50 pages • 1-hour read
Piglet
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Part 1, Chapter 11-Part 2, Chapter 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1, Chapter 11 Summary: “2 Days”
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of disordered eating.
On Piglet’s last day of work, Sandra gently explains that she understands why Piglet has not applied for the editor position and tells her not to worry about work until after the wedding. Piglet’s coworkers throw a party for her and another woman, Natalie, who is about to begin maternity leave. Piglet feels as if her wedding is less important than Natalie’s new baby. She rejects an offer to have lunch with her coworker Toni, lying and saying that her friends plan to take her to lunch at the Savoy Hotel. Privately, she plans to eat until she feels sick.
Even though she has tried to avoid binge eating in chain restaurants or places near her office, Piglet chooses to eat at Le Bun, a burger restaurant nearby. When a server approaches, Piglet hallucinates that the woman calls her a pig and mimics her father’s accent. Piglet orders every burger on the menu. When the server returns with the burgers, Piglet grabs burgers directly off the tray to begin eating. As she takes her first bite, she sees a large group of coworkers, including Toni and Natalie, enter the restaurant. She lies to Toni and says that her friends are in the restroom. Then, she panics and runs out of the restaurant. As she pushes the door open, she imagines that her hand has transformed into a hoof.
Piglet runs down a set of stairs to the banks of the Thames, ignoring calls and texts from Sandra and Toni. She begins to walk into the river but is stopped by a man who she briefly believes is her father. She leaves the river to meet Kit for a planned visit to Borough Market to buy ingredients for her wedding cake, a croquembouche. Piglet and Kit reaffirm their desire to get married. On the way home, Margot calls and says that she cannot come to the wedding, as the baby is too small to be in public and she doesn’t want to see Piglet marry Kit. At home, Piglet asks Kit to leave the kitchen as she begins baking choux for the croquembouche.
In the interstitial epigraph, Piglet wonders whether public knowledge of Kit’s betrayal is worse than the betrayal itself.
Part 1, Chapter 12 Summary: “1 Day”
The day before the wedding, Piglet makes the crème patisserie that she’ll use to fill the croquembouche the next morning. She sends Kit out to buy milk, eggs, butter, and sugar and doesn’t lose her temper when he returns with the wrong butter and sugar. She throws out all the food in the refrigerator and refills it with bowls full of the crème patisserie, which will cool and set overnight. As she works, she imagines the praise that she’ll receive from Kit and her father.
Piglet’s family arrives to spend the night at her house before the wedding. Piglet is happy to see them but uncomfortable with them in her home, knowing that her issues with Kit are still largely unresolved. As Piglet’s family gathers in the living room, Kit’s father, Richard, arrives. Piglet is keenly aware of the difference in class between her family and Kit’s and wonders if Richard is judging her father, John. As Kit leaves to spend one last night with his family, he apologizes again and promises Piglet that he still wants to marry her. She confirms that she’ll see him at the church the next day, and Kit leaves.
Piglet’s parents offer to take her, Franny, and Darren to dinner at Nando’s, a fast-casual restaurant specializing in spicy chicken. On the way, Piglet asks Franny to be her stand-in maid of honor since Margot isn’t coming. Franny suggests ordering wine for a toast, but John insists that he and Darren will have beer. Linda reveals that they plan to pay with a voucher and that alcohol is not included. Darren and John each order a whole chicken, while Piglet, Franny, and Linda order salads. As they eat, Piglet wonders what Kit and his family are eating.
Later that night, while Piglet is working on the cones that will hold up the croquembouche, she reveals Kit’s betrayal to her father. He dismisses her concerns, saying that these things happen, and implies that it is too late to cancel the wedding.
In the interstitial epigraph, Piglet wonders if it is too late to reveal the truth of Kit’s betrayal to the people in her life.
Part 1, Chapter 13 Summary: “0 Days”
Piglet wakes up at five o’clock on the morning of her wedding, feeling as if she is preparing for a funeral. She has two hours to assemble the croquembouche and another three hours to prepare herself. She tries to be as quiet as possible as she moves through the house so as not to wake up her family. When she opens her phone to pull up the recipe, she sees a message from Margot wishing her luck and promising that whatever Piglet chooses, she will be there for her.
Piglet is pleased with the consistency of the crème patisserie and begins piping it into the prepared choux buns. The first 90 buns take more crème patisserie than she expected, and she decides to pipe the remaining buns so that they are less full. Next, she prepares a caramel sauce to dip the filled choux buns in before assembling them onto the cone. As she works, she allows herself to eat one completed bun and is delighted with her success.
When the first cone is completed, she begins work on the largest cone, the centerpiece of the cake display. Her second batch of caramel is not as high-quality as the first, but she finishes it with several extra choux buns to spare. She eats all the extras, swallowing them whole. However, as she begins work on the final cone, she runs out of crème patisserie and regrets eating the extras. She decides to assemble the croquembouche with empty choux buns and serve this cone to her extended family and their unwanted plus ones.
Once the croquembouche have cooled, she carefully removes the paper cones, giving them structure. The first cone is easily removed, but as she pulls the cone out of the largest croquembouche, it falls to pieces on the floor. Piglet’s mother enters excitedly, and Piglet screams at her to leave the kitchen. The third croquembouche crumples slightly as Piglet removes the cone. As she begins to panic, Franny enters and tries to reassure her. Piglet claims that she cannot get married unless the croquembouches are perfect, and Franny offers to glue the croquembouche back together, assuring Piglet that no one eats cake at weddings anyway.
In the interstitial epigraph, Piglet worries that her life is spoiling around her.
