56 pages • 1 hour read
Kate Quinn, Janie ChangThe Phoenix Crown: A Novel
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.
Themes
The Relationship Between Art and Trauma
The Phoenix Crown shows the varying ways in which trauma and art can influence one another, as Gemma turns to her music as a sanctuary and a source of healing after the earthquake, while Reggie’s trauma renders her unable to access the artistic inspiration that allows her to paint.
After enduring the earthquake, fires, and other violence of the novel’s climax, Gemma turns to music, which has always been a place of refuge for her. Before the earthquake, she thinks, “[F]riends let you down, even the oldest of friends; men let you down; colleagues let you down. But her voice hadn’t, not yet” (101). Her art is something she can come back to when other humans have harmed her. It is also something she can come back to after a natural disaster. In the wreckage of the city, waiting for her ride, Gemma finds a piano to play and accompanies herself singing:
[S]he struck up Mozart’s ‘Laudate Dominum,’ seeing a tear slip down the cheek of the man with the bandaged head. Maybe she was as dim as her bird, singing when the world was burning down around her ears, but she couldn’t do anything else. She was a singer. So she sang (276).
Her art is not only a comfort to herself, but it is also an emotional release for the people who hear it.
This moment on the street among the ruins strengthens Gemma’s identity as a singer, as does her experience singing Mozart’s “Queen of the Night” at Henry’s party for his wealthy acquaintances. The authors include a detailed ekphrasis (written description of art) of her performance of this song. It is an opportunity, after she learns Henry harmed her friend, to “spit rage for three minutes in d minor, hitting those four stratospheric high F’s that (if done right) made the audience shiver as though an exquisite silver knife had just been slipped into their ears” (191). The authors use the simile, or comparison, of a knife to describe the sound of the notes Gemma sings. She is able to stab Henry, vocally, and this momentarily comforts her. This kind of comfort comes from righteous anger, rather than vocal “warmth, like silver and Christmas incense” (39). Whether she is full of rage, or devastated by a disaster, Gemma can always return to her art.
On the other hand, trauma prevents Reggie/Nellie from being able to create art. Since Reggie isn’t a point-of-view character, Gemma and Suling describe her trauma and its effects. Gemma considers how “locking her in a madhouse—trapping Nellie inside bleak colorless walls, no vibrant vistas to paint, no palette knives and brushes at her disposal…she would rather, Gemma knew, be dead” (180-81). Reggie needs to be in the world to paint: She needs to see people to inspire her portraits and visit places to inspire her landscapes. Even after escaping the asylum and relocating to Paris, where there is abundant visual inspiration, Reggie can’t paint due to her trauma. Suling thinks that Reggie “needs to see [Henry] convicted and hanged before she can sleep peacefully and paint again” (352). For Reggie, peace is a necessary precondition for art, while for Gemma, peace comes from art.
The Epilogue describes the paintings Reggie is able to finally produce after Henry goes to trial and dies by suicide. These ekphrastic descriptions can be compared to the ekphrastic description of Gemma’s singing. Overall, the authors explore how the creation of art is impacted by trauma. The Phoenix Crown shows the varying ways in which trauma and art can influence one another, as Gemma turns to her music as a sanctuary and a source of healing after the earthquake, while Reggie’s trauma renders her unable to access the artistic inspiration that allows her to paint.
After enduring the earthquake, fires, and other violence of the novel’s climax, Gemma turns to music, which has always been a place of refuge for her. Before the earthquake, she thinks, “[F]riends let you down, even the oldest of friends; men let you down; colleagues let you down. But her voice hadn’t, not yet” (101). Her art is something she can come back to when other humans have harmed her. It is also something she can come back to after a natural disaster. In the wreckage of the city, waiting for her ride, Gemma finds a piano to play and accompanies herself singing:
[S]he struck up Mozart’s ‘Laudate Dominum,’ seeing a tear slip down the cheek of the man with the bandaged head. Maybe she was as dim as her bird, singing when the world was burning down around her ears, but she couldn’t do anything else. She was a singer. So she sang (276).
Her art is not only a comfort to herself, but it is also an emotional release for the people who hear it.
This moment on the street among the ruins strengthens Gemma’s identity as a singer, as does her experience singing Mozart’s “Queen of the Night” at Henry’s party for his wealthy acquaintances. The authors include a detailed ekphrasis (written description of art) of her performance of this song. It is an opportunity, after she learns Henry harmed her friend, to “spit rage for three minutes in d minor, hitting those four stratospheric high F’s that (if done right) made the audience shiver as though an exquisite silver knife had just been slipped into their ears” (191). The authors use the simile, or comparison, of a knife to describe the sound of the notes Gemma sings. She is able to stab Henry, vocally, and this momentarily comforts her. This kind of comfort comes from righteous anger, rather than vocal “warmth, like silver and Christmas incense” (39). Whether she is full of rage, or devastated by a disaster, Gemma can always return to her art.
