61 pages • 2-hour read
Girl Dinner
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Part 5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section includes discussion of sexual content and sexual violence.
Part 5: "Dinner"
Chapter 32 Summary
Nina is in her new bedroom at The House talking to Jasleen via Facetime. Jasleen is upset that she will never be able to do good in the world because unethical billionaires seem to control the entire country. She rants for a while but then she adds that she’s so in love with Arya that if he were to marry her, she might be able to stop thinking about the world’s problems.
Jasleen leaves and Fawn comes home, and Nina thinks about what Jasleen said. She is increasingly sure that women are faced with the choice to either be powerful and wealthy but also unethical, or underpaid but morally righteous. She wonders if she might be able to do more in the world, in the form of financial donations to worthy causes, if she continues with her plans to become an attorney.
She also thinks back to Dr. Villanueva’s lecture that day. Seeing him with his wife and realizing that he probably would have had sex with her if she flirted a little harder has lowered him in her estimation. He is, after all, just another badly behaved man.
Fawn, intuiting her thought process, again suggests him as The House’s next victim. She shares that their first victim was an accident: Alex had killed her own attacker, and the House ate him to hide the evidence. Nina mulls over this. The previous year, she was sexually assaulted. She wonders if she would have killed her attacker, given the choice.
Chapter 33 Summary
Sloane and Arya have sex, even though Sloane knows that it can go nowhere. Still, she feels powerful during the act and doesn’t quite regret her actions.
Later, Max informs her of his intention to take a sabbatical the following semester. When she protests that this would mean losing access to the University childcare, he counters that she would have to stay home with Isla. He points out that she is always worried about how little time she spends with their daughter, and that going back to full-time parenting would afford her the opportunity to devote all of her time to their daughter.
She asks Max why he is insisting on taking a sabbatical now, and he won’t meet her eyes. Suddenly, something clicks in her mind: She asks if he has done anything against university policy and if he is being forced to take a sabbatical. She asks if he has been sleeping with Nina. He denies it, but she is sure that she is at least partially correct.
Chapter 34 Summary
As dinner nears, Fawn explains the policies and procedures to the new girls and reminds the sophomores, juniors, and seniors of their responsibilities. Each girl chooses a potential candidate and brings them to the dinner.
After Fawn’s lecture, Tess pulls Nina aside. The two haven’t talked in a while, and Tess would like to catch up. Nina asks about some of the side comments she overheard while Fawn was speaking, and Tess explains that Fawn is a controversial president and that some of the girls would like to see her unseated. Tess adds that Fawn is often opaque and self-serving, and that many of the girls disagree with her friendship with Caroline and with the way she sees dinner.
One of the other girls, Alina, comes up and begins to talk to Tess about the presidency. She would like Dalil to replace Fawn, but Tess hedges. Before Nina realizes what is happening, the two girls decide that Nina will replace Fawn. Nina is flabbergasted and realizes that she understands very little of The House’s politics.
Chapter 35 Summary
Sloane goes to visit Caroline. She finds that Caroline has also invited Alex. Sloane asks them about the ritual. She wants to know if it truly makes their lives better, makes the impossible possible. The women assure her that it does, but Sloane is initially unconvinced. She grows increasingly agitated and voices her fear that there is no way to balance career and motherhood, that women cannot win.
Alex does her best to reassure Sloane. She tells Sloane that even if Max is cheating on her (she and Caroline are aware that Max’s forced sabbatical is rumored to be the result of an affair with a student), she can still “win.” Assertively, she tells Sloane to write her book and have Priscilla publish it. Not being an academic title, it will have greater reach. Sloane can go on a book tour. She can build her brand. She can use the proceeds of the book to put Isla in the best schools. Sloane feels bolstered by Alex’s words and realizes that success might just be possible for her.
Chapter 36 Summary
Nina tells Fawn about the plan to install Nina as The House’s new president and adds that she would be happy to turn the other girls down. Fawn doesn’t seem to hear this last part and flies into a rage. She argues that Dalil would be a better candidate for president if there wasn’t a “revenge porn” video of her circulating. She argues that this video has the power to take down any of the other girls, because they would be seen as “guilty” by association.
Nina is horrified that Fawn would blame Dalil for being a victim, but Fawn waves her off: Some of the girls in The House want to run for office, and she insists that they cannot have any stains on their reputation. She then returns to the subject of Nina as a potential House president and asserts that in spite of all of the terrible men in the world, it’s women who are more often guilty of betrayal. She alludes to Tess having betrayed her without providing details.
When Nina becomes emotional and tells Fawn that she loves her, Fawn calls her an idiot. Heartbroken, she goes back to her room. Dalil comforts her, and she reflects on what a good friend she is.
Chapter 37 Summary
Caroline explains to Sloane that her kills are not entirely revenge-driven. The girls of The House and its alumnae must love their food, must be sure that they will benefit from consuming it. Sloane thinks about the world love, about its complexity.
She leaves Caroline’s and goes to her office, running into Arya. She asks him about Nina, and he tells her that Nina is innocent, that she has always thought she could do good in the world and that she could protect her loved ones. Sloane considers this. She thinks about her own daughter, also innocent, and wonders how she can give Isla the best possible life.
Her thoughts begin to race, and she becomes agitated. She thinks about Nina. She realizes that she and Nina have so much in common, they just represent women at different stages of their lives. Nina might be guilty of having an affair with her husband, but ultimately Max is more blameworthy. She might even, in some strange way, love Nina. Arya can see how upset Sloane is and asks her if she is okay. She isn’t sure.
