63 pages • 2-hour read
My Oxford Year: A Novel
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Chapters 14-18Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide features depictions of illness, death, sexual content, and substance use.
Chapter 14 Summary
Chapter 14 begins with a quote from “Untitled” by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, also known as Lewis Carroll, 1855.
Jamie brings Ella to the house he inherited from his aunt Charlotte. It is a mansion with a ballroom, and Jamie says he intends to restore it and donate it, turning it into a museum.
Ella examines portraits of Jamie’s family going back decades, including one showing Jamie, his brother, his mother, and his father. Jamie brings her to the dining room, and Ella thinks Jamie did not bring her to his house sooner to avoid misunderstandings. Jamie serves dinner, Ella loves it, and Jamie confesses that the family cook taught him. Jamie admits that his family is very wealthy and resists Ella’s questions about his parents. Ella jokingly says she discussed Jamie with her mother. Jamie says he likes Ella, and she says she likes him back. They leave dinner to have sex.
Ella and Jamie go to the Happy Cod for breakfast, and Ella is confused, having slept in Jamie’s bed for the first time. Simon is happy to see them together and encourages Ella to pursue Jamie. Martin, a friend of Jamie’s, comes in and greets them, introducing them to his fiancée, Sophie. Jamie is visibly disturbed by Martin’s presence and tries to leave with Ella. Martin and Sophie invite Ella and Jamie to a party they are having, and Jamie tells Martin to text him. As Jamie leaves, Martin asks if there has been any “improvement,” but Jamie only says: “Brilliant. Cheers” (125).
Chapter 15 Summary
Chapter 15 begins with a quote from Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s “Sudden Light,” 1863.
Ella pushes Jamie about Martin’s question, and Jamie says his brother, Oliver, has multiple myeloma, a blood cancer affecting plasma cells. Jamie says he frequently assists Oliver with treatments in London, but there is no cure. Ella offers to help, but Jamie says he wants to take a break from their relationship for a month. Ella accepts, though she is shocked, and she tells Jamie to end their relationship if he is done. Jamie kisses Ella and tells her he is not done.
Time passes. Ella drinks with her friends, talks with her mother, and expands her work for Gavin. She wonders what she will be doing in one year. At the pub with Charlie, Maggie, and Tom, Ella spots Connor, her fellow Rhodie, and joins him. He notes that she has not been at the Rhodes events and asks if she is seeing anyone. When Ella hesitates, Connor assures her that he is not pressuring her, but he invites her to get Thanksgiving dinner in London. Ella agrees and gives him her phone number.
Ella, Charlie, and Maggie drink and lament their romantic troubles. Maggie does not know how to show Tom her feelings, and Ella suggests taking off her clothes. Charlie thinks they need an event, and the Blenheim Ball is the perfect opportunity to dress up. Charlie teases Ella about Jamie, and she teases him back about Ridley. They need invitations to go to the ball, but they do not know how to get them.
After working on an essay, Ella gets food and walks around. She finds herself outside Lincoln College and walks up to Jamie’s rooms. He does not answer the door, so she calls him. He is glad to hear from her and says he is in the Lincoln library. Ella asks about his thesis and goes to the library, waiting for someone to enter and open the door for her. She says she loves George Eliot and asks where Jamie is working. Jamie describes the location and says he would like to see Ella. He hangs up, saying the librarian is approaching him. Ella finds Jamie’s spot empty.
Chapter 16 Summary
Chapter 16 begins with a quote from Charles (Tennyson) Turner’s “A Country Dance,” 1880.
Ella is furious that Jamie lied to her and searches the entire library before texting Charlie, Maggie, and Tom, inviting them out. Ella and Jamie’s agreement was to be honest with each other, and Jamie wasn’t. She goes to Magdalen and finds a rose in her mailbox, which she stomps into the ground. Hugh offers to clean it for her, which makes Ella smile. The clubs do not open until later, so Charlie, Maggie, Tom, and Ella congregate in Charlie’s room.
