56 pages • 1 hour read
Kate Quinn, Janie ChangThe Phoenix Crown: A Novel
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Prologue-Part 1, Chapter 10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: “Act I”
Prologue Summary: “Summer 1911”
In London, Alice Eastwood visits the Kew Gardens. The director there asks if she’ll be returning to her position as the “curator of botany” (1) at the California Academy of the Sciences. Alice thinks back on the 1906 earthquake and isn’t sure she has the heart to return. They talk about the Queen of the Night, a flower that only blooms for one night. After she walks outside, she sits on a bench and sees a newspaper with an article reporting that the phoenix crown has been found. She sends three telegraphs about this news.
Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary: “April 4, 1906”
Opera singer Gemma Garland tells a fellow train passenger that she is headed to San Francisco. The woman, a Flying Roller (a fundamentalist Christian group), rants about the sinful city and tries to convert Gemma. When Gemma admits to being an opera singer, the woman leaves Gemma alone and moves to another car. Gemma thinks about losing her parents and living in an orphanage. She also thinks about her artist friend Nellie, who was her roommate in New York before moving to San Francisco.
When Gemma arrives in San Francisco, she can’t afford a horse-drawn cab and is left on a huge hill with her luggage. An old Chinese man, Old Kow, runs into her with his pushcart. Gemma offers to pay for the use of the pushcart, and Old Kow’s assistant translates between English and Chinese. Gemma can’t determine the translator’s gender, but she is later revealed to be a woman named Suling. When Gemma compliments her English, Suling says she was born in the US. In the Nob Hill boarding house, Gemma meets Alice, and they talk about Gemma’s bird, Toscanini. However, Gemma discovers that Nellie has left. Gemma arranges to rent Nellie’s room.
Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary: “April 5, 1906”
Suling leaves the home she shares with her Third Uncle, who is addicted to opium, and heads to the Palace of Endless Joy, a brothel. She walks through Chinatown and into Hing Chong Tailors. She sews for them as a cover for her trips to the brothel. Madame Ning, the brothel’s proprietor, was Suling’s mother’s best friend as well as her employer. Suling’s parents died eight months prior to this visit. She tells Madam Ning that the arrival of her cousins means that she’ll have to stop working in her parent’s laundry—poorly run by Third Uncle—and marry Dr. Ouyang. Ning thinks it is a good match because the doctor frequently visited Suling’s mother at the brothel.
Suling disagrees and considers going to the Mission Home, but she realizes that she would also be married off there. She is in love with a white person she calls Reggie (actually Gemma’s friend Nellie, though this information is not revealed until much later in the book), though Reggie recently cut off contact with her without explanation. Madam Ning calls Reggie a “white devil” (30), arguing that Reggie exoticized Suling and was only interested in her for sex. She compares Reggie to the white police sergeant with whom she has sex in exchange for his keeping the police away from her establishment. After talking with Madam Ning, Suling teaches a sewing class at the Mission Home. When she gets home, her uncle says the fortune teller has picked a day for her wedding to Dr. Ouyang.
Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary
Gemma visits the Grand Opera House and sees Nellie’s work on the frescos. One of the muses looks like Alice. She meets a repetiteur (a coach or tutor for opera singers) named George Serrano, who tells her that Nellie left before finishing her work. He lets her on the stage, and she thinks about singing in her church choir growing up. After she sings, a man named Henry Thornton compliments her, saying he recognizes her from a performance in New York. Henry jokingly warns her to stay away from him, but invites her to dinner at the best restaurant in the city the next day. She hesitates, but he assures her that he is not married and that the dinner is to discuss a business opportunity. Gemma, who is broke, relents and agrees to meet him in order to get a meal.
Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary: “April 6, 1906”
While her uncle plays mah-jongg, Suling dresses as a boy to make deliveries with Old Kow. He is excited about her upcoming wedding, but she doubts his ability to run the family business without her. Third Uncle has already almost destroyed the business—only family members and people with opium addictions work for him. Suling misses Reggie and has started saving money to leave. The laundry clients complain about the work Suling’s employees do, but they praise Suling’s work. When white clients praise Suling’s English, she feels exasperated and says, “I was born here” (50), as she did when Gemma made the same remark.
Eventually, Suling makes a delivery to Henry in his octagonal house in Nob Hill. She thinks about meeting Reggie in secret there and is hurt that Reggie left without a word to her. She doesn’t know what happened. Laundry done by her uncle’s employees gets complaints, while her work is praised, again. Henry has her take a message to Madam Ning, requesting some of her girls for an event. Suling thinks back on the first time he asked for the girls: the girls just served drinks, while Suling translated. Henry called her Susie, and they saw his phoenix crown. She met Reggie for the first time that night.
