58 pages • 1 hour read
Ruth WareThe Woman in Cabin 10
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2016A 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 32-34Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 32 Summary
Lo opens the door into the lounge, and is blinded by the shimmering light bouncing off the crystal chandelier. She mocks its garish wealth. Lo seeks out the Bullmer cabin, where Carrie has told her that her clothing and Anne Bullmer's wallet full of cash and identification are stowed, but keeps getting turned around in the hallways. Finally, she finds the door and changes into leggings and a neutral top, slipping the kimono on over it. She searches for Anne Bullmer's wallet, and in the process finds a hand gun hidden under scarves in the dresser drawer. She continues to search, and eventually finds the wallet in the third desk drawer. Lo prepares to leave, but as she opens the cabin door, she hears a flirtatious staff member chatting with Lord Bullmer in the hall. Lo slips back inside and hides on the veranda, praying that Lord Bullmer doesn't come outside.
Lo waits on the veranda for hours. Lord Bullmer comes inside, turns on the TV, and calls for Anne. He remains in the room alone, watching television, until nearly 1am. Lo wonders how she will escape, even if Bullmer does fall asleep, when she hears the engine purr to life. She becomes more desperate to escape the boat. She eyes the glass divider, and finally removes Anne's kimono to climb it, reassuring herself that if Carrie could do it, she can, too. She climbs, but her hands slip and soon Lo is plummeting into the black fjords.
Chapter 33 Summary
Lo feels the current dragging her under. Before she can realize what has happened, she is deep under the water, floundering, praying for air. Lo believes she will die, but refuses to resign herself to death. She fights the current, finally spotting what appears to be moonlight at the surface. She comes up for air near the hull of the boat, screaming from the desperation and pain in her lungs. Lo sees lights from the nearby quay, and swims toward them. Though it seems to take ages, she finally manages to clamber up the rusted ladder and find herself on the dock. As she staggers to shore, she hears the Aurora's engine pick up. The boat floats away from the dock, and Lo staggers to the only open establishment in town, a small hotel nearby.
Inside the hotel, Lo is given a coffee and a warm blanket and seated in a chair in the lounge. She looks out over the water from the veranda while the staff try to figure out what to do with her. She has told them as much as she has felt safe revealing, giving them Anne Bullmer's passport, which miraculously has stayed in her pants pocket.
Finally, a manager arrives, his hair ruffled, and asks her who she is. She asks to call the police, and struggles to explain herself to the staff, who speak only broken and basic English. The manager reassures her and asks her to wait, and then calls someone from the hotel phone. She hears him talking, and then hears him thank someone named Richard on the phone. As she watches, the Aurora pauses, and then begins to turn around. Terrified, and realizing that Carrie was right to warn her away from revealing too much to anyone in town, Lo slips out the veranda door and escapes.
Chapter 34 Summary
Lo runs away from the small Norwegian town as fast as she can manage. She runs until the lights from the town are faint, and keeps running. She realizes that no one is nearby–as the hotel manager had revealed, the police are many hours away. As she glances up, she thinks it must be nearing dawn, but realizes she is actually seeing the aurora borealis.
A car comes speeding down the mountain road, and comes to a screaming halt a few feet away. Lo dives into the ditch, which is deeper than she anticipated, and she slips, wrenching her ankle and cutting herself on the sharp rocks. A man gets out of the car, and calls out. Lo responds with a cry for help, and a large, blonde man appears at the edge of the ditch, his hair framed by the moonlight. Lo knows it isn't Richard, but hesitates to trust the man standing before her. She decides to let him help her out of the ditch, if only so she can more easily run away. The man finally hoists Lo out, and asks for her name.
As the man asks, Lo realizes that he is a policeman. His car is marked, and he has a holster which she initially believes is a gun, but actually holds his radio. His radio buzzes, and she hears him say her name: Laura Blacklock. Lo isn't sure whether she is making a horrible mistake, and she feels the urge to run–she flees the scene, disappearing on foot down the rocky hill deep into the heart of the fjord.
Chapters 32-34 Analysis
Ware is interested in the idea of wealth and illusion, which comes to a head as Lo returns to the lounge from the bottom of the boat and is struck immediately by the garishness of the crystal chandelier, which nearly blinds her. The idea that this chandelier is decorating a boat that contains so much evil is ironic to Lo, who sees the décor for what it truly is–a elaborate ruse to disguise the gross dealings of the rich and powerful.
This becomes even more clear when Lo begins to examine the illusion of safety and its relation to power, as she sits in the Norwegian hotel after battling the current. She believes that she is safe, but soon learns that Richard's influence extends farther than she ever imagined. This is also true of the police officer that finds her on the road leaving town, who at first appears to be a beacon of hope, but is ultimately just another power man who seeks to harm Lo. Ware plays with the idea of safety and masculinity in each of these sections, and complicates the idea of who is good and who is evil.
The motif of drowning also comes to a climax in this scene, when Lo slips from the deck of the ship trying to climb over the glass barrier between one cabin and the next to escape, and tumbles into the sea. Ware makes an interesting connection between the lights of the moon at the surface of the water, which guide Lo toward the surface, and the lights in her vision, which occur during her panic attacks. The association of drowning with Lo's mental illness, and her powerlessness, are in their most complete form in this scene, where she must battle both her panic and the physical current to live.
Finally, Ware makes a symbolic move that speaks to Lo's resilience and self-empowerment when she runs from the policeman. Lo makes the choice to slide down hill, toward the water, into the dark rubble of the fjord. In this way, she descends, almost as if going into the underworld, in order to save herself. Though in earlier sections Lo was petrified of the idea of being pulled down, in this moment she finds power in her choice to escape by descending the hill. In this way, she finds her own agency and rescues herself.
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By Ruth Ware
