Chapter Summaries part 1 Flashcards
part 1 chapter 1 summary?
(Brionary pov)
- 1935, Briony Tallis writes play for her brother’s, return.
- Emily Tallis compliments her work, but her cousins are not so obliging.
- The cousins are staying with the Tallis family because their parents are divorcing, and Lola ruins Briony’s play by taking the role of the play’s main character.
- they read through the play, Briony starts “to understand the chasm that lay between an idea and its execution,” thanks to her cousins’ poor pronunciation and monotone inflection.
part 1 chapter 2 summary?
(Cecilia pov)
- Cecilia Tallis, is bored with life back at home after three years at Girton College.
- The fine day makes her “impatient, almost desperate.”
- She is outside to pick flowers to display in her brother’s guest’s room, but she avoids her childhood friend, Robbie Turner, who is down on his knees tending to the hedges.
- She reenters the house to retrieve a vase, a valuable piece passed down from her Uncle Clem, who died in World War I
- She arranges the wildflowers in the vase and decides to fill it with water at the fountain outside.
- As she approaches, Robbie turns and greets her. Their conversation is stilted, and Cecilia feels uncomfortable around him and “jittery” and “annoyed with herself” for being so.
- When Robbie mentions the subject of Cecilia’s father paying for his medical studies, he insists he intends to pay it all back.
- This statement bothers Cecilia, because she feels he is distancing himself from her and either mocking her for being a woman or punishing her for being above him in social station.
- She awkwardly balances the vase on the rim of the fountain, and Robbie grabs for the vase, trying to be helpful. As Cecilia grips it more tightly, a section of the lip of the vase comes off in Robbie’s hand.
- She reprimands him, and then strips off her clothes to wade into the fountain and save the broken pieces.
- She dresses quickly when she comes out and returns to the house without a further word exchanged between them.
part 1 chapter 3 summary ?
(Briony)
- Rehearsals for Briony’s play are delayed by the twins’ bad behavior.
- Lola, in her belief that she is all grown up, condescends to Briony, which causes Briony to suspect her of “destructive intent.”
- Briony spies Danny Hardman, a servant’s son, watching them from a doorway. Soon she finds herself alone in the nursery, and considers the mechanics of her hand, wondering which “part of her … was really in charge.”
- Briony goes to the window and witnesses the scene between Cecilia and Robbie.
- At first it seems to her, by the formal way that Robbie stands, that he is proposing marriage. When he raises his hand in what to Briony seems a command to Cecilia to remove her clothes, Briony takes a dark view of his behavior.
- She contemplates writing the scene she observed from three points of view.
- As she reflects on this moment much later in life, she mythologizes it as the point “when she became recognizably herself.”
- She puts off writing the scene to search for her cousins so they can resume rehearsals.
part 1 chapter 4 summary?
(Cecilia)
- Cecilia repairs the vase in the library.
- She hears footsteps, and concerned they are Robbie’s, she enters the hallway to confront him.
- Instead, she finds a puffy-eyed Briony, who rips in half the poster advertising her play. Cecilia attempts to console her, but Briony stalks off.
- Cecilia takes the vase to Paul Marshall’s room.
- Through the window, she sees Robbie interacting with her brother, Leon, and Paul.
- In exasperation, she begins to smoke, although she knows her father would not approve.
- She comes downstairs to meet Leon and Paul.
- After a short conversation, she decides Paul, who talks about nothing but his chocolate business, is dull and not the kind of man she would like to marry.
- Leon informs her Robbie will be joining them for dinner, which upsets Cecilia so much that Leon asks if something has happened between them.
- She denies it, and the three go indoors to mix drinks.
part 1 chapter 5 summary?
(Lola)
- After Briony abandons play rehearsals, the twins play football with a wooden brick, and Lola enters Paul’s bedroom for a view of Briony out by the water.
- She notices Paul’s suitcase, and when she slides one of the locks with her thumb, the clasp opens, startling her.
- She leaves and tries to occupy the twins elsewhere on the property but ends up with them back in the nursery.
- The twins express their displeasure at being there.