In the present, Henry shows Suling the silk roses she made for Reggie. Henry asks her for 25 more flowers and offers a high price for them. She agrees and he lends her some drawings to use in her pattern.
Part 1, Chapter 5 Summary
Gemma rejects Alice’s invitation to sing at the boarding house gatherings, recalling her former friends who abandoned her. Alice compliments the corseted outfit Gemma wears to meet Henry. At the Palace Grill, Henry tells Gemma about his octagonal house and kingfisher feathers used in Chinese jewelry, as well as his jade charm and Queen of the Night plant. Henry is an orphan, as is Gemma, though Gemma initially denies being one. Though she is not married, she is not a virgin, and she has been hurt by past lovers, which makes her wary. Henry asks why she isn’t a star, and she replies that she is still young for an opera singer.
Henry, whose hand is visibly scarred, becomes briefly upset when a waiter sets a dish on fire. After he admits he was injured in the Park Avenue Hotel Fire, Gemma admits to being an orphan. She also talks about her migraines interfering with her career, comparing her vulnerability with his reaction to fire. He invites her to be the guest of honor and offers to pay her to sing at a party of his in front of important opera people. She agrees, but he chides her for agreeing so readily, telling her that she should ask for more money. They agree on triple his original price.
Part 1, Chapter 6 Summary: “April 7, 1906”
Suling thinks back on meeting Alice at one of Henry’s parties. Suling is impressed at Alice’s position, and Alice is impressed with Suling’s silk flowers. Alice invites Suling to the California Academy of Sciences to discuss making some silk flowers for the museum. When Suling arrives, she initially encounters racist guards, but eventually gets to Alice’s office. Alice seems to understand that Suling dresses in men’s clothing to avoid sexist violence alongside racial discrimination. When Alice realizes the Academy’s employees are racist, she has Suling meet her at the boardinghouse. Alice hires Suling to make scientifically correct flowers for the museum and convinces the landlady to use Suling’s family’s laundry service.
When Alice hears that Henry has hired Suling to make Queen of the Night flowers, she surmises that Henry must have one of these rare plants. Alice offers to help Suling get a job in a fashion house in New York. The offer appeals to Suling, as she is eager to avoid her arranged marriage and escape her memories of Reggie. Suling remembers showing Reggie around Chinatown and teaching Reggie Chinese phrases. Reggie was Henry’s latest artist protege, and she wonders if Henry sent Reggie away. As Suling leaves the boarding house, she hears Gemma sing, but she doesn’t have time to stay and listen due to her work schedule.
Part 1, Chapter 7 Summary: “April 8, 1906”
After rehearsing with George, Gemma books him to accompany her at Henry’s party. She enjoys his company and is intrigued by his stories of studying music in Buenos Aires, but she won’t go on a lunch date with him. As they finish up, she starts getting a migraine. There is a package for her at the opera house from Nellie. When Gemma gets to the boardinghouse, she rejects the landlady’s invitation to sing for the residents. In her room, Gemma opens the package to find a drawing of a “Chinese boy and a Chinese girl” (97), along with a letter from Nellie, who has left San Francisco for an artistic opportunity in Colorado.
While Gemma lies in bed, in horrible pain, she thinks about how her migraines have interfered with her career. Because of them, she added her agent to her bank account, and he cleared out her savings when she was sick. The company in New York fired her for missing her performance that night. Gemma wishes she could tell Nellie about this in person. She worries that if she writes about it in a letter, Nellie won’t fully understand. Gemma believes she can only depend on her voice.
Part 1, Chapter 8 Summary: “April 9, 1906”
Suling and other women get ready for Henry’s party. Meanwhile, Madame Ning entertains the sergeant. At the octagonal house, Suling and the others serve drinks and food as Henry introduces Gemma. Suling is impressed with Gemma’s singing, which causes everyone to stop talking and give her a standing ovation. After the performance, Suling looks at the phoenix crown and a dragon robe. Alice comes into the room and admires the Queen of the Night flower. When Henry comes in, he says he wants Gemma to perform in the dragon robe, but it is damaged.
Alice tells Henry that Suling can fix it. When she confirms this, her voice causes Henry to recognize her as the laundry delivery boy. He says he would rather have her work on the robe than the silk flowers and asks her to name her price. Alice says Suling is worth $160, and Henry agrees to pay her that in daily installments over eight days. Suling will use the money to escape her arranged marriage.
