46 pages • 1 hour read
Kathleen RooneyLillian Boxfish Takes a Walk
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2017A 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 15-19Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 15 Summary: “Nature in the Roar”
At her baby shower in 1942, Lillian is crying. Before this pregnancy, she has lost three pregnancies, and she is worried that she might be too old or career-obsessed to have a baby. Now, she will be one of the women who buys the things being advertised, rather than the one doing the advertising. Though Chester promises to send her freelance work, she knows that a certain era of her life is ending.
She and Max name the baby Massimiliano Gianluca Caputo, Jr. Lillian loves Johnny more than anything but has no desire for another baby; she feels that motherhood is both banal and hectic. She remarks that it has turned her into one of the women for whom she has always had little patience: obsessed with their baby’s every move and jealous when their husband leaves for work each morning.
Max is drafted into the army and spends 1943-1945 in Italy, leaving Lillian and Johnny on their own. Lillian writes to Max often but seldom gets satisfying replies. When he returns, he takes a job working for the government and is often traveling. Lillian and Helen collaborate on a book for new mothers, and she continues her freelance work. The family spends time together and takes vacations, but Lillian feels that she and her relationship with Max will never be the same now that they have had a child.
Chapter 16 Summary: “Back to the Stars”
Lillian takes a detour so that she can look at the Hudson River. The neighborhood is in bad shape, and she reminds herself not to be afraid. A security guard yells at her, assuming that she is going to jump into the river to die by suicide. Lillian begins asking him about himself, and he reveals that his name is Stu and he hates his job. The job that Lillian says she hated most was writing half-finished limericks so that a magazine could run a finish-the-poem contest. She recites some on the spot, making Stu come up with the closing lines. She compliments him on his poetry and bids him goodnight, saying that people are expecting her, which is “[n]ot exactly true, not exactly a lie” (178).
Chapter 17 Summary: “Why People Do Things”
In a flashback, Lillian and Max sail to Italy for their honeymoon, and everything is picture-perfect. Lillian keeps a journal about her happiness. Throughout the trip, Max continually suggests that they buy a house in the New Jersey suburbs, a request that Lillian knows will make her unhappy but feels unable to refuse. They buy the house, but after two unhappy months, they decide to get a new apartment in Murray Hill.
Chapter 18 Summary: “Sulfur and Molasses”
Lillian continues her walk and realizes that the rap song she heard earlier is back in her head. She is both happy and sad that “this is where playful language is cherished now” (189), because as people got richer, they forgot the pleasures of the things that could be had for free. As she reflects on how the city has changed from the time her Aunt Sadie lived there, she finds herself in front of St. Vincent’s hospital. She recalls the tragedies it has seen and its connections to the city’s history, including the poets Edna St. Vincent Millay and Dylan Thomas.
Her thoughts are interrupted by a woman called Maritza, who is about to have a baby, standing at the doors. Lillian suggests that they go inside, but Maritza insists that they wait for her boyfriend, Luis, because the hospital staff might not let him find her since he is not her husband. She wonders if this makes Lillian think she is a “slut,” an idea which appalls Lillian, though the word itself shocks her. Inside, Lillian deals efficiently with the hospital staff, prompting Maritza to ask if she is an angel. When Luis arrives, Lillian says goodbye, telling Maritza never to worry about what someone’s grandmother might think about her choices. Being connected to the baby’s birth gives her a sense of investment in the future, though she notes that she has little of her own left.
Chapter 19 Summary: “A Horrid Little Ghost”
In 1955, Lillian is admitted to a sanitarium and diagnosed with depression and alcohol use disorder after a suicide attempt. Lillian stays at Silver Hill treatment center from February until June, receiving a mixture of therapies, drugs, and electric shock treatment. She is grateful for the treatments, she says, because they work and they erase her awful memories of the person she had been: a “counterfeit” Lillian Boxfish who tried to kill her and was unable to find joy or beauty in anything.
Helen visits, and her company is restorative. Lillian describes her feelings and how her relationship with Max had been only a part of it. She laughs when Helen asks if Max has been to visit. Lillian says that his only contact was a request to speed up the divorce proceedings. They spend the day together, and after Helen leaves, Lillian realizes that she forgot to ask her about all the wonderful things happening in her own life.
As soon as she feels better, she begins asking the doctors to go home. She is able to cope with Max and the divorce. In the years that follow, she develops a “grudging admiration” for Julia’s motherliness. On her last night at the sanitarium, Lillian takes a walk and the moon reminds her of Artie’s alternate title for her book. She wonders if her life might have turned out differently had she chosen that title, but she knows that there is no going back.
Chapters 15-19 Analysis
Lillian’s response to marriage and motherhood in many ways includes admitting feelings to herself that undermine patriarchal standards. The shift in her identity is not something that anyone has prepared her for, and Lillian comments that “I was a novelty, not a paragon. A freak. The exception” (161). Her love for Johnny is conflicted by what she perceives to be the drudgery and thanklessness of motherhood. Max’s long absence during the war and then traveling for work compound this feeling; his role in the war, in particular, conveys an image of hyper-masculinity which Lillian does not reflect with hyper-femininity. Rooney reinserts the imagery of the rug that first brought the couple together when Lillian notes that this “was not an abrupt or a radical change, just a different texture in the weave of our lives” (168). Lillian’s encounter with Maritza illustrates that little has changed about the way women face pressure to live up to the expectations of others when having children, and she shares the one thing that she has learned from motherhood, which is that the best course is to ignore those expectations.
These chapters directly address the impact of expectations about marriage and motherhood—both society’s and her own—on Lillian’s mental health. Her description of her stay at Silver Hill is both thorough and opaque; she describes her electric shock treatments in detail but still does not reveal the precise event that sent her there. Her comment that she was “the victim, and the murderer” (198), hints at her near-death by suicide but suggests that she is not ready to confront or share this fully. Lillian’s time at the sanitarium also has structural significance in the novel since it slows the pace and generates a moment of taking stock, as she notes the people she can rely on and those she can’t. The closing lines of several chapters underscore this sense of taking stock, contrasting memories of the past with the changes of the future, as she notes that “I have so little future left. And so much past” (196), and “I had been who I had been, and so I largely remained” (216).
In addition to exploring the ways marriage and motherhood changed Lillian’s self-image, these chapters further develop The Power of Memory Versus the Inevitability of Change, as the frequency with which Lillian moves between past and present increases and the chapters shorten. Outside St. Vincent’s hospital, she thinks about its constancy amid change in the city. Rooney strengthens the connection Lillian feels to New York City by personifying the city more as a friend and a mirror of Lillian than a place, noting that “[a]ny day you walk down the street and find nothing new but nothing missing counts as a good day in a city you love. People are forever tearing something down, replacing something irreplaceable” (172). As Lillian’s identity is built figuratively upon her memories, the city is built literally upon its past. Standing on a construction site, she remembers, “this place is called Battery Park for the old artillery batteries they built to defend the city” (175), noting that the new Battery Park City will be constructed upon materials excavated to build the World Trade Center. Several chapters earlier, Lillian muses on the fate of the WTC’s Twin Towers and how she would feel if they were to disappear from the sky. This novel was published after the September 11 attacks that resulted in their collapse, and Rooney’s use of dramatic irony emphasizes how the future can change in ways that may seem unfathomable in the present.