Charlie, Tom, Maggie, and Ella get drunk before riding their bikes to the club. Connor meets them at the entrance. Ella invited him, though Charlie gives her a disapproving look. Inside, Ella breaks away from the group to dance, remembering how she used to love dancing before she became a serious adult. Connor joins her, and she likes the way he holds her. She feels Connor is predictable and safe. Suddenly, Sophie, Martin’s fiancée, approaches Ella, thrilled that she came to her bachelorette party. Ella worries Jamie is also here, but she lets Sophie, who is also drunk, pull her to the bathroom. Sophie says Martin told her everything, and it is dreadful. Ella assumes Sophie means that Martin cheated on her, and she recommends leaving him. Sophie says Connor is good-looking, but she is confused by Ella’s advice. Sophie clarifies that the issue is with Jamie and involves Cecelia. Oliver is dead, and they already had a funeral, at which Cecelia was upset. Ella realizes that Jamie lied to her and remembers him saying that he did not want to hurt Ella.
Chapter 17 Summary
Chapter 17 begins with a quote from an unknown author.
Ella remembers her hard work during the first campaign she ran. The politician was revealed to be a pedophile, and Ella wonders why a man with a secret like that would run for office at all. Ella goes to Jamie’s house and opens the door. She hears Jamie talking to a woman and finds him seated and shirtless with a nurse. The nurse steps back, revealing an IV, and Ella asks what is happening. Jamie says he wants Ella to leave, but she insists on honesty. Ella changes her mind, says she does not care, and turns to leave. Jamie yells at her to get out, but as she leaves, he tells her to come back. Ella leaves.
Chapter 18 Summary
Chapter 18 begins with a quote from Elizabeth Rossetti’s “Dead Love,” 1899.
Ella pauses outside Jamie’s door, and he follows her outside. He looks pale and sickly. She demands an explanation, revealing that she knows Oliver is dead. Jamie has multiple myeloma, which he expects will kill him. He began treatment six weeks ago, just after he and Ella started seeing each other. Ella questions why Jamie would start a relationship knowing his prognosis, and Jamie says Ella was meant to be his last romance, which he assumed would work because Ella is leaving. Ella remembers how her mother switched roles with her after her father died, and she accuses Jamie of trying to trap her into staying in England and taking care of him. Jamie gets angry but falters, and Ella backs away, saying that she does not love Jamie.
Ella gets in a cab and feels guilty about leaving Jamie. Gavin calls and tells her to start thinking about hiring people for Janet’s campaign, and Ella considers taking on a more integral role. Ella tells the cab driver to go back to the club, but Connor calls. He and Charlie are outside the club with her bike, and Connor wants to know if Ella wants to get Thanksgiving dinner in London the next day. Ella agrees, but she immediately feels terrible.
The next day, Ella goes to London with Connor, but she struggles to pay attention to their conversations. They get a stereotypical Thanksgiving dinner, and Connor tells her about his life, which feels safe. Connor might move to India after England, which reminds Ella of Middlemarch. Ella’s mother calls, and Connor convinces her to answer. Ella tells her mother about Connor, joking about having sex with him, and her mother gets sad thinking about Ella’s father. She quotes Tennyson before letting Ella get back to her date. Ella describes how Dorothea, the protagonist of Middlemarch, gives up everything for love, but Connor does not understand. Ella politely decides to leave, and Connor understands that she is going to see someone else and wishes her luck.
Chapters 14-18 Analysis
This section of the novel shifts the focus of the narrative from the fantasy of falling in love on a trip to a foreign country to the struggle of facing illness and loss. Though this section begins with Jamie and Ella growing even closer, Jamie quickly requests space, which culminates in Jamie lying about his location. The sequence at Jamie’s inherited home epitomizes this shift: What begins as a romantic dinner in a stately house, complete with family portraits that remind Ella of Jamie’s deep roots, becomes unsettling when Martin and Sophie appear at breakfast. Their cryptic comment about “improvement” haunts Ella because it destabilizes the safety of her new intimacy, hinting at truths Jamie refuses to share.