Part 1, Chapter 9 Summary
Gemma walks Alice to the door at the end of the party, and Alice compliments her on choosing a patron with such an amazing botanical collection. Gemma turns down Alice’s offer to share a cab and instead meets up with George, who compliments Gemma’s singing before leaving. As she walks through the house, Gemma sees a clerk hiding a key to Henry’s office for another clerk while Suling looks for a ring. Watching Suling, Gemma recalls scrabbling for her things after being thrown out of her New York apartment when she asked for an extension on the rent. Feeling sympathetic, she helps Suling search and finds Reggie’s ring.
Henry pays Gemma for the performance, and together they look at his collection of Chinese objects. He shows her the phoenix crown and asks her to wear it. She declines, and he offers to serve as her patron, promising her success and job security. Gemma kisses him, and he says she doesn’t have to sleep with him in exchange for his patronage. She replies that she wants to, and he asks her what she wants in exchange. She asks to keep her room at the boarding house in addition to a suite in his octagon house, a voice teacher, a daily pianist for rehearsing, and a starring role that he is to purchase for her. He asks if she’ll stay with him when the Met travels on, and she agrees so long as he arranges concerts for her in San Francisco. He agrees and they have sex. Afterwards, Gemma smokes Henry’s opium while he performs oral sex on her.
Part 1, Chapter 10 Summary: “April 10, 1906”
Suling recalls working on a dragon robe with her mother a few years ago. She buys supplies and goes to Henry Thornton’s mansion. Mrs. MacNeil shows Suling to her workroom, complete with a private bath and snacks. A maid rushes in and announces that Gemma’s luggage is arriving. Suling changes out of her men’s clothes and starts working on the robe. Hours later, she finishes her work and takes some ribbon home to embroider. After five days, Alice visits Suling and makes sure she is getting paid daily. Alice also offers to connect Suling with a fashionable friend in New York as a foot in the door of the fashion industry. The next day, Suling buys a train ticket to New York and sees the opera singer Caruso arrive.
Prologue-Part 1, Chapter 10 Analysis
The authors of The Phoenix Crown, Kate Quinn and Janie Chang, begin at the end of the novel’s timeline, in 1911, as Alice Eastwood looks back, from a position of peace and safety, on the tumultuous events of 1906. This brief prologue, narrated in a third-person limited style from Alice’s perspective, establishes the importance and the dramatic nature of the events about to be told.
Act I takes place in 1906, and is the largest section of the novel (divided into three parts in this guide). The novel comes full circle, back to 1911, at the end of the Entr’acte (Part 4). In Act I, chapters begin with the date when new days begin. These chapters also include a countdown to the earthquake that serves as the novel’s climactic event: “Thirteen days, fourteen hours, fifty-two minutes before the San Francisco Earthquake” (7). This countdown serves two purposes—it helps to keep the timeline clear in the reader’s mind, and it creates a sense of suspense as the action moves inexorably toward an event whose disastrous consequences are widely known. Early in Part 1, the other main characters are introduced: Suling Feng, a seamstress, and Gemma Garland, an opera singer. The authors use the perspectives of both these characters. A fourth main character is also introduced in this section, though she is never a point-of-view character. This is Reggie/Nellie, a visual artist. In the sections narrated from Gemma’s perspective, this character is called Nellie and is clearly a woman. In the sections from Suling’s perspective, the character is called Reggie, and her gender is never made clear. Not until the second section of Act I do the authors reveal that Reggie and Nellie are the same person.
The authors use these female characters to explore the theme of Sexism and Intersectional Oppression of Women. Alice’s successful career impresses Suling, who thinks, “A woman in charge of something. How very intriguing” (82). The authors based this character on a real-life historical figure of the same name, who was curator of botany at the California Academy of the Sciences from 1894 to 1949. Alice’s career challenges the expectation—widespread at that time—that women should only be mothers and wives. Her position of authority impresses Suling as something she has never seen before. Reggie’s career as an artist is far less secure than Alice’s career in the sciences. Reggie mentions that, in the early 1900s, her gigs as an artist pay only “half what they’d pay a man” (36). This is a clear example of sexism in the workplace. As a Chinese American woman in an early-20th-century San Francisco rife with anti-Asian racism, Suling’s position is the most precarious. Whenever she leaves Chinatown, she disguises herself as male: “It was safer to leave the neighborhood dressed as a boy” (45). Chang uses Suling’s character to show how sexism and racism intersect. Suling experiences discrimination because she is Chinese American, and she hides her gender to avoid dealing with sexism in addition to racism.
