The Girls in the Garden: A Novel

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2016

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Part 1, Chapter 10

Part 1, Chapters 11-20

Part 2, Chapters 21-30

Part 2, Chapters 31-35

Part 3

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Themes

Relocation as Escape or Exile

Content Warning: The source text includes the assault of a minor, the death of a minor, suicide, substance overdose, and depictions of a schizophrenic episode.

Jewell explores the concept of home and the need for relocation through the Wild family and the Howes family. Some characters, such as the Wild family at the beginning of the novel, find themselves in Virginia Park to start over and escape their previous home, destroyed by Chris. Others are pushed away from familial groups or their sense of home in the form of rejection, such as Chris being unable to reconnect with his family during the novel and Grace being effectively pushed out of her community by Tyler’s violence. These characters all grapple with the definition of “home” and how Virginia Park, or their familial and social groups, fit into their lives. Relocation to or from “home,” as a means of escape or the result of societal exile, causes the characters to undergo an emotional transformation.

The Wild family begins the novel seeking an escape from their original family home. Chris, during a schizophrenic episode, “set fire to his children’s home without even knowing if they were in it or not” (71). After this event, but before the first chapter and the prologue, Chris is admitted to a psychiatric hospital. Clare, Pip, and Grace then attempt to find a new home in the Virginia Park community. Clare gets overwhelmed when she thinks about everything they lost in the fire, including diaries and her wedding dress: “It still made her want to cry whenever she thought about her old home” (153). The trauma of this loss affects her many months later and impacts her involvement in and relationships within the Virginia Park community.

The novel portrays the aftermath of the fire when Pip demands to see the burnt-out remains of their old home. This image haunts Grace. Right before Tyler drugs her, Grace thinks about “that small, dark flat that has never been her home, and then of her real home, which is carbon black and death shrouded” (382), clarifying the deep effect this event had on her. The attack further traumatizes Grace, exiling her from the Virginia Park community through Tyler’s violent rejection and the removal of a sense of communal safety. Clare and Chris find a new home by the time Grace is released from the hospital. The Wild family doesn’t fit in with the Virginia Park community, which can be contrasted with the Howes family.

The Howes family finds Virgina Park inviting, unlike many others who drift in and out of the community. For example, it is Gordon who leaves and comes back to the Virginia Park community only for medical treatment. He originally moved to be with his partner and her children overseas. He temporarily resides with Leo while he has foot surgery, and Clare thinks Gordon looks “[l]ike a deposed king” (229). He is no longer the most powerful patriarch, but an injured old man when relocated within the Virginia Park community. Only Leo, Adele, and their three children live in the Virginia Park community at the end of The Girls in the Garden, and Adele in particular vocalizes her love for the park and her understanding of its allure, even in light of the past murder that took place there. It is their permanent home, while other characters reside there only temporarily.

The Dual Nature of Green Spaces

Jewell also explores the dualities of Virginia Park, a private green space within central London, from the perspectives of the two families. The Virginia Crescent and Virginia Terrace Apartments surround a park that spans “[a]lmost three acres” (263), containing a playground, benches, a Rose Garden, and a Secret Garden. Jewell includes a map of the area at the beginning of The Girls in the Garden. She also describes it as a place where people of different socioeconomic classes live: “[N]o single type of person who lived here” (18). Instead of backyards, all the residents share Virginia Park. This diverse and communal environment has positive and negative qualities.

On the negative side of its dual nature, the park is haunted by the death of 15-year-old Phoebe. She was part of Leo’s generation and died many years before the Wild family moved into the Virginia Park community. However, Adele thinks that “Phoebe’s death [...] had just been one of those things, Nothing to do with the community or with the children. Just a wild child come to a sticky end” (199). Despite this past darkness, Adele views the park in a positive light. She believes it is a good place for her children to socialize because she homeschools them. The park serves an important social function for Willow, Catkin, and Fern. They are part of a friend group that also includes Tyler and Dylan. When the Wild family moves into the community, Adele’s daughters “felt the impact of Grace’s presence in the park” (402). Grace upsets the social order that had been established with Tyler as the leader. The positive social interactions become combative, and eventually violent, as Tyler and Grace vie for Dylan’s attention.