The mystery of Oliver’s illness, which turns out to also be Jamie’s illness, throws a new problem in Ella and Jamie’s attempt at a non-committal romance. Ella and Jamie’s fight in Chapter 18 centers on Ella’s fear of loss, and she tells Jamie: “You thought…That I’d fall for you, That I’d stay. That I’d take care of you” (151), implying that Jamie did not trust Ella to maintain her distance if he told her about his illness. Ella’s anger reveals her own fear, as she knows that she is falling for Jamie and would stay in England to take care of him, inevitably ending with his death and her grief. The irony of her accusation is that the words meant to wound Jamie expose her own truth, injuring only herself and underscoring how her rigid control is breaking down. By losing order, Ella begins to reconnect with the very vulnerability and depth of feeling that drew her to Victorian literature in the first place. She is not angry at Jamie for being sick but heartbroken at the situation itself. When Ella follows up this comment by saying: “It’s a good thing I don’t love you” (152), she is already hinting at her own growing feelings for Jamie. The defensive tone of this denial dramatizes how grief and intimacy are entwined, as Ella protects herself with cold words because she knows the opposite is true.
A common trope in romance novels is the third-act breakup, in which the last portion of a narrative involves a setback in the romance that drives the story toward a happy ending. My Oxford Year has this conflict occur earlier, shifting the novel toward the primary conflict that leads into the resolution of the novel and reveals the key element of the romance, which is Jamie’s illness. By moving the “breakup” moment to the midpoint, Whelan structurally signals that this novel is less about will-they-or-won’t-they romance than about how love can survive the inevitability of death. Connor is a false rival rather than a true competitor for Ella’s affections. For Ella, however, Connor exists as a reminder of the life for which she could settle. Thinking about Connor’s perfect life, she notes: “I think these things, the details that technically define you, are what you give to people in exchange for not talking about the real things” (156), acknowledging that her attraction to Connor is superficial. Her brief attraction to Connor at the dance club reinforces this contrast: Dancing with him feels “safe” and predictable, a return to a life of careful choices, but Sophie’s drunken revelation about Oliver and Cecelia punctures the illusion. Safe paths cannot shield Ella from grief any more than risky ones can. Chapter 18 ends with Ella leaving Connor and implicitly going to reunite with Jamie. Her contemplation of Dorothea in Middlemarch, who gives up everything for love, underscores how Ella’s literary framework shapes her decisions. Rather than embracing the safe life, Ella recognizes that meaningful love demands risk, even if it ends in suffering.
The exposure of Jamie’s illness opens a major theme in the work, Illness as a Catalyst for Reevaluating Life Choices, as it impacts how both Ella and Jamie treat each other. Jamie’s reasons for hiding his illness and pulling away from Ella are rooted in his desire to avoid hurting her with his own deterioration and death. When Jamie lies and tells Ella that Oliver is alive but dying of cancer, he adds: “I’m sorry, Ella, I should’ve been more forthcoming. I’m simply not one to go on about such things” (126). This is Jamie’s polite way of saying that he does not want to burden Ella with the details and challenges of his illness. Though Ella insists that Jamie does not need to hide things from her, she does not understand how living with cancer, and having lived through Oliver’s death, influences Jamie’s decisions. For Ella, the main issue is the fear that Jamie will die, leaving her to grieve his death, whereas Jamie is afraid to ruin the little time he has left by accidentally trapping Ella, as Ella notes in their argument. This divergence shows how the same illness generates opposite fears: for Ella, unbearable absence; for Jamie, unbearable entrapment. Together, their conflict dramatizes how love under the shadow of death requires rethinking not only the future but also the meaning of the present.
Ella’s angry outburst in Chapter 18 marks the moment her façade finally fractures. By hurling accusations at Jamie, she admits that loving him means staying and being forced to face grief again. Once spoken aloud, that fear cannot be contained, and Ella cannot return to the careful, controlled version of herself who believed she could keep intimacy at bay. The collapse of her mask is itself transformative, revealing that the real danger lay not in being with Jamie but in repressing her emotions behind rigid order. Jamie, by contrast, handles the exposure of his illness with a kind of weary candor that reflects his growth in the opposite direction. Though initially defensive, he quickly pushes his anger aside and asks Ella to stay, responding not like a man trying to maintain distance but like someone already in love. His acceptance of Ella’s presence, even in the most vulnerable moment of being caught mid-treatment, underscores that his barrier is not repression but the practical fact of his illness and Ella’s impending departure. Their diverging reactions in this section demonstrate how both characters are forced into honesty, Ella by losing control, Jamie by embracing it.
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