51 pages • 1-hour read
What in the World?!: A Southern Woman's Guide to Laughing at Life's Unexpected Curveballs and Beautiful Blessings
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 4-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary: “As Broke as a Church Mouse”
In college, Morgan met “wealthy people” for the first time. A group of girls who went to private school in Chattanooga and Memphis befriended her, charmed by her jokes and southern accent. Morgan was baffled by their talk of exotic vacations and the differentiation between “new money” and “old money.” Morgan had always thought of her family as “well-off”—they owned land, a business, and two vehicles. However, when she went to her roommate Lara’s grandparents’ home, she was shocked to see a freezer full of shrimp, which Morgan considered a luxury.
Morgan rushed sororities with all the other girls in her dorm and was chosen by Phi Mu, a house filled with the most beautiful girls. She was “flattered” to be chosen, but struggled to see the point of it all, and quit after the first week.
Morgan also struggled with the newly discovered gulf between urban and rural people. Many people at college, including some of her professors, mocked Morgan because of her accent and her grammar. Her new city friends laughed if she mispronounced words, but they were drawn to her authenticity and still wanted to be her friend.
After she broke up with Evan, she was a broke college dropout sleeping on her friend’s couch. Eventually, she moved into an apartment with Brian and Stan, two of her coworkers from the makeup counter. This turned out to be perfect for all parties. Morgan had a comfortable place to live, and Brian and Stan had Morgan to cook and clean for them. Morgan slipped into a “mother hen” role with the boys and their friends. She still felt directionless, and when she was offered a promotion with a nominal raise, Morgan knew it was time to turn her life around and go back to school.
Morgan’s parents were happy to give her a second chance at college and offered to pay her tuition. She enrolled as a student of child and family studies, thinking she would make a good counselor, at least until her dreams of fame worked out (54). She also cut her long blond hair and got a new job waiting tables at Grady’s, a restaurant with a reputation for good pay among UT students. Morgan wasn’t a drinker like most of the Grady’s crew, but she liked smoking cigarettes with the line cooks and listening to who was dating whom.
Chapter 5 Summary: “Chase, Catch, Kill: Courtship in Your Twenties”
As she recovered from her divorce and put her life back together, Morgan had no intention of dating. When Chuck Morgan started working at Grady’s, Morgan thought he seemed like a jerk. Sitting next to Morgan during a family meal at the restaurant, Chuck encouraged her to eat less fat on her baked potato, shocking Morgan with his rudeness.
Chuck was getting his master’s in finance at UT and quickly fell in love with Morgan. However, she didn’t know how he felt because he didn’t talk to her. Instead, he began showering Morgan with acts of service, like cleaning the bathroom at work so she didn’t have to and giving her gifts she hadn’t asked for. She continued insisting that she wasn’t interested in dating, but Chuck didn’t give up. Apart from the fact that she wasn’t interested in a relationship, Chuck and Morgan were complete opposites, and she didn’t think a relationship would work out.
Finally, Morgan agreed to have dinner with Chuck. He was stable and reliable, and she knew he would be able to take care of her and their future family. After a month of dating, Chuck announced that they would get married as soon as he got a good job. A week after that announcement, he broke up with Morgan. The only explanation he offered was that he didn’t like her smoking.
Morgan was confused and devastated. She quit her restaurant job to avoid working with Chuck and got a new job at a catering company. She rebounded with a skinny artist who reminded her of her sister and got over Chuck quickly. Her life was full of friends, family, work, and school.
Six months after they broke up, Morgan heard that Chuck had moved to Bean Station, Tennessee, to take over a mobile home refurbishing business. Morgan came back from spring break in Key West and was surprised to run into him at her makeup counter in the mall. He began pursuing her again, calling every day after he went back to Bean Station. Morgan finally invited him to her graduation ceremony and suggested she “might consider” getting back together.
After graduation, Chuck asked Morgan to marry him and move to Bean Station with him. They had a simple wedding at the courthouse, and armed with a husband and a college degree, Morgan was ready to have children and start her show business career.
