55 pages • 1 hour read
Susan MeissnerA Fall of Marigolds
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2014A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary
him care for his patients. Her father says she was good at nursing because “[she] didn’t panic” (35). However, Clara really wanted to get out of Pennsylvania. She “wanted to be in the city,” and “[m]arriage to a Pennsylvania farmer wouldn’t take [her] there” (35). However, Edward’s death not only dashed her romantic hopes but also “stole” her “affinity for the wild and wonderful. The hospital was busy, but it was not wild, or wonderful” (36).
Clara manages to retrieve the pattern book for Andrew but mistakenly opens his wife’s trunk first, where she sees a book of poems by the 19th-century English romantic poet John Keats. Clara decides to take the book to Andrew as well as the pattern book she retrieves from his trunk. As she is hiding the books under her bed until she has time to take them to Andrew, papers fall out of the book of poetry: a certificate of annulment for the marriage between Lily and Andrew, with only Lily’s signature, and a letter from Lily, with a first line that reads “Dear Andrew, I hope in time you can find it possible to forgive me…” (41).
Chapter 5 Summary
Despite feelings of guilt at reading private letters, Clara reads the letter from Lily, which reveals she manipulated Andrew into marrying her so she could escape her abusive husband, Angus Ravenhouse. Lily writes, “[T]he beast I was forced to wed stole everything from me when my father died: my life, my father’s estate, and my father’s good name” (43). She married him in an attempt “to protect [her] mother from ruin and despair,” but her mother died “within weeks” of their marriage (43). She then married Andrew only to get away from Angus, and she had planned to run away as soon as she and Andrew arrived at Andrew’s brother’s home in New York.
Clara is appalled and decides to put the book back so that Andrew can discover it himself when he is released. She realizes that the only reason she took the book was out of some fantasy of helping Andrew heal, knowing that her “own hunger for meaning” had led her to “take the book, because [she] wanted to be the angel-nurse who helped Andrew find his way out of his in-between place” (46). Unfortunately, Lily and Andrew’s things are incinerated to prevent the spread of infection, so Clara cannot put the book back.
Chapter 6 Summary
This chapter begins with a description of scarlet fever and the insidious way it spreads: a “menacing bacterium, too tiny to see with your eyes, [that] finds its way to you from an avenue of exposure you aren’t even aware of. The minute it is inside, it attacks” (49). Despite this menace, Clara does not believe either Lily or Andrew’s things were capable of spreading the infection and is unconcerned that by opening Lily’s trunk she may have exposed herself to the disease.
She is tormented, however, by the realization that if she had not taken the book of poems, it would have been incinerated along with the letter from Lily and the certificate of annulment. Now, however, Clara must decide whether to tell Andrew the truth about his wife, or leave it be. She realizes she has “two choices: dispose of the book and its contents and let Andrew believe his dead wife loved him, or give Andrew the letter and let him grieve for having been cruelly wronged” (51). However, Clara realizes that Andrew himself might die of scarlet fever and decides not to do anything about the letter just yet. She tells Andrew that she will keep the pattern book while he is in isolation and promises to take it to his brother if he dies.
Chapters 4-6 Analysis
These chapters provide quite a bit of detail about Clara’s life, particularly her reasons for becoming a nurse. This sets her apart from other women of this era, for whom marriage and family were often prime considerations because of cultural notions of what women should desire and how they should behave. She claims to have no interest in the typical activities women engaged in at this time. She “didn’t paint and [she] didn’t arrange flowers, and needlepoint and sewing bored [her]” (35). She wanted adventure and to experience the world as “an immense, vibrant place” (35). However, Edward’s death takes this desire away from her. In the next two chapters, Clara’s description of Ellis Island as a hub of activity captures the reality of the massive European immigration the United States experienced between 1880 and 1920. Clara is working at Ellis Island during the peak of this period, which saw over 20 million immigrants enter the United States in the space of 40 years.
Finally, her turmoil about whether to tell Andrew the truth about Lily expands the theme of love at first sight and adds the idea that information can be a burden. Clara’s anger at herself for reading the letter reflects her anxiety over whether Andrew has the right to this information about his wife, or whether it is kinder to leave him in ignorance. She is drawn to Andrew because she sees her feelings for Edward paralleled by his story: Andrew must have thought he loved Lily to marry her so quickly, but Lily was only using Andrew; she did not love him in return. Clara worries that she has similarly romanticized her feelings for Edward as she will never know if he loved her.
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By Susan Meissner
