46 pages • 1-hour read
Mrs. Quinn's Rise to Fame
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Chapters 19-26Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of illness.
Chapter 19 Summary: “Key Lime Brandy Snaps”
Teenage Jenny struggles to keep her quickly growing pregnancy a secret from her father. As her body changes, she feels compelled to tell him the truth, but she doesn’t want to shatter his belief that she is the perfect daughter. When she cannot finish the brandy snaps she made for their dessert, he demands to know what is wrong. Jenny tells him the truth, and he apologizes, saying that he has failed both her and her late mother.
In the present, Jenny practices preparing key lime brandy snaps for the next week of Britain Bakes, which is a cookie-themed episode. She grows worried when Bernard has a coughing fit, but he insists that she leave for the competition anyway. Rose calls to wish Jenny good luck and share the news that she was promoted to partner. Jenny is proud of Rose and wonders how it would feel to have others be proud of her.
Chapter 20 Summary: “Chocolate Teacakes”
Teenage Jenny becomes increasingly attached to the idea of having her baby, although her father has not spoken to her in the week since she revealed the pregnancy. At Aunt Ethel’s urging, Jenny’s father tells her to go to a mother and baby home, where she’ll live for six weeks before and after having the baby in secret, then place it for adoption. Jenny reluctantly agrees. Later, while eating a chocolate teacake, she feels the baby kick.
In the present, Jenny is chosen to compete for the golden whisk for the second week in a row. In the Blind Bake Challenge, she and fellow contestant Angela are asked to bake chocolate cheesecakes. Influencer Sorcha laughs loudly when Angela’s meringue falls apart minutes before judging. Jenny wins the golden whisk, making her immune to elimination the next week. She attempts to call Bernard in a post-challenge interview, but he doesn’t answer.
Chapter 21 Summary: “Espresso Martini”
Jenny agrees to celebrate with Azeez by going out for espresso martinis before her train home. Despite the fact that she is older than the rest of the crowd, she feels completely anonymous in the posh, crowded cocktail bar. Jenny and Azeez begin to share details about their personal life. Jenny reveals that the independence of her time on set is bringing up memories from before her marriage to Bernard. She tells Azeez that she has been keeping a secret from Bernard, and she worries that telling him would destroy both their lives. Azeez encourages her to tell Bernard the truth, insisting that his reaction might surprise her.
Jenny arrives home to find the house empty. Her neighbor Ann appears and reveals that Bernard fell and was taken to the emergency room, where doctors discovered that he also has pneumonia. As Jenny waits for visiting hours to begin, she determines not to tell Bernard her secret, as he is too frail to handle it.
Chapter 22 Summary: “Cheese and Onion Pie”
Teenage Jenny is sent to live in a home with other unwed mothers waiting to give birth. The older women working in the home are cold to Jenny, and she longs for the comfort of her home and her father. Although she feels awkward around the other girls, Jenny reveals the details of her pregnancy to a young-looking girl named Mary. She is hurt when Mary refuses to share anything about herself. As she unpacks, she finds a surprise from her father: a hand-baked cheese and onion pie.
In the present, Jenny visits Bernard as soon as the hospital opens, bringing him a cheese and onion pie. Bernard explains that he fell during a coughing fit while making Jenny a new pastry board. Horrified by how frail he looks, Jenny tells Bernard she is leaving the show because his health is the only thing that matters. Bernard begs her to stay on the show, but she has already dropped out.
Chapter 23 Summary: “Eton Mess and Coffee Walnut Choux Buns”
As she waits for her baby to be born, teenage Jenny grows closer to Mary. Jenny believes that her baby is a boy and decides to name him James. She decides to write a cookbook of her family recipes and leave it in the box of clothes each girl knits for their baby. Although she knits the clothes with love, she is hurt knowing that she will not be able to raise John herself.
As Jenny brings Bernard home from the hospital, she learns that Azeez has qualified for the Blind Baking Challenge in patisserie week at Britain Bakes. Rose is waiting for them at home and offers to care for Bernard while Jenny returns to the show. Bernard reveals that because Jenny won the golden whisk the previous week, show producer Carys says she can return to the show despite her absence, as she wouldn’t have been eliminated anyway. Rose encourages Jenny to return, reminding her that she can love Bernard and still chase her own dreams.
Chapter 24 Summary: “Cottage Loaf”
On January 11th, teenage Jenny is baking a simple cottage loaf when she goes into labor. She is sent alone to the hospital, where she is treated coldly by the staff, including doctors and nurses. She grows angry thinking about how Ray escaped their relationship without consequences. After a difficult labor, she gives birth to a healthy baby boy, whom she officially names James. He is taken away from her moments later, and she weeps at the thought of letting go of him forever.
Despite her fears about bread week, Jenny is successful, and she is chosen to compete in the Blind Baking Challenge against Azeez. The stakes are high for this challenge, as the winner is granted immunity during semi-finals week and therefore guaranteed a spot in the finals. The recipe is revealed to be a cottage loaf, and Jenny’s nerves give Azeez the win. In a post-challenge interview, Jenny reveals that she had made the recipe once before but never had the chance to eat it.
Chapter 25 Summary: “Blackcurrant & Elderflower and Apple & Cinnamon Donuts”
In the maternity ward, the other mothers question Jenny about her lack of visitors. Jenny lies, claiming that James’s father is in the navy and unable to come home. Jenny spends as much time as possible holding James and staring at him from outside the nursery, knowing that she will be separated from him for good in six weeks.
