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 4-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary
Lo wakes up in a haze and makes herself some coffee. Judah is still asleep in bed. Lo brings Judah a cup of coffee and wakes him. He pulls her into bed, and the two share a tender moment. Then, a misunderstanding between the pair leads to a small fight:Judah apologizes for not being there when Lo was attacked, and Lo gets upset that he is never home. Judah talks about making the relationship more serious, and Lo accuses him of wanting her to wait for him at home while he goes on dangerous, overseas trips as a foreign correspondent. The argument ends with Lo packing her bag and making a dramatic statement about wanting the relationship to end, because it has no future. She slams the door and leaves for her train.
Chapter 5 Summary
Lo gets on the train, reading about the history of the captain of the Aurora from her press kit to keep her mind off of Judah and their prior argument. She learns that Lord Richard Bullmer is a self-made man: he attended a private school but when his father died, his family estate was left in shambles and he was homeless at 18 years old. He worked his way through college and ultimately became rich enough to court his wife, Anne Lyngstad, an heiress to a large fortune.
After the train, a cab takes an exhausted Lo to the port, where she notices that the ship is much smaller than she anticipated. Climbing aboard, she is greeted by Camilla Lidman, guest manager, who welcomes her aboard in a way that seems almost eerily gracious. Another passenger, Lederer, comes up behind her, and makes a brazen comment to Camilla. After witnessing this interaction, Lo is given champagne and her porter Josef leads her to Room 9, her suite. As she walks, she notices the ship's elaborate crystal chandelier, among other fineries. Her room is very comfortable, with an enormous bed and balcony edged in glass so she can see the ocean. The chapter ends as the ship sets sail into the North Sea. Lo checks her phone one last time for a message from Judah. She hasn't received one.
The section ends with two emails to Lo: one from Judah and the other from her office. Both emails imply that Lo hasn't been responding or communicating with the world outside the ship for a few days–Judah is worried, and Lo's boss, Rowan, is concerned about the fact that Lo hasn't filed any copy since she departed.
Chapters 4-5 Analysis
Ware builds suspense as she ends the first section of the novel in a number of ways. Lo leaves London without Judah as a tether to return home to, and the emails at the end of the section, in Chapter 5, make it clear that Lo has either been compromised in some way, or is purposefully ignoring emails from the mainland. As the suspense builds, there is a sense of foreboding–the fact that the section ends with the boat setting off into the North Sea implies a loss of power, or loss of self, which has been alluded to previously.
The luxuriousness of the cruise liner plays a similar role in these chapters. There is a sense of disparity between Lo's psychological discomfort and the physical comfort of the ship itself. Lo mentions that despite the comfortable bed, she can't sleep–she might miss dinner and ruin her chance to network, thereby getting off on the wrong foot. This is a mundane moment, but it alludes to a larger theme of being unable to give in to comfort, or rest, because of factors that are out of Lo's control. Sleep is frequently used in the first section of the book to symbolize this inability to find comfort; Lo's insomnia is both a symptom of her trauma and a symbol of her inability to find rest or peace in the world.
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By Ruth Ware