Chapter 6 Summary: “What Every Newlywed Should Know Going In”
Chapter 6 consists of a series of questions that Morgan wishes she and Chuck had asked one another before they got married to save themselves. Nowadays, people go to premarital counseling, something Morgan loves the idea of, but Chuck isn’t “a talker,” and they never discussed any of the specifics of their marriage.
The first question was about where the new couple wanted to live. Morgan wanted “a nice house close to [her] family” (71), but Chuck’s main concern was affordability, so they ended up renting a dingy guesthouse in Bean Station. The next question Morgan wishes they had discussed is about money. Morgan “love[s] to entertain and have nice things,” but Chuck is “super tight with money” (72). Even though the newlyweds were only 26, he insisted they save every penny for retirement. Morgan thought she would at least spruce up their house, but Chuck insisted they only spend on essentials.
Their next conflict came from their differing social needs. Chuck was wholly focused on work, but Morgan needed to be social. For a while, Morgan’s only recourse was to call Chuck’s office and chat with his secretary, Pearl, a 50-year-old woman who was already a great-grandma. Pearl was uneducated, and Chuck taught her how to read and write phonetically. He was good to his employees, and much of his frugality came from the fact that he wanted to make sure they, too, had a good living. Morgan understood but resented it a little bit.
Morgan and Chuck also didn’t see eye to eye in terms of their emotional and sexual needs. Chuck embodied traditional masculine stereotypes and attitudes. Morgan, on the other hand, needed to talk openly and vulnerably. Chuck was incapable of discussing his feelings, but had a high sex drive, while Morgan needed more emotional connection and non-sexual contact.
Morgan was close with her family and wished they lived closer, but Chuck believed in boundaries. Morgan got along well with Chuck’s family, but they were more reserved and less outwardly affectionate than her family. Even though they lived nearby, Chuck and Morgan rarely saw his family.
The final question pertains to housekeeping. Chuck and Morgan often disagreed over what constituted cleanliness. Chuck’s mother was famous for her perfectly kept home, while Morgan grew up in a more lived-in house. Chuck wanted things spotless, but Morgan wanted her house to feel like a home.
Chapter 7 Summary: “Storied”
Morgan had always wanted children and was “thrilled” when she became pregnant with her first child at 27. Chuck’s mobile home business had opened a second office, and Morgan was working there, answering phones. However, Chuck hadn’t taken the time to train her, so she often had no idea what to say to prospective customers. One day, a family pulled up with a nine-year-old smoking a cigarette, which was more “country” than anything Morgan had ever seen. She quit the job, quit smoking, and got pregnant the same night.
Her pregnancy was neither terribly difficult nor very easy. During the last trimester, she had to sit on a donut pillow to ease the terrible pain in her rectum that she assumed was hemorrhoids. During her pregnancy, Morgan thought a lot about her own mother and how she wanted to embody motherhood, hoping she would be as much fun as Lucille was.
The day before Morgan’s due date, she had a sudden craving for pumpkin bread and sent Chuck to the store for a can of pumpkin. Two hours had passed with no sign of Chuck when Morgan’s water broke. Panicking, Morgan called her mother-in-law, who hurried over and was helping Morgan prepare for the hospital when Chuck finally showed up. He had forgotten the can of pumpkin because he stopped at Lowe’s to look at some saws on sale. He was surprised that Morgan’s water had broken because she wasn’t due until the next day. On the way to the hospital, Chuck drove well under the speed limit. When Morgan urged him to hurry up, he told her that if they arrived before midnight, they would get charged for the whole previous day. Morgan was furious.
At the hospital, Morgan learned that her baby was breech, and she would need a C-section. The doctor informed her that the baby’s feet were pushing against her cervix and rectum; her pain wasn’t hemorrhoids, after all. Morgan’s baby, Charlie, came out healthy, and the moment she saw his face, she knew being his mother was her life’s purpose.