On the other hand, trauma prevents Reggie/Nellie from being able to create art. Since Reggie isn’t a point-of-view character, Gemma and Suling describe her trauma and its effects. Gemma considers how “locking her in a madhouse—trapping Nellie inside bleak colorless walls, no vibrant vistas to paint, no palette knives and brushes at her disposal…she would rather, Gemma knew, be dead” (180-81). Reggie needs to be in the world to paint: She needs to see people to inspire her portraits and visit places to inspire her landscapes. Even after escaping the asylum and relocating to Paris, where there is abundant visual inspiration, Reggie can’t paint due to her trauma. Suling thinks that Reggie “needs to see [Henry] convicted and hanged before she can sleep peacefully and paint again” (352). For Reggie, peace is a necessary precondition for art, while for Gemma, peace comes from art.
The Epilogue describes the paintings Reggie is able to finally produce after Henry goes to trial and dies by suicide. These ekphrastic descriptions can be compared to the ekphrastic description of Gemma’s singing. Overall, the authors explore how the creation of art is impacted by trauma.
Sexism and Intersectional Oppression of Women
The novel explores the varied manifestations of misogyny and sexism in the early 20th century, as its female protagonists each find their own ways to adapt and thrive despite the social pressures they face as sexism intersects with other forms of oppression.
Gemma faces both sexism and ableism, because she suffers from migraines. She thinks, “Wasn’t it hard enough to be a woman alone, trying to make a career in a hard business and harder world, without this? Without a sleeping beast living inside her own head, who might at any moment wake and sink its fangs into her brain?” (98). Here, Gemma recognizes that her identity as a woman already makes it difficult for her to live as an independent artist, and her disability—without adequate accommodations from her employers—compounds this difficulty.
Suling struggles with both racism and sexism, and she often dresses as a boy to avoid the dangers she would otherwise face as a Chinese American woman in San Francisco. As a Chinese American, Suling has to grapple with the stereotypes associated with her race, including a tendency among white men to treat all Chinese American women as presumptive sex workers. When she is harassed on the street while dressed as a boy, Suling only has to face racism. She thinks about being “lucky they didn’t realize she was a girl” when dealing with racists (84). This implies it is likely that racists will sexually assault a woman of color. Gemma’s professional theatrical experience as an opera singer alerts her to the possibility that Suling is a woman in men’s clothing the first time they meet. Gemma thinks, “All those operatic stories where girls dressed up as boys had to come from somewhere after all” (16). Women dressing as men appear in literature that predates opera, such as the medieval poem the Roman de Silence (Romance of Silence), where the titular female character Silence wins a war while dressed as a knight. Silence can be compared to the popular character of Éowyn from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Though she doesn’t wield a weapon, Suling is Reggie’s knight, saving her from the asylum after the earthquake.
Reggie, who also dresses in a style typically associated with masculinity, deals with anti-gay bias and sexism. She sleeps with both men and women, which limits where she can publicly display affection. For instance, she is able to dress as she likes and be affectionate with Suling in Paris. Reggie is able to wear men’s clothing at the party in Versailles without attracting attention. Even her friends have to do a double take to realize they aren’t seeing a man: “Not a man. Reggie” (333). The one male character with whom she has a romantic relationship, Henry, imprisons her in a mental institution. When she works as an artist, she is paid “half what they’d pay a man” (36). She is able to get regular gigs as an artist before her mental health declines, but still doesn’t make as much as male artists. Reggie, Gemma, and Suling all deal with various forms of discrimination, including racism, ableism, anti-gay bias, and sexism.
Class, Labor, and Gender
The Phoenix Crown also explores socioeconomic class and the nature of work. After she learns that Henry has paid to imprison Reggie in an asylum, Gemma thinks, “There were many ways the powerful could crush those underneath them to smithereens” (195). In her own relationship with Henry—before learning of Reggie’s fate—the worst she expects is that Henry will simply discard her for a new mistress. She hopes for temporary “security […] Maybe it would only last a few months—she’d still take it” (123). His patronage only lasts a couple weeks, but during that time she is able to focus on her art without having to worry about income. When this period ends, much sooner than she had hoped, she learns that wealthy white men are capable of far greater violence than simple rejection.
Alice is devoted to her work in the sciences as much as Gemma is devoted to the arts. This tenacity led to Alice’s becoming the botanical curator of the California Academy of the Sciences—a position that allows her to focus on her work without depending on a male benefactor. However, success in her career doesn’t make her exempt from natural disasters. The authors based the scene of Alice and Gemma climbing up the banister of a ruined staircase on a true story. This act demonstrates Alice’s commitment to her work. When Gemma tries to get her to leave the building, Alice cries, “My work” (234). They do manage to rescue some of her work, as well as escape with their lives.
Another minor character who is devoted to her work is Madam Ning. Suling thinks about how she “had had exactly zero interest in being a wife. As for being an honest woman, she had run her brothel as ethically as the profession and profits allowed” (348). Ning makes sure her employees get their wages and protects them from violent or abusive clients. She is also supportive of the queer women who work for her. Ning describes a lesbian couple who works for her: Having sex with men is “what they do professionally […] and nothing to do with who they love […] As for Butterfly, she’s had enough of men” (189). In sex work, emotions do not have to be involved. While many of Ning’s employees escape the earthquake’s devastation, Ning herself is murdered by Henry when she tries to collect wages that he owes her. Her last act in life is trying to make sure her employees are fairly compensated. The authors explore different kinds of labor, including work in the arts, work in the sciences, and sex work, as well as socioeconomic class.
