61 pages • 2-hour read
Girl Dinner
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Part 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section includes discussion of sexual content.
Part 4: "Invitation"
Chapter 25 Summary
Caroline, to Sloane’s horror, insinuates that she has just eaten a human heart. As Sloane desperately tries to induce vomiting, the door opens and Alex barges in. Exasperated, Alex assures Sloane that Caroline was joking and that she’d only eaten beef heart. Alex insists that Sloane leave with her and assures her that she will pick up her car tomorrow.
On the way back, Alex confirms that cannibalism The House’s secret. They do it only once per semester. It is a ritual. Eating a small amount of human flesh is beneficial to the health, too much would risk developing neurological disorders. It is, Alex argues, the secret behind their success, their beauty, and their good health. Sloane is horrified, but Alex openly questions whether she would truly refuse to eat human flesh if it had the potential to unlock so much of her true potential.
Chapter 26 Summary
Nina wakes up surprisingly cramp-free. Fawn and Tess explain to her that she is not likely to have cramps again and that she can also expect her general health to improve. Already, Nina observes, her hair looks shinier.
She asks Tess whose blood they drank, and Tess is vague. He might have been a past political candidate, but she can’t remember: They took the blood from the reserves. They always target “bad men,” men who abuse women and get away with it, men who influence one another to act misogynistically. Drinking their blood is an act of pure revenge.
Unable to sleep the night after initiation, Nina walks alone through The House. She encounters Fawn and the two end up in bed. Sex with Fawn is magical, and Nina feels truly reborn.
Chapter 27 Summary
Sloane wakes to find that Alex has returned her car and Max has made breakfast for himself but not her or Isla. She asks for his help getting Isla ready, but quickly realizes that it would be easier to do everything herself. In a huff, she finally leaves for campus.
There, she speaks with Alex on the phone. Alex confirms that Caroline is the one who does all of The House’s actual murdering and that her online persona is, in large part, an elaborate cover-up for her criminal activity.
Sloane remains unsure how she feels about The House’s cannibalism, and asks Arya about the sociology of cannibalism when he arrives at their office. He is surprisingly blasé about ritualistic killing, and further surprises Sloane by offering to take on her work so that she can go home to Isla. She realizes that her attraction for him is mounting.
Chapter 28 Summary
Nina gets dressed for a Greek life event. Arya, who is also attending, does her makeup. She, Arya, and Dalil pass around a flask of vodka on their way to the party, and Nina feels alert and alive. Her migraines have disappeared. Her cramps are gone. She has never been happier or healthier.
Chapter 29 Summary
Max suggests dinner out. Although Sloane would rather stay home with Isla, she calls to see if Alex can babysit. She no longer quite believes The House women capable of cannibalism and wonders if it is all a hoax.
Alex arrives as Sloane is still getting dressed, and when Sloane comes downstairs she and Max are talking. She can tell from their facial expressions that Alex is bored and that Max has no idea that he’s boring her.
On the way to dinner, she confesses that she is worried about failing Isla. Max’s response is so tepid and vague that Sloane realizes he either hasn’t listened to her or doesn’t care. She also realizes that she is entirely unsurprised by his lack of emotional intelligence.
Chapter 30 Summary
The party is at a restaurant that has been closed down for the night. Nina is shocked by Arya’s enthusiasm and impressed by his dance moves. Nina slips away from the dance floor to find a bathroom and runs into Fawn. The two begin kissing, and Fawn drags Nina outside.
There, Nina notices Dr. Villanueva standing in line at the next restaurant over. She says hello, and can sense an awkward feeling in the air. He is with his wife, who turns out to be Dr. Sloane Hartley, The House’s new advisor. Nina can see Sloane eyeing her in a calculating manner and wonders if Dr. Hartley knows that her husband flirts with his students. Then, Arya comes running out, and Nina learns that he is Dr. Hartley’s teaching assistant.