- Referring to their parents, Jackson utters the word divorce. Lola admonishes him never to use the word again.
- Paul enters, perhaps having overheard the discussion.
- He greets them and sits in an armchair.
- When the twins ask Paul if he knows their parents, he says he has read about them in the papers.
- Using adult words, Lola orders him “not to talk about them in front of the children.”
- Lola and Paul then engage in adult conversation, both lying about having seen William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet in London.
- Paul opens one of his chocolate bars in front of the cousins.
- The twins do not seem convinced by his plan to put a chocolate bar in every soldier’s kit if they go to war, and they complain the name “Army Amo” is boring.
- Paul gives the bar to Lola and watches her closely as she eats it.
part 1 chapter 6 summary ?
(emily)
- Emily Tallis lies immobile in her bedroom, stricken by one of her frequent migraines.
- She reflects how “everything was shrinking.”
- She is dissatisfied with Leon’s lack of ambition and with Cecilia’s lack of marriage prospects after her time at Girton College, rubbing shoulders with “silly, ignorant ladies.”
- She feels sorry for Briony in having to deal with Lola, whom she sees as just as scheming as Lola’s mother, Hermione, Emily’s sister.
- Emily hears everything in the house and feels she has a “tentacular awareness” of everything that goes on there.
- She rests through the afternoon heat, ruminating on all the events the reader has seen happen in previous chapters.
- After dozing, she hears the “muted thunder of the plumbing” cease “with a judder that shook the air.” Then she hears a “little squeal of laughter abruptly smothered” and surmises Lola is in the nursery with Paul.
part 1 chapter 7 summary?
(briony)
- Briony slashes at nettles with a slender branch down by the island temple in the yard.
- She pretends certain nettles are Lola and she is enjoying cutting her down.
- She also cuts down playwriting and childhood itself.
- She then imagines she is an Olympic nettle slasher, representing her country in front of the world.
- She basks in the imagined praise of her older brother, Leon, as he approaches in the trap, but she does not turn to look at him.
- She wants him to stop and greet her, but he does not, and she is sad.
part 1 chapter 7 summary?
(robbie)
- Robbie sits in a bath in his cramped home and thinks of Cecilia’s exposed body in the fountain.
- Formerly, she had been “like a sister, almost invisible,” but he sees her as a woman now.
- He decides to write Cecilia a letter of apology.
- He goes through numerous typewritten drafts, and on one of them, he types an obscene admission of love for her.
- He puts that version aside and writes out another version in longhand.
- As he dresses for dinner, he chats with his mother, who tells him she polished the silver at the big house earlier in the afternoon.
- He goes out, feeling free and happy, anticipating seeing Cecilia.
- He muses it might be better for Cecilia to see the letter before he goes in to dinner, so he gives it to Briony, whom he runs into along the way.
- Only afterward does he realize he picked up the obscene version of the letter by mistake.
- He tries to call Briony back, but it is too late.
part 1 chapter 9 summary?
(cecilia)
- Cecilia is in her room, trying on various dresses before she decides on a dark green, backless gown to wear to dinner.
- Once dressed, she opens her door and sees Jackson, who is upset because he and Pierrot only have one pair of socks between them.
- She helps the twins clean their room, which is in a terrible state of disarray, and then gets them a pair of Briony’s socks to wear.
- She goes to the kitchen and diplomatically ends an argument about dinner between her mother and Betty, the cook.
- She then chats with Leon on the terrace, and listens to him as he conjures “a world of good intentions and pleasant outcomes” and invites her to visit him in London.
- Briony enters the room, hands Cecilia a folded piece of paper, and then runs to Leon.
- Cecilia reads the letter and Robbie’s love becomes clear to her.
- “Of course. How had she not seen it?” she questions herself.
- Then in horror, Cecilia asks Briony whether she read the note, but Briony ignores her.
part 1 chapter 10 summary?
(briony)
- Briony rips open the letter intended for Cecilia.
- She knows she should not, and yet “the shock of the message vindicated her completely.”
- She realizes she must now reconsider the fountain scene based on the letter and on the obscene word which “disgusted her profoundly.”
