Mrs. Quinn's Rise to Fame

Jenny Quinn is the 77-year-old protagonist of Mrs. Quinn’s Rise to Fame. The novel chronicles her teenage pregnancy in a series of flashbacks alongside the main narrative, which focuses on her experiences as a contestant on the fictional baking competition show, Britain Bakes. The novel suggests that Jenny’s time on the show helped her to build back confidence that was damaged in her teenage years. As a teenager, Jenny was shamed by her family when she became pregnant after her married boyfriend coerced her into unprotected sex. Although adult Jenny feels that her pregnancy happened in “a different lifetime” (16), the novel suggests that the shame of the pregnancy and the difficulty of carrying the secret “never lessened with the passing of time” (43), and it affected her well into her adult life. Jenny’s struggles to come to terms with her past are an important part of her character’s journey and are reflected in the novel’s frequent flashbacks.

The experience of competing on Britain Bakes helps to build back the confidence Jenny lost after being shamed for her pregnancy. Early in the novel, Jenny worries that her application to the show will fail, and that she is “deluded” to think that “she was anything other than an old lady who enjoyed baking” (10).