Part 2, Chapter 1 Summary: “Old”
Piglet grows increasingly anxious as wedding vendors begin arriving. Her family seems unaware of her mood, but the wedding photographer, Madeline, notices that she is not smiling. Piglet is unhappy with her hair and makeup and has a brief hallucination of her nose transforming into a pig’s snout.
As she puts on her wedding lingerie, Piglet is keenly aware of how much weight she has gained. Linda and Franny struggle to fit her into her dress. When they cannot close the corset, they focus on fitting her arms into the sleeves. Piglet feels like a sausage escaping its casing. Her mother calls her father to help fit her into the dress. John believes that he is being summoned to see the final product and cannot hide his disappointment when he sees Piglet half dressed. Piglet’s family pushes and prods her until the corset of her dress is nearly buttoned. As Piglet turns to look at herself in the mirror, the buttons fly open again. John begins to yell, calling Piglet greedy and asking why she couldn’t control herself. Piglet wonders if he is criticizing the cost of the dress or her weight. He storms out of the house.
Linda assures Piglet that she will walk her down the aisle, and the group travels to the University Church, a historic and prestigious church on the Oxford University campus. In the back of the rented Rolls Royce, Piglet prods at the croquembouche until one of the choux buns explodes. When they arrive, John is waiting to escort her down the aisle. Piglet greets Cecelia and the flower girls, selected by Cecelia from her side of the family.
As she walks down the aisle, Piglet is unable to make eye contact with the guests, who she feels are waiting to devour her. She whispers her vows, hoping that her guests and God won’t be able to hear her. As she and Kit seal their vows with a kiss, Piglet realizes that she has made a horrible mistake.
In the interstitial epigraph, the vicar observes the differences between the bride’s and groom’s families and wonders what kind of food will be served.
Part 1, Chapter 11-Part 2, Chapter 1 Analysis
As Piglet’s wedding day approaches, the tone of the novel changes dramatically. Hazell begins to depict Piglet as animalistic and her wedding as a horror story. Piglet has two visual hallucinations of herself as a pig in this section of the novel. The first comes two days before the wedding, shortly after she is caught binge eating by her colleagues in a restaurant near their office. As Piglet flees the restaurant, she notices a change in her hand: “[H]er fingers had fused together. They were short and swollen and ended in a sharp point. She stared at it, this appendage resting on the door. It was not a hoof, but it was not a hand” (165). Piglet’s hallucination of her hand as a hoof reflects her growing suspicion that the people around her are aware of her body-image problems and issues with food.
Later, while getting her bridal makeup done, Piglet looks into the mirror and perceives that “her eyes look[] too small, her ears too big. Her nose look[s] flat and round, and her body beneath [i]s sack-like and soft” (221). In this passage, the combination of small eyes and a flat, round nose suggests a pig’s face. As with the hallucination of the hoof, Piglet’s vision of herself as a pig here reflects her concern that her family nickname is becoming reality and that her appetite is making her animalistic. Piglet’s hallucinations suggest that the stress of the wedding and her body-image issues are causing her to lose touch with reality, illustrating the devastating impact of Body Image and the Pressure to Be Thin on both physical and mental health.
In addition to Piglet’s visual hallucinations, Hazell’s descriptions of Piglet in this section of the novel are also animalistic. At the end of Part 1, Piglet eats the choux buns she has prepared for the wedding croquembouche whole. Hazell writes that Piglet “ha[s] no need to chew, her saliva dissolving the pastry, the crème slipping down her throat” (204). The image of food dissolving in Piglet’s saliva and sliding down her throat is animalistic, as if Piglet were a snake. This comparison is made explicit a few pages later as Piglet eats more choux buns: “[T]he pastry was soft, the custard slick, and she moved the contents of her mouth down her throat like a boa constrictor, swallowing her food whole” (206). In this passage, the image of Piglet swallowing the choux buns whole further emphasizes her animalistic hunger, suggesting that she is losing her personality as the wedding approaches.
The structure of the first part of the novel counts down toward Piglet’s wedding day, building anticipation toward what everyone tells Piglet will be the happiest day of her life. In contrast, the tone of the first chapter of Part 2, which describes the wedding day, shifts from anticipation to horror. The descriptions of Piglet’s attempts to get into her wedding dress are particularly evocative of body horror. As Piglet puts on her bridal lingerie, she studies her body critically, noting that her belly button “peek[s] out above the fabric like a gouged eye” (222). The violence of this description reflects Piglet’s growing disgust with her own body. Piglet later imagines her wedding dress as “a black hole for [her] to lower herself into” (223). This description mirrors Piglet’s belief that her wedding is a disaster she cannot escape. Combined with the image of the gouged eye, this passage presents the wedding as a concrete risk not only to Piglet’s mental state but also to her body. These passages add to the horror of the wedding day while also highlighting, with the contrast between what Piglet envisions and the reality, the effects of The Pressure to Build a Perfect Life—she has planned a wedding that, instead of focusing on her and Kit and being deeply personal, is constructed with other people’s perspectives in mind.
This sense of horror builds as Piglet attempts to get dressed for the wedding. Because of Piglet’s weight gain, Linda and Franny are forced to help her into the dress: “[T]hey moved around her, working together, wrapping her in fabric, embalming her” (223). The use of the words “wrapping” and “embalming” in this passage suggests funeral garb, as if Piglet’s mother and sister are preparing her for death. As the women continue to struggle to fit Piglet into her dress, Hazell uses increasingly violent verbs—“folding her body away, grappling with handfuls of netting” (224)—to create a tense, claustrophobic atmosphere. In the final pages, Piglet feels the once-soft silk “scrape and twist against her spine, the dress closing around her” (225). Here, the use of the words “scrape” and “twist” contrasts with how the dress felt to Piglet earlier in the novel, building the sense of claustrophobia. The tone of this section of the novel reflects Piglet’s dread at the thought of marrying Kit.
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