48 pages • 1 hour read
Jane SmileyPerestroika In Paris
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2, Chapters 12-14Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2, Chapter 12 Summary
At New Year, Madame realizes that Etienne’s future is uncertain because she has made no preparations for him after her death. She wants to talk to him about it but does not wish to ruin his happy mood and decides to tell him another day. Etienne sits astride Paras and knows he wants to ride but fears making the dream a reality.
While Etienne reads in the library, Paras talks to Kurt about her life as a racehorse and why she never had rat friends before. Kurt rides Paras’s head back to the grand salon and, though he does not enjoy the ride, he knows doing so is his best hope of escaping the house and finding a mate.
Raoul acknowledges that he is old and will soon need to surrender his perch above Benjamin Franklin’s head to a younger bird. That night, he travels with Paras to Anais’s bakery. The baker believes Paras is a spiritual visitation rather than a real horse; when she sees Raoul with Paras, she thinks he is the spirit’s animal companion. She worries that she is getting old and lonely, so she enjoys the visits from Paras even though she thinks Paras is not real.
Etienne and Madame go to the market, and Frida follows to protect them. While they walk, Frida smells a rat and finds Kurt inside the grocery trolley. She allows him to stay and protects him, even knocking over the trolley to let him out and walk under her. Kurt is amazed by the outside world and how much bigger it is than he imagined. A gendarme sees Kurt walking under Frida and wonders if he indeed saw what he thought he did.
Part 2, Chapter 13 Summary
The weather turns warmer, and Pierre has to maintain the lawns so nobody walks through muddy water. He occasionally thinks about Paras but keeps busy enough to remember her infrequently. When he leaves his work shed, he sees Frida walk by with her shopping bag and laughs—accepting a dog with a shopping bag is easy after accepting a horse in the middle of Paris.
Madame opens the windows and lets the spring air in. Though her prior dread for Etienne’s situation fades, she still considers what will happen to them both. Orphanages during her childhood were not well-maintained places that properly cared for children, and homes for older people may not let her keep her independence. Her memories blend the past and the present—remembering wars and other times of struggle for children—and she worries again about what the future holds for herself and Etienne.
Meanwhile, Etienne takes Paras for his first ride around the grand salon. She takes the circuit he creates at a leisurely trot to let him adjust to riding her. Before long, Madame leaves her room and Etienne takes her to the kitchen while allowing Paras outside. He worries because he forgot to feed Paras, but Paras is not concerned because she got good oats and feed from Anais, and the grass tastes good. At the pond, Nancy worries about the rising waters and takes comfort that Frida left—she fears dogs will snap with no cause.
Frida’s dog behaviors such as hiding objects, claiming ownership of them, her uncontrollable tail, and her dependence on smell, confuse Paras who now sees these more regularly as they live together. Raoul plans to leave his perch above Benjamin Franklin’s head for a quieter location. Madeline and Delphine, Para’s owner and trainer, also adjust to their new lives. Madeline leaves horseracing after losing Paras and plans to open a local museum. Delphine continues to train horses but wants to solve the missing Paras mystery. She roams to a different part of town than usual and stops at a bakery, where she encounters Anais. Anais plans to ask about horses, but Delphine cuts her off and Anais keeps her questions to herself.
Part 2, Chapter 14 Summary
Etienne progresses from riding Paras around the grand salon to riding her around the courtyard. While he rides, he considers the various animals that are now part of his life and how he feels about living in seclusion from humans, which suits him well enough. He wants to follow Paras at night to see where she goes but does not because Paras indicates she does not want him to.
Kurt spends time following Madame around the house; he ventures close to her frequently to see if she has a smell. While Kurt is in the kitchen with Madame, Etienne comes in and sees him; the boy guides Madame out of the kitchen and into the grand salon before returning, holding Kurt, and telling Kurt how silky his fur is. Kurt, who has never known human acceptance because Conrad fears everything outside the house (and many things in it), feels comfort that Etienne accepts him, though he knows he can never Conrad about this interaction.
Jerome stays out of other peoples’ business: As a Paris shop owner, he sees many weird things and learns not to question them. So, when school officials overhear him talking about a boy named Etienne to his neighbor, they question him because no Etienne attends the school. While he lets the schoolteachers conduct their business, he sends a note with Etienne’s groceries to warn him about the questions. In response, Etienne plans to avoid the school’s attention by sending Frida to shop alone.
