55 pages • 1 hour read
Kate QuinnThe Briar Club
Kate QuinnFiction | 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
Finding Support and Overcoming Differences in a Circle of Friends
Content Warning: This section of the guide features depictions of domestic violence, psychological abuse, anti-gay bias, suicide, and murder.
In a novel set during the decade in which fear of communism reached its peak, The Briar Club emphasizes how communal activities allow various individuals to find support and overcome their differences. Initially, the narrative shows the tenants of Briarwood House living in their isolated worlds. A communist then enters their midst and establishes community-mindedness. Grace has no conscious intention of introducing communist political ideology into her dealings with her fellow housemates. However, she establishes the rule of the Briar Club dinners by asking each tenant to bring one can of food to the gathering as the price of admission. Her years of starvation in Leningrad have left her with the tendency to stockpile canned goods in her apartment. Aside from that, each tenant’s contribution creates a connection with Grace and their fellow Briar Club members.
Through the Briar Club, the tenants create Finding Support and Overcoming Differences in a Circle of Friends. Although the author structures the novel to tell the isolated story of one individual in each of its parts, the narrative depicts a slow but steady progression from insularity to community. The stories of the other tenants begin to weave their way into the central narrative. Midway through the novel, the narrative demonstrates the value of this community when Fliss is desperate for help with her infant daughter. Fliss highlights the emotional toll parenting alone is taking on her when she says, “She’d never seen her mother or her aunts weeping into their laundry tubs or scrubbing kitchen tiles with a toothbrush at three in the morning […] was it because they had nets of people to help?” (179). Grace recognizes the young mother’s need for a breather and arranges for other members of the Briar Club to pitch in with childcare.
Grace constructs the Briar Club as a supportive net of people, and this circle of friends remains loyal to her in her critical time of need. After she kills Kirill and is exposed as a former communist, the national paranoia of the McCarthy years would dictate that the Briar Club members should turn her in without hesitation due to her un-American activities. Arlene is willing to do so to further her career ambitions, as she staunchly believes in the McCarthyism project. However, every other member votes against this move, citing Grace’s friendship as the reason for their allegiance to her. In the end, the members of the Briar Club overcome their differences, particularly regarding political ideology, to support each other and protect one of their own.
Navigating American Identities and Societal Restrictions Amid McCarthyism
The McCarthy investigations focused national attention on what it means to be an American. The behavior of citizens of the country was subjected to intense scrutiny to contrast it with the un-American traits communists exhibited. In alignment with the political backdrop, the characters in The Briar Club consciously project personas that conform to prevailing notions of Americanism. However, they each experience various forms of conflicts regarding identity that stem from subcultural contexts. Fliss is obsessed with appearing perky and inoffensive. She doesn’t want her housemates to label her as a standoffish Brit, conscious of the cultural stereotypes she may face. Further, she has absorbed certain cultural assumptions about motherhood and blames herself for not living up to rigid expectations of domesticity. Every time she fails to meet that ideal, she labels herself a bad mother, turning pervasive cultural expectations inward.
Nora’s desires clash with her Irish American family. She doesn’t want to become a spinster daughter who lives to serve the needs of her rude brother or tradition-bound mother. Further, she is particularly sensitive to the divide that separates Irish cop families from Irish gangster families. Her romance with Xavier tests her assumptions about right and wrong to the breaking point. Bea sees herself as a baseball player. Without that self-definition, she doesn’t know who she is or where she fits into the world. She tries to work as a gym teacher but feels no satisfaction in the job. Additionally, she reviews marriage and its associated domestic expectations as trapping, avoiding settling down as a result—something that others expect of a woman her age. It is only after she sees a way to remain linked to the world of baseball as a talent scout that she finds fulfillment.
Reka places her identity as an artist on hold because she keeps reliving the memory of her glory days as a painter during the Weimar Republic and what she lost arriving in the US as a refugee. She is unable to find work in her desired field and becomes bitter due to the circumstances and emptiness of her current life. Regaining her stolen sketches revitalizes her, and she picks up a paintbrush for the first time in decades. Claire has changed her name and transformed herself from the descendant of Polish immigrants, attempting to align with more American ideals. Her real identity is a secret to everyone in the Briar Club, and she conceals her complicated past, present thievery, and affair with Sydney. Even after her relationship with Sydney is on solid ground, she still must pass as a social secretary rather than as Sydney’s lover, which highlights the restrictive nature of the McCarthy era, where LGBTQ+ identity was scrutinized and could lead people to lose their livelihoods.
Of course, the most radical version of an American identity the text highlights is Grace. She passes flawlessly as a native-born despite initially coming to the country as a Russian spy to gather intel on the American flight program. Further, her attitudes and ideals are a closer match to the American ideals HUAC promotes. Ultimately, through the actions of the characters, the novel demonstrates that Navigating American Identities and Societal Restrictions Amid McCarthyism is more complicated than what initially meets the eye or what one projects to those around them—a symptom of the political and cultural context during the McCarthy era.
The Struggle for Freedom
On the surface, McCarthyism preaches the evils of communism because it seeks to suppress freedom. In reality, the US during the 1950s necessitated conformity to rigid cultural ideals that often conflicted with one’s best interests. Consequently, each member of the Briar Club is on a quest to assert their independence from various forms of restriction. Fliss has been indoctrinated with restrictive cultural standards of what it means to be a good mother. She must offer unconditional love and toil day and night to ensure her child’s happiness while her husband is away at war. Further, she is expected to wholeheartedly embrace the idea of becoming a mother multiple times in the future, despite the overwhelm she already feels with one child. Fliss’s desire to return to nursing and work on clinical trials for birth control pills demonstrates her aspirations, something women were often encouraged to stifle during the period. Her decision to work directly on contraceptive access—including supplying spermicide cream to Sydney to help her navigate family planning while in an abusive marriage—and her ability to agree with her husband that she does not want to have more children highlights her ability to counter the reproductive expectations that society placed on women at the time.
Nora initially has very rigid notions of right and wrong. She is taught to sacrifice for her family and put their needs ahead of her own, even though they rob and exploit her. Further, the line between cops and criminals must never be crossed. Her romance with Xavier is an act of rebellion against the restrictions her family and Irish American family places upon her. However, she reproaches herself for crossing that line. It takes a few more years before she is finally willing to assert her independence from the rules and allow her former gangster boyfriend back into her life. Bea is confident enough to break societal expectations to become a wife and mother to ensure her happiness, but she still feels boxed in. There is no place in the post-war US for professional female ball players. For years, Bea lacks professional fulfillment until she finds a job as a talent scout, valuing a rewarding career over settling down into a domestic life. Her assertion of freedom also includes the refusal to accept Harland’s multiple marriage proposals until she’s good and ready.
Claire breaks all the societal rules. She steals, works as a sex worker, and pursues a romance with a woman. However, these actions don’t ultimately indicate defiance but rather a conventional desire for security, as she grew up without financial security and familial support after her parents lost everything during the Great Depression and died soon after. It isn’t until Claire falls for Sydney that she achieves emotional liberation and is willing to sacrifice financial security for true love. Despite going to live with Sydney at the end of the novel, she must keep their romantic relationship secret from others, which demonstrates the ways LGBTQ+ relationships were stigmatized during the period.
Grace’s pursuit of freedom is the most dramatic of all. In escaping communism, she risks retaliation from her superiors. In passing as an American, she risks imprisonment as a communist. Grace’s past makes her acutely aware of what ideological restriction feels like, and she is willing to risk everything to gain her freedom, including killing in self-defense to protect her livelihood in the United States.
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