All these women are artists and intellectuals with aspirations beyond economic survival, and in different ways all of them must deal with the demands of Class, Labor, and Gender. Suling is unable to pursue her artistic aspirations as fully as she would like to because she has to work. When visiting Alice, Suling hears Gemma rehearsing: “a melody that made Suling’s heart yearn for some unnamed desire. She found herself wishing she could sit on the steps with Alice, just for a few minutes of beauty. But she had to go. She needed that twenty-five dollars” (91). The novel often uses exact figures when discussing income, including the specific amount that Henry will pay for the silk flowers that Suling sews and for her work repairing the dragon robe that Henry owns. Alice says, “I’ll name a price […] one hundred and sixty dollars” (111). These precise figures highlight the class inequality between these characters: For Suling, $160 is enough to change her life, while for Henry it’s an amount he can give away without a second thought.
This first section also explores The Relationship Between Art and Trauma. When Henry offers to become Gemma’s patron, she is wary, but she allows herself to hope that the arrangement will offer relief from the constant trauma of job insecurity, “What would it be like to rehearse a role in that kind of security? […] Not always balanced on a knife edge, wondering if her own body was going to betray her and then if her employers were going to punish her for it” (121). Gemma suffers from migraines, and without legal protections for people with disabilities, she has often lost jobs as a result of this condition. A wealthy patron like Henry can exert power over Gemma’s employers, providing her with a stability she has never known before. For a brief period, this stability allows Gemma’s art to flourish.
Henry’s relationship with art is in some ways similar to that of the novel’s protagonists. Like Suling, Gemma, and Reggie, he believes that “Art—beauty—music—those are the things that matter” (40). Unlike them, though, he sees himself not as a maker of art but as a collector and sponsor of it—that is, an owner. He wants his name and reputation to be associated with beautiful things because of the status it grants him. He understands that his wealth gives him power: Artists like Gemma and Reggie need money to live and make art, and Henry takes advantage of their economic need to gain power over them.
Gemma’s musical talent allows her to cross boundaries of class, as her voice moves both Henry’s aristocratic friends and working-class people like Suling. When Suling hears Gemma sing while she is working at Henry’s party, “the melody and Gemma’s clear, elegant soprano stirred a wistfulness in her, an awareness that there was beauty amid the sorrows of this world, and that some of it was right here” (106). The work that Suling does, such as delivering laundry and passing out refreshments at parties, interferes with her ability to not only appreciate art, but also to create it. Alice encourages her to work for a fashion house because women who sew “at fashion houses are considered artists” (88). Alice wants Suling to be able to work on beautiful garments and have her art appreciated by fashion connoisseurs.
In keeping with the conventions of the historical fiction genre, the novel frequently includes allusions to real-life events from this era. Gemma encounters a woman she identifies as a “Flying Roller”—a member of a real-life religious community known as the House of David. Like other millenarian religious sects that arose around the turn of the 20th century, the Flying Rollers believed that the biblical end times were imminent. Gemma thinks somewhat derisively that they believe “God will bring fire and earthquakes down upon them […] within the month” (8). They claimed to be correct in these predictions when the 1906 earthquake and subsequent fire destroyed much of San Francisco. The countdown to the earthquake that appears at the beginning of some chapters can be compared to Suling’s countdown to leaving San Francisco. As a queer woman, she must make a radical break with her community and her family to live her life on her own terms. An important simile is introduced in this section. Gemma, who trains by running while holding her breath, has “lungs like an elephant” (93). This comparison comes up again when she uses her impressive lung capacity to save her friends from a fire. The authors allude to pieces from operas that Gemma performs in the story, as well as mentions her performances that occur outside of the text. In The Phoenix Crown, Gemma performs in the opera Carmen and sings Mozart’s “Queen of the Night” aria (38). Prior to the events of the novel, she performed as Olympia in “The Tales of Hoffmann” (8). The latter opera is an adaptation by composer Jacques Offenbach of short stories by E.T.A. Hoffmann.
Finally, the authors introduce several symbols in this first section. The Queen of the Night is not only a musical allusion, but the flower of the same name is a symbol of the connection between the different female characters. In the Prologue, Alice mentions seeing the “Queen of the Night” (2) flower bloom, an event that only happens once a year. The event she references occurs in Part 3 of Act I. The titular Phoenix Crown is also introduced in the Prologue. It represents Henry’s relationships with women, including Reggie, Gemma, and Cecilia. It is burned in Act II, which connects it to the symbolism of fire that runs throughout the novel. Henry was burned in the “Park Avenue Hotel fire” (75). It is later revealed that he took part in starting the fire that scarred his hand. Fire is what destroys much of San Francisco after the earthquake destroyed fire crews’ access to water mains. The phoenix is known for rising from the ashes, like the city does after 1906.
