50 pages • 1 hour read
The Girl Before
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Chapters 14-18Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 14 Summary: “I try not to let people know what I am really thinking. Agree . . . . . Disagree”
Chapter 14 opens on Jane and Simon at One Folgate Street. Simon is reminiscing about “old times” with Emma, so Jane reminds him “I’m nothing like her” (305). He assures her that he knows that. Jane picks up her phone and says that she’s going to put the necklace back upstairs, and he tells her that she should be resting because she is pregnant. Jane is reminded of Simon saying earlier that alcohol is okay at “fifteen weeks,” and wonders how he knows how many weeks pregnant she is. She starts to go towards the stairs, and he says, “Careful” (306).
Jane gets upstairs and goes into the cleaner’s cupboard, where she tries to call Mia, then Edward, then 9-9-9 (the UK equivalent of of 9-1-1). Each call fails. She goes into the roof space, but there is still no signal. Simon calls to her from downstairs, and she asks him to leave. He finds her in the cupboard. When she won’t come out, he explains that he’s jamming the cellphone signal, and says, “All I wanted was to be with you” (307). Jane tells him that she’s calling the police, and he begins kicking on the door and calling her a liar. Jane is “dizzy with terror” (307). As Simon begins narrating his desire for her to come out, Jane starts shouting to David Thiel and Edward. Simon explains that it has been him watching her, not anyone from the Monkford Partnership.
Simon explains that he had given Emma a test; she’d failed because she wanted Edward instead of him. Simon opens his bag and pours something like lighter fluid under the door. Jane pleads with him, saying, “Think of the baby” (309); Simon responds by telling her that he’s going to burn the house down. Jane crawls farther into the attic and holds her stomach.
Chapter 15 Summary: “Your child has gotten into difficulty in the sea. As you go to rescue her, you realize she is only one of about ten children who are in the same predicament. You can either rescue your daughter immediately, or go and get help for the whole group, which may take some time. Which do you do? — Save your own child — Save ten other children”
After a long time crying, Jane decides that she’s “not Emma Matthews, disorganized and vulnerable” (313). As she gets out of the cupboard, she breaks the pearl necklace in her hand. She looks around to see an “unrecognizable” (313) space with graffiti on the walls, torn furnishings, and broken dishes. Simon appears at the bottom of the stairs.
Jane finds herself knowing “what [she] has to say” (314) and talks to Simon. She says, “I’ll be Emma for you, and then you’ll let me go” (314). She continues talking, telling him that he’s going to be a dad. Jane asks Simon if he wants to take a shower and walks towards the bedroom to get a bathrobe. Simon tells her that he can’t lose her, calls her Emma, and begins crying. Jane takes her “chance, dodging past him toward the stairs” (315). Behind her, Simon grabs her hair. Jane throws her handful of pearls at him, and he falls down the stairs “into the void […] his head following [his body] with a sickening crack” (315). Jane watches the blood “seep from the back of his head” (315). The chapter closes on Jane feeling that “One Folgate Street has healed itself,” and that she is at “peace” (316).
Chapter 16 Summary: “A railway signalman is responsible for changing the posts at a remote junction. Against regulations he takes his son to work, but gives him strict instructions not to go near the line. Later he sees a train approaching, but before he can change the points he spots the boy playing on the track, too far away to hear him. Unless the points are changed the train will almost certainly crash, causing multiple fatalities, but if he does change them the train will almost certainly kill his son. If you were him, what would you do? — Change the points — Don’t change the points”
In Chapter 16, Jane has her baby, Toby. Although she doesn’t get to have her ideal “water birth, with Diptyque candles,” she feels “love flow” from her to her baby (319). Edward comes to the hospital to see her and Jane describes their relationship “as co-parents” (320). Jane and Edward discuss Toby’s Down’s syndrome, and Jane describes how “beautiful” (320) she feels the baby is. Edward asks if she wants to give Toby up, saying that they could have “a clean slate” (320). Edward explains that he thinks he “could be a father again” (321). Jane narrates that it is this moment that she tells “Edward the truth” (321) and her section ends.