They stand around chatting for a moment and, based on the way she is speaking to him, Nina wonders if Fawn knows Dr. Villanueva better than she is letting on. When Dr. Villanueva and his wife head into the restaurant, Fawn tells Arya about Nina’s attraction to Dr. Villanueva. Arya seems to sober up at that point. After Fawn and Nina head back inside, Fawn asks Nina what she thinks of Dr. Villanueva as a candidate for “dinner.”
Chapter 31 Summary
Sloane meets with Dean Burns, who is upset with her for prioritizing her child over the department. Sloane pushes back on his criticism, expressing incredulity that he would expect her to value work over her daughter. Dean Burns counters that Max is able to prioritize his job over his family and adds that if Sloane continues to spend so much time away from the department, he will give her courses to someone else the following term. This would mean that Sloane would lose her benefits and childcare, and she leaves angrily. She finds Arya in her office, recalls how good he looked when she ran into him over the weekend, and locks her door.
Part 4 Analysis
Part 4 begins with a clarification on the role of cannibalism within The House’s social world, invoking The Complexities of Ambition and Ethics. Alex, Priscilla, Britt, and Caroline, all house alumnae, argue that it should be morally permissible for women to take back the power denied to them in patriarchal societies. Although characters like Jasleen assert that being a feminist means helping other women and fighting for equality, Alex’s version counsels privileged women to adapt patriarchal power structures for their own ends instead of rejecting them. Self-interest, she argues, is not selfish but smart.
The House’s cannibalistic ritual involves selecting a series of candidates for murder, all men guilty of some kind of crime against women. The women insist that killing them and eating their flesh to make themselves stronger, healthier, and more beautiful symbolizes robbing men, and patriarchy itself, of power. What none of the women address or acknowledge is how perpetuating a system of domination, greed, and power plays ultimately enables injustices to continue instead of resolving them. The reveal that Caroline’s Country Wife account is an elaborate front to hide her murder sprees reinforces the sense that the women’s rationale is ultimately self-serving, as Caroline does not care about promoting anti-feminist ideology so long as she—and her House sisters—still get what they want by doing so.
Sloane also continues to wrestle with The Tensions Between Motherhood, Marriage, and Career. She wakes to find that Max has made breakfast for himself but not her or Isla, considers asking him for help with a household task, but realizes that it would be easier for her to do it herself. Sloane is always conscious of what needs to be done around the house, but Max provides “help” only when asked, instead of regarding household matters as an automatic, shared responsibility between partners. She does much more of their family’s mental labor than Max does, and he isn’t even aware of the discrepancy. She wonders: “Was heterosexual marriage the problem?” (271). It is during moments like these that Sloane realizes that it is not possible to “have it all” if both partners do not equally contribute to the household.
Sloane further confronts marriage’s inequality during a meeting with the dean. He berates her for not having made adequate process on her research and Sloane balks at the idea that she is supposed to prioritize her career over the health and wellbeing of her child. The dean argues that Max is able to prioritize work over home, and Sloane realizes that she is being punished for Max’s shirking of parental responsibility: Since Max cares less about his child than his job, Sloane has to take on the parenting of both of them. Sloane thus realizes that Max’s neglect at home also impacts her life out in the professional world as well.
Part 4 also focuses on Greek life and Nina’s social world, which continues to reveal further cracks. The nature of sisterhood and community is one of this novel’s key subtexts, as both Nina and Sloane begin the novel as women looking for friendship and fulfillment. However, Nina starts to notice that The House’s sisterhood is not always as sincere or durable as she initially thought, such as when she hears Fawn rudely denigrate Alex. Nina’s desperation to fit in and maintain her standing once again contrasts with Jasleen’s criticism, with Jasleen’s insistence that the elite sororities simply perpetuate injustices and structural inequality becoming more applicable as The House’s real dynamics and secrets—notably the cannibalism—become more apparent.
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