As Jenny prepares for the semi-final of Britain Bakes, she realizes that the competition has given her a sense of purpose and possibility in a time when that seemed impossible. She allows herself to briefly imagine winning the show but shuts down the idea to avoid disappointment.
Hours later, Bernard arrives to pick her up. Jenny reveals a twist in the semi-final: the bottom two bakers were selected for the Blind Bake Challenge, rather than the top two, with the loser of the challenge eliminated. Jenny announces that she was not in the bottom two and made it into the final unquestioned. Bernard says he has always known she was brilliant.
Chapter 26 Summary: “Treacle Tart”
On the night before she is forced to part with James, teenage Jenny and Mary share a treacle tart that Mary stole from the kitchens. Jenny shares her pain in being parted from James, and Mary reveals that she did not expect to love her baby, fearing that she would look like her father. (The narrative implies that it is Mary’s stepfather.) When Jenny leaves the following morning, Mary gives her a photograph of James that she took secretly.
In the present, Jenny decides to bake treacle tarts when she cannot sleep the night before the Britain Bakes producers are set to interview her and Bernard at home. During his interview, Bernard shares how proud he is of Jenny and suggests that she is succeeding because of her age and experience, not despite it. When Ann appears unexpectedly, Jenny is forced to disclose her role on the show. In an interview, Ann shares her own love for Jenny.
Chapters 19-26 Analysis
In this section of Mrs. Quinn’s Rise to Fame, the novel’s thematic interest in The Connection Between Food, Memory, and Love is made explicit as the tasks on Britain Bakes recall specific moments in Jenny’s past. The recurring connections between Jenny’s past and present add a layer of tension to the narrative, foreshadowing Jenny’s eventual reunion with her son. In Chapter 19, Jenny makes her father’s favorite cookies, brandy snaps, on the day she tells him she is pregnant. Later, Jenny’s “perfect” brandy snaps make her one of the week’s top two bakers, sending her to the Blind Bake Challenge, where she is charged with making chocolate tea cakes. In the next chapter, a heavily pregnant Jenny sneaks out of the house in disguise to buy “Tunnock’s Teacakes” after agreeing to deliver her baby in secret and place it for adoption. The fact that Jenny is “well acquainted with the Tunnock’s variety” of teacakes enables her to win the Blind Bake Challenge (196), ensuring that she stays on the show. In these episodes, baking connects the most difficult moments of Jenny’s life with her greatest successes on Britain Bakes.
As the novel progresses, Jenny begins to acknowledge these connections more explicitly, beginning the novel’s exploration of the Mistreatment of Pregnant Women and Girls in the 20th Century. Flashbacks in Chapter 22 reveal that when Jenny left her father to live in the mother-and-baby home, her father secretly baked and packed her a cheese and onion pie “pinched in the shape of his fingers” (223). Later, when Bernard is hospitalized with pneumonia, Jenny mimics her father and brings Bernard a cheese and onion pie with a “neatly pinched crust” (226), calling it “comfort food” (226). The repetition of the image of the hand-pinched crust and the reference to comfort suggest that Jenny sees the connections between her teenage pregnancy and her current life.
This pattern repeats in Chapter 24. On the day she gives birth, Jenny bakes a simple cottage loaf, her water breaking as she puts the loaf in the oven. Years later, she is charged with baking a cottage loaf as part of a Blind Baking challenge. When the bake is announced, Jenny is transported into the past, “the events of sixty years ago vivid in her mind” (253). Jenny’s memory “[takes] hold” as she began to bake, and she is forced to bargain with herself, vowing “never again” to bake a cottage loaf after the competition. This episode suggests that bakes can be tied to specific memories, and that Jenny is painfully aware of these connections.
In this section of the novel, Jenny develops two close friendships. As a teenager, she grows close to Mary, another young unwed mother in the mother-and-baby house Jenny is sent to. Years later, Jenny grows close to Azeez, a young gay architecture student who is also competing on Britain Bakes. Both of these friendships are formed in intense and unusual circumstances, even though Jenny has little in common with Azeez or Mary. Jenny and Azeez meet at their first audition for Britain Bakes, and they often commiserate about the stress of the show. Despite the fact that the young, gay Azeez is “so removed from her life with Bernard” (210), she feels “safe” with him, and they quickly grow close. Jenny’s friendship with Azeez ignites “a flash of confidence” in Jenny (209), making her feel “momentarily indestructible,” and she tells Azeez that she has been keeping a secret from Bernard. This is the closest Jenny has come to revealing her teenage pregnancy in sixty years, suggesting the intimacy she feels with Azeez and furthering the novel’s exploration of The Importance of Intergenerational Relationships.
This intense, unexpected friendship is mirrored in Jenny’s teenage friendship with Mary, which also develops quickly. Jenny and Mary come from dramatically different backgrounds, Mary from “a family whom she mentioned only in glimpses and always with a tone of resentment,” and Jenny from “a loving home, with a father she adored completely” (232). The novel suggests that their friendship is based on their shared experiences, namely their secret pregnancies, noting that “as their secrets grew, so did their fondness for one another” (231). The extreme nature of their circumstances meant that their friendship formed quickly, so that “while they had known each other only a month, it felt as if they had always been friends” (231). Like Jenny’s friendship with Azeez, her friendship with Mary is built on their shared experiences as unwed mothers, which trumps their disparate backgrounds.
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