63 pages • 2 hours read
My Oxford Year: A Novel
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Chapters 8-13Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide features depictions of illness, death, sexual content, and substance use.
Chapter 8 Summary
Chapter 8 begins with a quote from William Morris’s “The Defence of Guenevere,” 1858.
Ella goes to Lincoln College, which seems smaller and older than Magdalen. She finds Jamie’s office but hears him arguing with another man. Jamie is telling the other man to leave, but the other man is telling Jamie that he is absurd to abandon his family. The other man storms past Ella, who knocks on Jamie’s door. Ella is distracted by Jamie’s velvet pants, and he tells Ella that she failed to complete the essay assignment. He told everyone to discuss how the poem made them feel, but Ella wrote him a detailed essay on the literary meaning of her poem. Ella is frustrated, but Jamie reassures her that she is not ill-equipped for the course material. Ella asserts that men are incapable of long-term love and says Jamie is a perfect example. Jamie says they have quickly judged each other and quotes Ella’s article on education. Jamie emphasizes the importance of feeling poetry, and he tells Ella to read Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach” out loud. Ella says she “gets” what he is doing, but he forces her to read anyway. As Ella reads, with Jamie sometimes saying the next lines for her, she feels something.