Paras visits Nancy to see her new ducklings. Sid has not returned yet but will soon; Nancy worries because she currently cares for six hatchlings alone. After their conversation, Paras ventures toward the racetrack, feeling pulled to return. She holds back because she recognizes she is older and no longer the racehorse she once was. A car nearly runs her over, which solidifies her decision not to return. She returns to the de Mornay house and stays awake until Etienne gives her breakfast.
Pierre and Anais meet incidentally and discuss the horse they both experience. They take relief that the horse exists and is not a figment of their imaginations.
Part 2, Chapters 12-14 Analysis
Part 2 opens with Smiley using the aging characters of Madame and Raoul to reverse the dichotomy she has previously established between humans and animals. This is essential to the allegorical nature of the novel, specifically the use of Animals as a Vehicle for Commentary on Human Life. Until now, humans have been portrayed mostly as lazy and self-absorbed—with characters like Jerome, Anais, and Etienne being exceptions to the rule—while animals are considered to have a deeper understanding. The contrast appears when examining an evening in Madame’s mind with an evening in Raoul’s. The new year approaches and Madame reflects on what she wants from her life. She observes that what most bothered her was “vanity […] until she lay down in her bed at the end of the day and her real concern hit her—yes, she wasn’t going to live forever, and what in the world would happen to Etienne?” (157). Madame can only recognize her true desires when she lies alone in bed—when Raoul observes humans being at their worst because they isolate themselves and sleep weirdly. However, Smiley exposes Madame’s internal monologues about her life to portray humans' potential for kindness. Rather than portraying Madame as vain, Smiley shows how she uses her isolation time to worry about Etienne and wants to make plans to secure his future. As narrative time moves forward, so does the novel’s portrayal of human frailty and resilience.
In contrast to Madame, Raoul’s age makes him possessive. When Smiley first introduces him, Raoul scoffs at ownership. However, he does not wish to relinquish his position above Benjamin Franklin’s head. The perch over Benjamin Franklin’s head symbolizes social status; by refusing to surrender his perch, Raoul also refuses to relinquish his social status among his peers. Where Madame’s private moments demonstrate the contrast between her public vanity and private selflessness, Raoul’s private moments demonstrate the opposite—at the end of the day, Raoul is a vain bird. Despite his assurances that birds, and animals in general, are less vain than humans, Smiley juxtaposes Raoul and Madame both publicly and privately to demonstrate how private and public views do not always align; this serves as a cautionary tale about appearances and not trusting solely what a person displays for everyone.
Chapter 12, the longest chapter in the section, also expands on the theme of The Universal Longing for Freedom and Belonging. To prepare for leaving the house, Kurt takes a moment to ride on Paras’s head. When he disembarks, “he decided never to do that again [...] But he knew he would, that sitting on her head was, perhaps, his best bet for getting out into the world and finding his doe, his desired mate” (161). To accomplish this, Kurt must overcome the massive obstacle of the structure that contains him: The house symbolizes oppression and confinement, and to escape the home is to escape confinement and acquire the freedom Kurt desires. Part of escaping the house is overcoming fear; by incorporating this, Smiley extends the theme’s cautionary tale. She claims there will be times of fear when changing systems, either personal or societal, but that people like Kurt must do the things that frighten them to achieve the freedom and belonging everyone yearns for.
Finally, Smiley returns to the genre conventions of magical realism by allowing Raoul to travel with Paras when she receives oats from Anais. When Anais heard Paras’s distant whinny, she “decided that Paras was a spiritual embodiment of some sort—one result of her very religious upbringing was that, although she rejected doctrine, she didn’t mind visitations” (165). Anais believes that Paras is a supernatural entity visiting her and that offering oats to the entity will improve her standing in life. One of the agreed-upon elements of magical realism is the inclusion of magic within the real world. Smiley challenges that position by incorporating a moment when something is real but a character believes it is magic. The novel raises a question about belief and whether belief makes something real. In doing so, the novel explores the rigid nature of human rationality and the alternative value of emotional belief and trust, demonstrated by both Anais and Pierre. This episode allows the end of the narrative to reward these unusual humans for their animal-like trust in experiences that they cannot explain.
