40 pages • 1 hour read
Bernardine EvaristoGirl, Woman, Other
Bernardine EvaristoFiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2019A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 3, Section 1 Summary: “Shirley”
Shirley King starts her career as a young, ambitious teacher ready to change minds at Peckham School for Boys and Girls. She notices that the classrooms are stocked with maps of the world that depict “Britain rival[ing] Africa in size, a testament to the colonial cartographers who got away with it for centuries” (219). As the only girl among her siblings and with two brothers who have accomplished less in life, Shirley feels extreme pressure to succeed to please her parents, Winsome and Clovis. She goes head-to-head with outspoken senior teacher Penelope Halifax to express her opposing teaching pedagogy: While Penelope feels many of the school’s students are beyond hope, Shirley believes in equality and blames a society that has told the students they are failures.
Shirley often rants about Penelope to her handsome, supportive husband, Lennox. Lennox recalls beginning to wear suits outside of school to avoid racial discrimination. Shirley admires Lennox’s good temperament and ambition. She appreciates that he gets along with her childhood friend Amma, whom she views as odd. She recalls the early days of her friendship with Amma. Amma was initially the shy one of the two, but Amma—whose parents were “educated socialists,” whereas Shirley’s were not educated or political—wound up a confident “maverick.” When Amma came out to Shirley as a lesbian at 16, Shirley was disgusted and felt betrayed, although she didn’t let on. Once Yazz was born, Shirley babysat often, noting that Amma did not realize this might be a burden.
After the school undergoes a turn for the worse over a decade, Shirley and Penelope become allies against junior instructors who express big ideas yet leave the school within a year or two. Shirley notices the Peckham classrooms becoming more crowded and the students acting out more, carrying “knives large enough to disembowel rhinos” (237). She persists at Peckham instead of moving to a more elite school because she is committed to making a difference in the world. By the time Shirley starts to consider a change, she believes she is too old to be hired. Shirley decides to take one student a year under her wing and help them get on track to a better life. The first of these students is Carole, who goes on to a top university. A decade after leaving for school, Carole has yet to contact Shirley to update her or thank her.
Chapter 3, Section 2 Summary: “Winsome”
Winsome and her husband, Clovis, move back to their native Barbados from England to retire. Their daughter, Shirley, her husband, Lennox, Shirley’s daughter, Rachel, and Rachel’s daughter, Madison, visit every summer. Winsome watches Shirley through the window. She notices that Shirley wears all white when she’s in the Caribbean, “like a tourist” (250). Winsome believes that Shirley does not appreciate her good fortune in life, complains too much, and is “an emotional dumper” (251). Winsome is preparing food in the kitchen when Rachel enters carrying a sleeping Madison in her arms. Rachel asks Winsome to tell her about her life before she had a family when she was “a person in her own right” (257).
Winsome recalls meeting Clovis at a West Indian gathering. She married him because he seemed stable. Winsome subsequently moved them from southwest London to the southwest of England and then to Scilly Isles off the coast so Clovis could find work as a fisherman. Instead, the couple faced extreme discrimination there. Winsome finally insisted they return to London.
Winsome recalls her infatuation with Lennox, which began after Shirley brought him home for the first time. Soon after, Shirley and Lennox married and started a family. Winsome convinced herself that the attraction was one way until Lennox showed up at her house when Clovis was out and seduced her. Winsome and Lennox continued their affair for a year until Lennox cut it short without explanation. When Shirley boasts that Lennox would never cheat on her, Winsome replies, “You lucky, Shirl, you lucky” (275).
Chapter 3, Section 3 Summary: “Penelope”
As a teenager, Penelope finds out she is adopted. She decides she will go to college, marry an adoring man, teach, and have children, “all of which would fill the gaping, aching chasm she now carried inside her” (283). Penelope marries her first husband, Giles, after completing teacher training in college. Her career is put on hold after she has two children. Giles is reticent to allow her to return to teaching, which Penelope misses desperately. After reading Betty Friedman’s The Feminist Mystique, Penelope insists on returning to work, and she eventually divorces Giles over the matter. She receives custody of her two children, Sarah and Adam, and begins teaching at Peckham School for Boys and Girls, a new school down the road from her house. Penelope butts heads with a young teacher, Shirley King.
Penelope meets her second husband, Phillip, a psychologist who works from their home. Though at first Penelope finds Phillip far more progressive than Giles, his constant psychoanalysis of her becomes grating. They divorce when Penelope discovers Phillip’s affair with a much younger patient. Penelope and Shirley bond over being senior teachers in an increasingly underperforming school. Penelope’s son moves to Dallas, while her daughter marries an Australian and moves to Australia, taking her two small boys with her and leaving Penelope alone. Penelope drinks to mask her loneliness.
Chapter 3 Analysis
Continuing to explore Human Connectivity and Interdependence, Chapter 3 examines the lives of three interlinked characters: schoolteacher Shirley King, her mother Winsome, and Shirley’s school colleague Penelope Halifax. At first Shirley and Penelope butt heads over their educational methodologies. While Shirley advocates for a culturally competent and nurturing approach, Penelope dismisses Shirley’s concerns about racial sensitivity to make her voice heard among the mostly male faculty at the school. Over time, the two women bond over their veteran positions at the school as the teacher turnover increases and the school becomes neglected. Penelope and Shirley’s unlikely alliance implies that relationships can change for the better over time.
Furthermore, their relationship builds on the book’s motif of feminism. Early on in her life, Penelope makes a point of standing up to male dominance at the school and insisting to her husband that she go back to work. However, Penelope exercises this agency at the expense of Shirley. Through her early dismissal of Shirley, Penelope makes clear that her solidarity with women, especially across the divides of race and class, is limited. Later in the book, Penelope disassociates herself from the term “feminism” after she meets her partner Jeremy, who negatively associates feminism with his ex-wife. Like Amma and Yazz’s varying definitions of feminism, Penelope’s rejection of the term illustrates its shifting meaning across generations.
Chapter 3 introduces the motif of secrets—which will be built upon in Chapter 4—through Winsome keeping her early life a secret from her children. Winsome also harbors her secret lust for and subsequent affair with her son-in-law. With Winsome’s ironic response to Shirley’s claims about Lennox’s fidelity Evaristo implies that this affair stemmed not merely from attraction but also from Winsome’s frustration with her daughter. This has its roots in the Diaspora in Great Britain, as Winsome feels Shirley does not appreciate the advantages she had growing up in England. Moreover, her observation that Shirley acts like a tourist while in Barbados implies friction like that which exists between Carole and Bummi, with the daughter failing to appreciate or embody her heritage to the mother’s satisfaction. Much of what goes unspoken in the novel relates to this intergenerational tension.
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