51 pages • 1-hour read
Freaky Friday
A 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 1-2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of disordered eating.
Chapter 1 Summary
Thirteen-year-old Annabel Andrews expresses delighted shock as she wakes up in her mother’s bed—in her mother’s body. She gives background on her family’s composition. Annabel is one of two children in the Andrews household. Her younger brother, Ben, is six. Annabel resents the fact that Ben has inherited blue eyes while hers are brown, and although she admits that Ben is a perfectly ordinary child, she “loathe[s]” him (3) and refers to him as “Ape Face” (4). Her father, Bill, is an account executive and “a fantastically cool person” (3). Her mother, Ellen, is a homemaker. Annabel views her mother as an attractive woman who is too strict and old-fashioned.
Annabel feels that her mother controls her and prevents her from having fun. Ellen insists on Annabel eating nutritious meals, cleaning her room, and obeying basic safety rules. She wants Annabel to keep her hair and nails trimmed. Annabel recalls the argument she and her mother had the night before. Annabel’s good friend is having a party, but Ellen will not allow Annabel to attend, because the friend’s parents do not closely supervise the children in their home. At the friend’s last party, the boys and girls played kissing games, which Ellen does not approve of. Annabel, angry about Ellen’s decision, accused her mother of ruining her life with all her rules.
Annabel objected to her mother telling her what to do, calling it unfair since no one tells her mother what to do. Ellen argued that being an adult is difficult, because it means having to tell yourself what to do. Annabel expressed her belief that Ellen spent her days eating snacks, watching television, and having lunch with her friends, and Ellen countered that her days were full of work—laundry, grocery shopping, making meals, and supervising her children. Now, Annabel suspects that her mother has somehow engineered this body swap to show Annabel what it is really like to be a responsible adult.
Chapter 2 Summary
Grateful that her mother has seemingly chosen to simply show her what adult life is like instead of punishing her for being rude, Annabel excitedly imagines how her day will go—she decides that she will “tell [herself] to do a whole bunch of fabulous things” (7). She is glad that she will not be going to school, because she has not done any of her homework. She gets dressed and puts on makeup, mimicking the routine she has watched her mother perform many times. Although Annabel is often told that she looks like Ellen, she does not believe it is true, and she very much envies her mother’s beauty.
Overjoyed at how pretty she looks after completing her morning routine, she wakes her father up by punching him in the arm—which she belatedly realizes is probably not how adults wake one another up. She asks him whether she looks pretty, and he asks what is wrong with her. She is happy to realize that her father really thinks she is Ellen. Bill grouchily tells her that she looks beautiful, if a little heavily-made-up for so early in the morning. He says he loves her and asks if he can go back to sleep now. Just then, his alarm rings, and Annabel hurries to the kitchen to get breakfast underway. She realizes that her father may be further disappointed by his morning when she hands him instant coffee—the only kind she knows how to make.
Chapters 1-2 Analysis
Chapters 1 and 2 set up the story’s basic premise: After an argument that shows Annabel’s lack of understanding of adult responsibilities, Annabel wakes up in her mother’s body, about to learn through experience what it really means to live as an adult. She is very excited, believing that her day will be full of carefree pleasures. Her Chapter 2 waking of her father with an arm punch and her realization that she does not even know how to make coffee, however, hint that the day will be more difficult than she imagines, creating the tension that drives the plot forward and establishing the theme of The Responsibilities That Come with Adult Freedoms.
Because Freaky Friday’s central conflict focuses on the coming of age—that is, it is a story in which a young protagonist has a series of experiences that help them mature into a more adult person—the narrative must first establish that Annabel is immature and has room to grow. This is a key function of Chapters 1 and 2, which show that, initially, Annabel is preoccupied with her looks and does not give much consideration to her behavior and internal world.
She is jealous of Ben’s blue eyes and believes her own brown ones inferior. She worries about her weight and avoids eating the nutritious foods her mother tries to give her. As soon as she is in her mother’s body, her first concern is putting on makeup and insisting that her father tell her she is pretty. These preoccupations with appearance are somewhat typical for a teenage girl of her era, but they also characterize Annabel as excessively focused on the external at the expense of the internal.
Since she is not an introspective person, Annabel is unaware of how unfairly negative she is about her mother and brother. She is callous about the impact of her unkindness toward Ben, excusing it by characterizing him as “more disgusting than fortified fish” (3) and calling him by the epithet “Ape Face” instead of using his name (4). She lists actions her mother takes on behalf of the children—making them balanced meals, asking them to keep themselves and their environment clean, and so on—but instead of appreciating that her mother is caring and responsible, she says “I can’t stand how strict she is” (4) and characterizes her as “fussy” (5). In the first two chapters, it is clear that Annabel has some growing to do toward more appropriate Appreciation for Family Bonds.
Like many contemporary novels, the narrative begins in medias res—in the middle of the action—before flashing back to explain what is happening. Annabel begins by sharing an exciting entry point to the story: the moment she wakes up in Ellen’s body. This creates suspense about how the swap happened and what will happen next. Annabel does not immediately follow with the explanatory flashback, however. Instead, she interrupts the narrative with several pages of exposition introducing each of her family members. This structure prolongs the suspense, and it also suggests how important Annabel’s family really is to her, even if she chooses not to acknowledge this fact. Because it is clear how central the family is to Annabel’s life, tension is created around the question of whether she will learn to properly appreciate them.
In many ways, Annabel also fails to appreciate herself. Her narrative voice is lively, clever, and forthright, making her an appealing protagonist. Her failings—her self-centered behavior and her resentment of having to follow others’ rules—are neither serious nor uncommon in people her age. Yet Annabel does not value herself. She does not take care of her hair and nails—despite her preoccupation with appearances, she does not believe herself to be pretty enough to fuss over in this way. She does not do her homework, seemingly unconcerned about her reputation at school and her future after school ends. Her room is comically messy, showing that she does not care enough about her own comfort and convenience to keep it organized and clean. Ellen even has to nag her about personal safety, because Annabel constantly takes unnecessary risks. This demonstrates that Learning to Value and Understand Oneself is yet another area in which Annabel needs to make progress as she matures.
Unlock all 51 pages of this Study Guide
Get in-depth, chapter-by-chapter summaries and analysis from our literary experts.
- Grasp challenging concepts with clear, comprehensive explanations
- Revisit key plot points and ideas without rereading the book
- Share impressive insights in classes and book clubs