53 pages • 1 hour read
Robyn HardingA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
The novel emphasizes how preconceived notions often differ dramatically from lived experience, as evident in Lee’s frequent reflections on how her previous understanding of being unhoused differs from her experience of it:
What did I think of the homeless before I became one of them? Not much, is the short answer. Each year, I donated to a local shelter that served Thanksgiving dinners. I occasionally tossed coins into hats or empty coffee cups, but I didn’t meet their eyes, I didn’t ask their names. Sometimes I’d even cross the street to avoid them. I was not without compassion for the displaced, but they were just so separate, so other. There was no way I’d ever become one of them (3).
Lee’s candid acknowledgement of her previously superficial understanding of the unhoused population and how she didn’t think of them much contrasts with the detailed reality of her experience in the opening scene: While she’s attempting to sleep in the driver’s seat of her car, a man breaks her car window and robs her. In addition, Lee is extremely conscious of how people see her in her current situation compared to how they would have seen her in her previous life. Seeing two put-together women in the pool locker room, she thinks that if they’d seen her in her restaurant, “[t]hey might even have envied [her]. But now [she] see[s] the wary looks in their eyes. And the pity” (29). She’s aware of how outward appearance and circumstance can drastically change perception.
Lee realizes that along with how people perceive her, her perceptions of others have changed. Thinking about whether she would have been attracted to Jesse, she imagines that she would have worried about “a shortage of common interests, and probably a certain superficiality. But now, all that matters is that he is good and kind” (50). Since becoming unhoused, Lee has become increasingly empathetic about others’ situations. When the man selling her a phone suggests that he’ll pay for sex, she can “see how easily it happens. If a person is desperate, if they have nothing else of value, they can always sell themselves” (18). This illustrates the contrast between her previously dismissive attitude about sex workers and displaced people and her growing empathy for various situations. Likewise, she exhibits empathy toward Hazel. Similar to Lee, Hazel’s outward circumstances starkly contrast with her real situation. While Lee’s initial assumption about Hazel is that she couldn’t be unhappy because she’s so wealthy, she quickly begins to empathize with the abusive situation that her friend is in. Through both Lee and Hazel, the novel highlights the divergence between people’s appearance and outward circumstances and their inner lives.
Hazel and Lee’s friendship highlights how both interpersonal connection and negative circumstances can supersede superficial class distinctions. Lee and Hazel initially appear to be in opposite situations: Lees lives in her Toyota Corolla, and Hazel lives in a cliffside mansion. However, as the women get to know each other, they form a connection that transcends their socioeconomic statuses. The beach is a liminal space where both women are themselves rather than defined by their circumstances.
While their economic circumstances are opposite, Lee and Hazel both experience the same lack of agency and control. Whereas Hazel’s abusive relationship with Benjamin has removed her personal agency, Lee has experienced a similar loss of choices due to bankruptcy and being unhoused. Harding highlights their similar passivity in that both fall for and succumb to the will of the same man, Jesse. Despite their economic differences, both Lee and Hazel share a similar character trajectory: a move toward making more decisive actions to achieve personal freedom. That freedom ends up taking the same form, as both use false passports to escape to Panama.
Lee and Hazel’s relationship is complex and develops primarily through their independent actions and thoughts about each other rather than through in-person exchanges. Throughout the novel’s first section, they spend time talking on the beach and form a close connection that the novel portrays as inevitable. Both women feel drawn to each other and share intimate details about their lives: Lee about her loss of her restaurant and the details of what she did to Teresa and Hazel about the intricacies of her abusive relationship. Their relationship is close and sisterly: For example, after Hazel applies makeup to Lee’s face when she’s ill, Lee notes, “Her ministrations were relaxing, maybe even healing. When she brushed my hair, I closed my eyes and thought of Teresa” (43). Both Lee and Hazel feel that they can fully be themselves only with each other. After the first section of the novel, Hazel’s point-of-view chapters reveal the plan that she and Jesse conceived to implicate Lee in Benjamin’s murder, and Lee begins to doubt Hazel in retrospect. However, both women take actions that highlight their continuing friendship: Hazel throws Lee’s knife into the ocean rather than planting it as a murder weapon, and Lee turns the audio recordings in to the police rather than disappearing. The novel’s concluding scene depicts Lee giving Hazel another chance by offering her a job in her new Panama beach restaurant. Though the relationships are complex, in both friendship and circumstance, Lee and Hazel share a close affinity in spite of their economic differences. The novel suggests that both negative circumstances that remove one’s agency and the positive power of intimate friendship operate outside one’s socioeconomic status.
The novel explores various examples of toxic relationships and the power dynamics within them, showing how they can lead to a loss of agency, especially among women. Benjamin and Hazel’s marriage exemplifies a toxic power dynamic. Benjamin exerts control over every aspect of Hazel’s life, ranging from the abusive sexual relationship to refusing to let her order for herself in restaurants. She describes the dynamic as something that can work when it’s consensual but clarifies that Benjamin broke the rules of their contract and that her “lack of consent ma[kes] it more exciting for him” (57). Hazel’s first-person point-of-view chapters establish that the severe physical abuse is sporadic, but the “mental and emotional torture [are] constant” (117). Benjamin’s effect on Hazel is clear; her interactions with Jesse exhibit a similar pattern of succumbing to a man’s will. For example, in one scene with Jesse, Hazel “d[oes]n’t want to have sex; [she] still fe[els] shaky and fragile and frightened. But [she] kn[ows] [her] boyfriend ha[s] a high sex drive, and [she]’d been programmed to please men” (130). While Benjamin is in jail, Hazel initially continues to be passive but eventually begins to take more drastic actions to assert her own agency and effect change in her life.
In contrast to Benjamin’s overt sadism, Jesse initially appears kind and loving to both Lee and Hazel. Clues about his true nature appear gradually throughout the narrative. Lee begins to observe a change in their sexual relationship from tenderness to becoming “more…athletic.” While she tries to convince herself that she’s okay with the change, she feels “empty, dissatisfied” and demeaned after they have sex against her car behind the diner. However, she remains desperate for the tenderness and affection that he provides and decides that it “is [her] issue, not Jesse’s” (84). For Hazel, the relationship’s turning point is when Jesse demonstrates his similarity to Benjamin by punching her in the face. While he justifies it by explaining that they need Lee to pity Hazel and go along with their plan, his violent action foreshadows the later revelation that Jesse is really Carter Sumner and that Benjamin hired him to murder Hazel. Hazel reflects that “the ease with which he had hit [her] hurt more than the physical pain” (158), suggesting that, like with her husband, she’s more tortured by emotional than physical abuse. The novel’s inclusion of two relationships characterized by interpersonal violence demonstrates the range and insidiousness of domestic abuse. The novel suggests that toxic and abusive relationship dynamics can remove women’s agency whether they’re as overt as Benjamin’s sadistic abuse or more insidious, like Jesse’s subtler but similarly toxic manner of interacting with both Lee and Hazel.
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