Girl Dinner

Max Villanueva is Sloane’s husband. Initially presented as a “good” partner and a respected academic, his character becomes increasingly complex as the novel progresses. Max is a philosophy professor whose lucrative job offer at The University derailed Sloane’s career. She left a full-time position for adjunct work which, to Sloane, was a serious blow. Max never shows meaningful empathy for the way that his career choices have impacted hers, demonstrating his willingness to prioritize his needs over his family’s.

Max calls himself a feminist. He respects Sloane’s intelligence and argues that marriage should be characterized by equality. In practice, however, Max does not do his share of the household or parenting labor and is happy to let Sloane take over the “women’s work.” He does so in part through ineptitude and learned helplessness. He takes so long completing simple parenting tasks and does them so poorly that Sloane realizes it would be easier for her to just do them herself rather than ask for help. 

Although he and Sloane are both new parents, Max is not expected to take time off to help care for Isla, and the dean chastises Sloane for not being able to balance career and home the way that Max does. Here, too, Max shows that his feminism is not genuine: Rather than pointing out the sexism inherent in the dean’s characterization of men’s and women’s responsibilities, he admonishes Sloane for not working hard enough toward securing tenure.

Max also engages in flirtations and affairs with his students, a habit that eventually lands him the slap on the wrist of being forced to take a semester-long sabbatical. As such, he reflects the novel’s interest in the #MeToo movement and the way that sexual misconduct is often overlooked on university campuses.

Nina Kaur is one of the novel’s protagonists. A sophomore at The University, she is still recovering from a past sexual assault and has chosen to deal with her trauma by focusing the bulk of her energy on her career goals. A student of color, she is not as interested in racial or social justice as her sister and would rather become a successful attorney than help other women to achieve equal rights in a patriarchal society. Nina believes in using the resources at hand to guarantee herself as much success as possible: Success in a “man’s world” is, to Nina, a feminist goal.

Nina is drawn to The House in large part for its networking cache, but also because she craves sisterhood and belonging. She is star-struck by Fawn and Tessa, but she also strikes up an easy bond with Dalil during the rush process. She feels, among The House girls, that she has not only gained social capital on campus, but that she has finally found a community, a sisterhood of like-minded individuals. It is for this reason that she offers to sacrifice herself when the other girls bring their male candidates for dinner. Having observed The House’s fraught politics, she hopes to remind her sisters that sisterhood is at the heart of the Greek project, not political jockeying.



Nina is also characterized by her naiveté. She falls for Fawn in spite of Fawn’s duplicity, even though she has been warned, albeit obliquely, by Tess about Fawn’s troubled past and often opaque motives. While she wants the best for people and strives to be genuine in her personal interactions, she becomes more aware of The House’s politics and the cruelty and competition that exists between some of the sisters. At the novel’s end, she realizes that her twin Jasleen is missing, although the novel ends before Nina learns of Jasleen’s murder at Sloane’s hands.

Jasleen is Nina’s twin sister and Sloane’s victim. Unlike her sister, she has a low opinion of Greek life. She attends a university in Ohio and is not a member of a sorority. She criticizes fraternities and sororities for their elitism and argues that they are inherently racist. Jasleen, or “Jas” as Nina often calls her, is a staunch feminist who is pursuing a degree in English and gender studies with the hope of working in the non-profit sector. She is committed to social justice and wants to use her skills and her degree to do good in the world. She is, however, worried that true positive change will always be out of reach because society has become too corrupt and marred by inequality. 

Jasleen’s murder at the end of the novel represents an important embodiment of the kind of structural injustice that Jasleen has openly criticized throughout the novel. Jasleen has repeatedly warned Nina that enduring racism means that women of color are still often exploited and marginalized, including by women with more class or racial privilege. Jasleen’s warnings about the danger of avoiding intersectionality in feminism come true when Sloane kills Jasleen and serves her flesh to Isla, mistaking Jasleen for Nina. Women of color like Jasleen and Nina are ultimately seen as disposable by women like Sloane, who think more of their own advantages than of creating a more just society for all.

Dalil is one of the other members of Nina’s pledge class and Nina’s friend. Dalil is “a natural alpha” and has no trouble asserting her viewpoints and opinions (26). She has a dry sense of humor and is more willing than the other girls to critique the Greek system, even as she secures a place for herself within the most elite sorority on campus. 

Dalil is popular with the other students, but Fawn and Tess are worried that she will attract negative publicity to The House because she was recently the victim of revenge porn. Some of The House members refuse to support Dalil as a survivor, instead blaming her and acting like her involuntary association with the revenge porn could damage their own reputations and future political ambitions if she becomes the House president. Their reactions betray both the superficiality of The House’s “sisterhood” and the deep internalized misogyny of some of the members themselves, who claim to hold bad men to account while still holding survivors like Dalil responsible for what those bad men do.

Fawn is The House’s president and Nina’s friend and love interest. Fawn is beautiful, intelligent, and popular. She exemplifies Nina’s idea of the “ideal” sorority sister and is, at the beginning of the novel, dating a similarly attractive male student. Nina characterizes her as “half of the Greek system’s golden couple” (28). Fawn is the kind of girl whom Nina strives to emulate, and Nina is initially thrilled when the two strike up a friendship. She feels that Fawn has “chosen” her and that friendship with Fawn is its own kind of social capital. 