Chapter 38 Summary
The winter solstice has arrived. Each girl brings her candidate for dinner. The men are all drugged and will not remember anything if they are not chosen. If they are chosen, they will be ritually killed and eaten. Dalil has brought a young man whom Nina assumes is the one who circulated explicit images of her. The other girls have all brought men whom Nina is sure preyed upon them in some way.
Fawn has brought Dr. Villanueva. The two, as it turns out, had a relationship the previous semester. Nina tries to gently ask Fawn about it, but is rebuffed. She realizes that Fawn is more complicated than she thought. She is capable of being a real friend, but she is also self-serving. She tells Fawn that she had actually loved her. Flippantly, Fawn replies, “bummer.”
Chapter 39 Summary
In a short chapter, an unidentified speaker asks what kind of weapon they should use. Another unidentified speaker recommends a stun gun.
Chapter 40 Summary
When asked about her candidate, Nina explains that her candidate is herself. She still believes in sisterhood even if the House’s complex politics have caused other girls to lose faith in the idea. Everyone is moved.
Chapter 41 Summary
Sloane drops Isla off with Britt’s husband, Finn, and heads to the hardware store.
Chapter 42 Summary
After some deliberation, two candidates remain: Dr. Villanueva and Alina’s boyfriend, Tripp. Nina votes for Tripp.
Chapter 43 Summary
Sloane picks something up at the hardware store.
Chapter 44 Summary
Their meal is satiating, and after eating Nina feels amazing.
Chapter 45 Summary
Sloane approaches the house with her hardware store purchase: A new stun gun.
Chapter 46 Summary
Arya texts Nina. He is concerned about Jasleen. She is visiting from her home in Ohio and said that she was on her way to Nina’s, but obviously hasn’t arrived. She is on a new medication, he explains, but her depression has still been worsening. Nina worries: She has seen no trace of her twin.
Chapter 47 Summary
Sloane prepares Alex’s bolognese recipe for Isla after dropping off the disemboweled body (implied to be Jasleen’s) with Caroline. Isla greedily eats. Sloane is grateful that after months of fussiness, Isla is finally eating. Max comes in and tells her that they need to talk. She dismisses him with a wave. She already knows, to some extent, what he has to confess.
Back at the house, Jasleen’s phone lies alone on the sidewalk, Jasleen having been kidnapped by Sloane. She and Nina are twins: Sloane’s mistake is understandable.
Part 5 Analysis
The theme of The Complexities of Ambition and Ethics reaches its culmination in this section. Jasleen, the novel’s mouthpiece for the value of personal ethics, argues with Nina about Nina’s choice to embrace Greek life and about the racism and inequality that, she feels, have increasingly come to define American life. Nina, although she does see Jasleen’s point and wonders whether it is truly possible to be both powerful and ethical, ultimately chooses power.
This choice reflects her priorities: Like the rest of the women in The House, Nina values personal success over social justice. Unlike her twin sister, she does not feel duty-bound to give up the possibility of a high-powered career to help people in the non-profit sector. Nina’s attitude shows the character buying into a false dichotomy, in which a woman needs to be either entirely selfless or entirely amoral and ambitious. The novel depicts the consequences of this zero-sum thinking in Jasleen’s murder: The fact that it is Nina’s twin sister who ends up killed by Sloane and eaten by her daughter reinforces some of the points Jasleen has been making all along, especially her warnings that privileged women sometimes buy into abusive power structures instead of rejecting them as toxic and exploitative for everyone. As Jasleen’s death suggests, feminism that lacks intersectionality and a social conscience ultimately ends up hurting and disempowering women who are especially marginalized due to their class, race, sexuality, or other factors.
Part 5 also juxtaposes Max’s and Sloane’s affairs, with Sloane choosing to adapt bad patriarchal behaviors in her own life instead of rejecting them. Max is placed on sabbatical by the university for his affair with Fawn and vilified by The House as a serial predator, a professor who uses his looks, status, and position of power to entice his female students into sexual relationships. Sloane’s decision to have sex with Arya reflects her adaptation of the same behavioral patterns. Alex has been arguing that women need to access the kind of power that is traditionally reserved for men in patriarchal societies, and Sloane’s choice to have an affair of her own reflects her changing definition of what it means to have power and control—an attitude that is markedly reflective of those same patriarchal and hierarchal assumptions she deplores in Max.
In choosing to sleep with her TA—someone who has less power in the academic hierarchy than she does, and who answers to her as an employee—Sloane is also behaving in a way that overtly abuses the power of her position. Instead of subverting or rejecting these corrupt power dynamics within academia entirely, Sloane instead simply adapts them for her own ends. The novel thus subtly critiques the ways in which women themselves can sometimes end up abusing power and privilege when seeking their own fulfilment, with Sloane being just as capable of abusing her position as Max is.
The novel ends with Sloane’s transformation, but it comes at the expense of Jasleen, a woman of color who has advocated for the kind of social justice and intersectional feminism women like Sloane have chosen to reject. Sloane’s decision to kill another woman and feed Isla Jasleen’s flesh embodies how privilege can sometimes lead some women to prioritize their own ends or that of their own children instead of questioning the toxicity inherent in exploitative dynamics. Sloane ultimately does not question how to reject or reform a system that pits women against one another—as symbolized in her murder of Jasleen—and which presents some groups of people as inherently more worthy of privileges and opportunities than others for arbitrary reasons, such as Sloane having more privilege as an upper-class white woman than Jasleen as a woman of color does. The novel’s ending thus suggests that, unless or until women reject competition and exploitation and work together, some women will continue to gain power and exploit it at other women’s expense.
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