Chapter 16 also returns to Emma, in the form of the letter she had written to Edward. In it, she describes wanting “to be commanded” and how she couldn’t “tear [her]self away” when she thought she had found the right man to fill that role for her (322). She explains her affair with Saul and her feelings towards Simon. At the end of the letter, she describes that she’s realized that “you can make your surroundings as polished and empty as you like. But it doesn’t matter if you’re still messed up inside” (323).
Chapter 17 Summary: “It is better to tell a lie and remain in control of a situation than to tell the truth with unpredictable results. Agree . . . . . Disagree”
Jane reveals the truth to Edward: that she had planned to have another baby. She explains to him that she knew Edward “could be the father of [her] child” (327) from the moment she met him. Jane adds that it was One Folgate Street that “colluded in [her] plans” (327). Edward is impressed, describing that it is “magnificent” (328) that Jane was actually controlling him, rather than him controlling her.
Edward tells Jane about his grief after the death of his wife and child, and how he made One Folgate Street in order to “demand a sacrifice from anyone who lived there, but repay that sacrifice a thousandfold in return” (329). Edward makes Jane an offer that if she gives up Toby for adoption, he’ll give her the house.
Chapter 18 Summary: “— Give up the baby — Don’t give up the baby”
In Chapter 18, Jane tries to make her decision. As she thinks about giving up Toby, she looks down at him and wipes away some “regurgitated milk” (333). She makes her choice to “take what [she] can from Edward” (334) and then let the whole story fade behind her. One day, she imagines that she will tell Toby about his sister, “the girl who came before” (334).
Chapter 18 closes on a new narrator, Astrid, who is marveling at the interior of One Folgate Street. Astrid is excited about the opportunity to leave behind the “bitterness and rage of [her] divorce” (335). The novel closes on Astrid beginning to answer the first question on the application: “Please make a list of every possession you consider essential to your life” (336).
Chapters 14-18 Analysis
During the final climactic moments of the novel, the contrast between control and disorder is heightened. As Jane struggles to evade Simon’s malicious intentions, she is determined not to be like “Emma Matthews, disorganized and vulnerable” (313). Instead, Jane decides to carefully approach her escape, planning each step slowly. As she leaves the cleaning closet, she notes that One Folgate Street is in complete disarray. Simon’s anger has expressed itself as the opposite of Jane’s determination: rather than being controlled and cautious, he is messy and emotional. After Simon’s death, Jane feels a sense of relief that “all this mess, this superficial disorder” (316) can be cleaned away, and One Folgate Street can be “pristine” (316) again.
One Folgate Street is a representation of ultimate control and purity, and Simon’s attempts to disrupt this end up in total chaos and disorder, eventually leading to his death. In describing Toby’s birth in Chapter 16, Jane again comments on the tension between what people do and don’t have control over; although she has a cesarean instead of a water birth, she is able to find happiness in holding “Toby for just a few bittersweet, wonderful minutes” (319) after delivery. Delaney’s consistent focus on the tension between control and disorder eventually leads to a feeling that neither is the ideal state, as shown by Jane’s imperfect, yet perfect, birth.
Throughout the novel, traditional heteronormative relationship structures are questioned. No character has a successful long-term romantic relationship, and most characters experience some kind of breach of trust, whether infidelity or otherwise. Towards the end of the novel, Jane and Edward have a conversation that seems to suggest Delaney’s intentions in portraying non-conventional relationships. Edward suggests that he and Jane could have a successful life together if she’d be willing to “give this baby up for adoption” (329) so that Toby can have “parents who can accept him for what he is” (333). Jane, though, is willing to accept the “life of turmoil and muddle and compromise” (333) of keeping Toby. Even though a potential life with Edward is portrayed as perfect, Jane is willing to become a single mother of a child with Down’s syndrome. This conclusion to the novel implies that having a traditional relationship isn’t necessary for happiness and seems a fitting conclusion to a plot that relies on people not being able to sustain marriages or other long-term relationships.
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