After Tyler attacks Grace, Adele maintains the opinion that the green space of the park is positive. She blames Cecelia’s poor parenting for Tyler’s actions, in addition to Phoebe’s death, and takes on the responsibility of parenting Tyler. Clare recognizes some of the positive qualities of the park, but Grace’s trauma causes Clare to categorize it as negative. Because she is a private person, Clare thinks the Virginia Park “community was small and incestuous” when she first arrives (147). She ends up there because it is what she can afford as a stay-at-home mom with savings from Chris’s income while he is in the hospital. Grace, and her grandmother, dislike the park, saying that it is “full of murderers” (14), from the beginning. By the end of the novel, Grace cannot step foot in the park or the apartments that surround it. Grace and Adele have steadfast opinions about the green space. While Grace consistently considers Virginia Park to be a dark and dangerous space, Adele considers it a space where community members can socialize and help one another.

Generational Trauma Within a Community

The third theme that Jewell addresses is how trauma is passed down over generations. Through the Rednough and Howes families, Jewell highlights the continuing of generational patterns and the breaking of these patterns, respectively. Ultimately, Jewell emphasizes the importance of self-awareness and independence from negative familial narratives.

The primary example of this is the Rednough family. Rhea tells Adele that Cecelia’s mother, Marian, traumatized Cecelia. It is discussed that if Marian had been a better parent, perhaps there wouldn’t have been the love triangle between Cecelia, Phoebe, and Leo. It is also rumored that Cecelia killed Phoebe due to her jealousy of Leo and Phoebe’s relationship but that Marian’s poor parenting was a contributing factor to Cecelia's sinister behavior. Phoebe’s death haunts the Virginia Park community. New residents live where she died: “A group of young mothers with their toddlers and babies was sitting there, in the very spot where Phoebe’s body had been found twenty-three years earlier” (206). Though the trauma of the past can perhaps be overcome in the following generations, this is not the case with the Rednough family. Cecelia continues the cycle, traumatizing her daughter with negligence and bad advice. Cecelia “spent her days caring for other people’s children, yet let her own go without lunch money or company” (345). She is a social worker, but much of her negligence comes from spending time with her boyfriend instead of at home being a responsible parent. When Cecelia is present, she advises Tyler to harm Grace. After Tyler tells Cecelia that Grace has stolen Dylan, Cecelia says, “Make her pay” (392).

Both Cecelia’s absence and presence are traumatizing for Tyler because Cecelia continues the patterns of her own mother. To break the cycle of generational trauma, Tyler needs outside intervention. Additionally, for years, Cecelia lied to Tyler, claiming that Leo was her father. This false narrative caused Tyler to be jealous of not only Grace’s relationship with Dylan, but also Grace’s relationship with Leo. Adele describes Tyler’s state of mind:

First Grace had taken Dylan from her. And now she was taking her fantasy father too. The broken child, daughter of a wife-beater and a negligent mother, she’d found her family out here, found her place in the world. And Grace had come and Grace had slowly dismantled it and how could a half-formed child such as Tyler cope with all of this? (387).

After Tyler drugs and assaults Grace, Adele invites Tyler to live with her, Leo, and their daughters. Adele believes a more positive environment is what Tyler needs, not legal punishment for her actions. Still, within the Howell family, Leo is accused of assaulting Grace and is assumed to have had a nefarious relationship with her. Most of this assumption is based on Leo’s father’s behavior, not Leo’s. Though Adele believes in the breaking of this generational narrative when it comes to Tyler, she finds herself suspicious of Leo, alongside many of the townspeople. Ultimately, however, it is revealed that he has not harmed or had an inappropriate relationship with Grace, demonstrating the possibility of breaking away from familial narratives.