Fawn is a complex character whom Tess initially identifies as someone whose true beliefs are hard to pin down and someone whose motivations can be opaque. Fawn believes in free speech and women’s right to shape the course of their own lives. She dislikes Caroline and the “trad wife” movement, but does argue that Caroline should get to make her own choices. Nevertheless, in spite of Fawn’s apparent commitment to women’s rights and feminism, she isn’t committed to any particular set of personal ethics in her own interactions. She is not always a good friend to Tessa and ultimately betrays Nina, admitting to her that their liaison was not meaningful to her and that she doesn’t reciprocate Nina’s feelings. Fawn’s feminism is also revealed to be rather shallow and self-serving: She blames Dalil for being a victim of revenge porn, acting as if Dalil is now a liability for the other girls’ reputations and future ambitions.

That Fawn is eventually the target of a coup to remove her from The House’s presidency speaks to The House’s complex politics, but also to Fawn herself: She is not widely liked among the House’s girls because of her duplicitous nature and the ease with which she betrays her friends.

Tess is Nina’s mentor in the House. She is a biracial student who is “brash and charismatic and unapologetic” about her identity and her interest in social justice (161). She earns Nina’s respect early in their relationship, explaining that she is “certainly not earning anyone’s respect by straightening my hair “(160). Nina feels a kinship with Tess because both girls are students of color. Women of color on campus share a specific set of experiences, expectations, and concerns and Tess knows what it is like to be treated, at all times, as a representative of her race. Like Nina, Tess cares about her career and hopes to use The House’s connections to her benefit someday. 

Tess is also caring and is characterized in part through her kindness to Nina. She introduces Nina to Greek life and to The House’s complex internal politics with care, and helps Nina to understand The House’s unusual, violent ritual. Although Tess is genuinely kind, she is also circumspect in her judgement of other people. She is friends with Fawn and does care about her, but she recognizes Fawn’s flaws. She points out to Nina that Fawn can be self-serving and that her real intentions are often difficult to parse.

Alex is an attorney and Sloane’s new friend on campus. “A cross between Helen of Troy and Anne Boleyn,” she is beautiful, polished, and poised (35). Alex effortlessly balances a high-powered career and single parenting, and Sloane is initially struck by how accomplished she is while still not sacrificing time spent with her child. For Sloane, Alex represents both the possibility of “having it all” and the promise of real friendship. She is the first woman Sloane has met in many years who is, like her, both a professional woman and a mother. Alex also comes to represent one of the novel’s key depictions of contemporary feminism. Alex does embody the idea of being a “girl boss,” of working equally hard outside and inside of the home.

She also eschews traditional feminine values of compromise and docility and argues that women need to seize as much power as possible from men, not waiting to be given respect. She criticizes Caroline for Caroline’s retrograde persona without completely reflecting on the similarities of their personal philosophies: Caroline, too, believes in taking whatever power she can and has also built a successful career on her own work ethic and her willingness to use the tools she has at hand. Alex is also an important nod to this novel’s interest in sexual violence against women and #MeToo. She was the one to begin The House’s cannibalistic ritual, killing her abuser and setting The House’s tradition of ritualistic killing into motion.

Caroline is one of the House’s alumnae and the woman behind The Country Wife VidStar account. She is characterized initially through the eyes of the women around her, many of whom object to her retrograde depiction of the ideal life for women. Caroline is acutely aware of her characterization as an anti-feminist and freely admits to Sloane: “Oh, come on. Alex doesn’t consider me successful, and neither do you” (199). 

Although Caroline’s account trades in “trad wife” imagery and showcases her work as a homemaker, there is more to Caroline than meets the eye. She is not politically conservative and rejects the values of the bulk of her followers, freely admitting that she publicly espouses that ideology just to make money. She also brags about earning millions of dollars through her social media account, even though a truly traditional wife is not supposed to have a career or an income of her own. 

Although Caroline and Alex disagree vehemently over Caroline’s choices and the bad example Alex feels it sets for young women and modern feminists, Caroline does argue that her life choices represent a version of contemporary feminism. In a man’s world, she asserts, she has chosen to use her available skills and resources to amass a serious following and real wealth. It is also later revealed that Caroline’s social media presence is a ruse to cover up the murder sprees she undertakes for The House’s ritual.

Britt is one of the House’s alumnae and a friend to Alex and Priscilla. She is the head of a PR firm and cherishes her career, but Sloane also observes how good she is at parenting and household management. Unlike Sloane, Britt seems able to balance the demands of career and motherhood with ease and that her “entire life was like a VidStar feed” (62). She has a doting husband who, unlike Max, is happy to shoulder his share of the parenting work, and their twins are bright, happy children. 

Britt thinks critically about parenting and chooses toys and activities for her children taken from the Montessori system. She is an effortless cook who often shares recipes with Sloane. Britt is also ambitious. She has always known that she wanted both a career and a family and viewed The House, like Nina, as a way to network and further her PR work. She represents the “girl boss” feminism to which Sloane is initially drawn but toward which she ultimately becomes skeptical. That women like Britt can only achieve the ideal balance between work and parenting because of their participation in a cannibalistic ritual is part of the novel’s subtle critique of contemporary feminisms. Within Britt’s world and that of the novel, “having it all” is the result of exploitation and amorality, not justice.