- Briony attempts to do some writing, “to be lost to the unfolding of an irresistible idea.”
- Lola enters and declares that she’s had an appalling evening.
- She shows Briony a long scratch on her upper arm and her chafed wrists.
- Lola accuses her twin brothers of assaulting her, but Briony correctly reflects the depth of Lola’s grief could not be caused by the twins alone.
- Feeling tenderness toward Lola, Briony reveals the details of the letter. The two decide Robbie is a “maniac.”
- Then, Briony goes downstairs, enters the library, and witnesses what to her looks like Robbie attacking Cecilia (but is actually Robbie and Cecilia engaged in the sexual act).
part 1 chapter 11 summary?
(cecilia)
- The evening’s dinner is a stuffy affair.
- Jack is absent, and so, too, is light conversation. Paul breaks the silence with a private comment to Robbie.
- It is inappropriate social behavior but goes uncensored.
- General dinner conversation commences, with the heat being a main topic.
- Emily chastises Briony for speaking rudely to Robbie and then states, “hot weather encourages loose morals among young people.”
- This leads Leon to jokingly question his sisters about their behavior.
- Robbie uses this time to reminiscence about his encounter with Cecilia in the library immediately before dinner.
- In a flashback, he apologizes to her for giving her the wrong version of the letter, and they talk about their newfound feelings for each other, until “there seemed no way out with words,” and they let their bodies do their talking for them.
- They make love, Robbie tells Cecilia he loves her, and Briony interrupts them.
- Dinner ends with an outburst by Briony about the twins’ wearing her socks and her pointing out Lola’s injuries.
- Briony then finds a letter from the twins indicating they have run away.
- Everyone goes out to search for them, including Robbie, who sets off by himself.
part 1 chapter 12 summary?
(emily)
- Emily dreads calling the police to assist in finding the twins, and instead fusses over Lola.
- Emily muses about having once been a “wronged child,” neglected in favor of her sister, Hermione.
- She is now a “wronged wife,” neglected by Jack in favor of his work, his mistresses, and his obsession with bettering Robbie’s life.
- While everyone is out searching, she waits in the house.
- She receives the expected call from Jack saying he will be late. Then the search parties return, and Leon breaks the news that Lola has been raped.
part 1 chapter 13 summary?
(briony)
- During the search for the twins, Briony is hyperaware that Robbie the “maniac” is outside, too, “with a dark, unfulfilled heart.”
- She walks around, half searching, not really thinking the twins are in danger, but simply enjoying being out so late “with permission.”
- Coming up to the house, she sees her mother through a window and contemplates going to her, but decides against it because she is no longer a child to be “snuggled.”
- Instead, she goes to the island temple, where she sees Lola and a larger figure running away.
- Without a flashlight, she cannot actually see him, but “she had no doubt.
- She could describe him.” Still, she asks Lola who it was, but before Lola can answer, Briony declares, “I saw him.”
- Lola agrees “It was him.”
- Briony makes the connections herself and doesn’t need Lola to make accusations.
- She declares Robbie as the attacker, and Lola does not correct her, instead claiming that she did not see her attacker.
- Briony meets up with Leon and Cecilia and prepares to tell her story.
part 1 chapter 14 summary?
(briony)
- Back at the house, Emily and Betty lead Lola to a comforting bath while the police arrive.
- Meanwhile, Paul returns to the house and offers the police cigarettes from his gold case. Cecilia hangs at the periphery, clearly upset.
- Briony goes to Cecilia’s room and retrieves Robbie’s letter as “proof” of his crime.
- Emily reads it, and Cecilia becomes incensed by this betrayal of her privacy.
- Emily blames Cecilia for not coming forward earlier with the letter, claiming Lola might not have been raped if she had.
- Briony has her first interview with the police and implicates Robbie.
- Cecilia defends Robbie and attempts to cast suspicion on young Hardman, but she is dismissed.
- When Robbie returns, having found the twins, he is taken into custody by the police.
- Cecilia speaks to him as he is put into the car in handcuffs.
- His mother, Grace Turner, follows the police car as her son is being taken away and condemns the Tallis family for being liars.
