era, decades before, and worn during the Edwardian era (1904-1911).
Louise generally does not appreciate Cora’s efforts to guide her, as these chapters illustrate. She also does not heed the warnings of Ruth St. Denis that the Denishawn dancers must avoid scandalous behavior, a fact that reveals her distrust of and rebellion against most authority figures. Given what she reveals to Cora later about her abuse as a child at the hands of male adults, and her hostile relationship with her mother, it’s clear that these feelings can be traced back to her early experiences and are deeply rooted in her.
These chapters also introduce Joseph, an important character, and reveal more of Cora’s childhood and teenage years. Cora’s past is important because it continues to affect her as an adult. The Kaufmanns and Alan gave her affection and stability after the turmoil and loneliness of her early childhood, and Alan’s support helps explain why Cora continues to keep his homosexuality a secret. Her relationship with Joseph eventually satisfies her sexually, and his introduction in these chapters runs parallel to the descriptions of past events that give the reader a better understanding of Cora’s perspective. Each of these characters play a partial role in fulfilling Cora’s emotional and physical needs.
Chapter 9 shows Louise’s influence on Cora for the first time, as Cora tries to flatter Joseph just as Louise flattered the usher at the theater. This shift is important because Cora will gradually adopt many of Louise’s ideals over the course of the novel, including sexual agency for women in the form of birth control access, the re-legalization of alcohol, and less restrictive women’s clothing.