Years later, Morgan and Chuck were in marriage counseling, and he finally apologized for driving slowly on the way to the hospital and “prioritiz[ing] the wrong things” (89). He was just 27 years old and overwhelmed by the responsibility of supporting his employees and his new family. Morgan forgave him, but jokes that she had to become a comedian partly to deal with him.
Morgan thought that she would snap back to her pre-pregnancy body and was “devastated” when she had to wear her maternity clothes, which still fit, home from the hospital. She was also surprised to find nursing difficult and painful. Exhaustion also caught up with her. Chuck was still working full-time, so he never got up at night with the baby. Once, in a fit of exhausted fury, Morgan sprayed breast milk into his shoes as revenge.
As a stay-at-home mom, Morgan thought she would have time to keep the house spotless, and her darling baby would keep her company. Instead, she was always too exhausted to clean, and she often felt lonely and isolated. However, she also relished the time with her baby.
Chapters 4-7 Analysis
These chapters detail the aftermath of Morgan’s divorce, her determination to get her life back on track, and the first years of her marriage to Chuck. Through it all, Morgan’s strength and resilience are evident in her ability to adapt to new situations and get along well with diverse groups of people. After Morgan’s divorce, she had no money and was sleeping on her friend’s couch. Then, she had the opportunity to move into an apartment with two students who worked with her at the department store. Living with a pair of college boys, one of whom “had the maturity level of a toddler” (51-52), was less than ideal. At one point, one of the boys took his friends “on a tour through [Morgan’s] panty drawer” (52). Nevertheless, Morgan had fun living with her roommates; she loved cooking for them and their friends, and she behaved like a “mother hen” toward them. When Morgan began serving at Grady’s, the other employees “were a typical restaurant wild bunch,” into drinking and having “a good time” (55). Despite being more straight-laced, Morgan slipped right into this group as well, having “a ball” smoking with the line cooks by the dumpsters. Morgan approached these different groups of people with an open mind and a lack of judgment. She didn’t let their lifestyles influence or change her, but she also didn’t let their differences stop her from building relationships and having fun, continuing to highlight how Building Resilience Through Humor was a fundamental aspect of her approach to life.
These chapters also introduce Chuck, Morgan’s future husband. From the start of their courtship, it is clear they are “opposites.” Chuck fell in love with Morgan quickly, but he “didn’t chat with [her]” (59), so she had no idea how he felt. Instead, he showered Morgan with acts of service. This difference in love languages belied more differences that spanned almost every aspect of their marriage, from differing social and sexual needs to contrasting ideas about money and emotional expression. Morgan’s ability to adapt and connect with people who are different from herself allowed her marriage to flourish despite the couple’s inability to see eye to eye on many topics. In the early days of their relationship, the narrative establishes the theme of Subverting Gender Roles in Southern Culture by establishing their relationship as based on traditional gender roles.
Through the story of her pregnancy and early days of motherhood, Morgan delves into the duality and complexity of female experience. Morgan dreamed of becoming a mother her whole life, and she was “thrilled” when she got pregnant with her first child. However, she is also honest about the hardship and discomfort that come with pregnancy, confirming her down-to-earth and straightforward manner through her frank descriptions. She never felt “beautiful” or “glowed” like she’d heard other women describe. Instead, she gained enough weight that her doctor joked she looked like she was carrying a baby “in each butt cheek” and had to sit on a donut pillow to ease the pain in her rectum (84). When her baby was born, the assurance that being his mother was “what [she] was put on this planet to do” was so strong it felt “supernatural” (89). However, this didn’t make being a new mother any easier. Morgan felt “so unattractive and swollen” (90) after the birth, and even though she was “in love up to [her] eyeballs” (92) with her new baby, she still sometimes felt lonely and isolated. Her honesty illustrates how experiences can be beautiful and challenging, fulfilling and isolating, painful and rewarding, all at the same time.
Unlock all 51 pages of this Study Guide
Get in-depth, chapter-by-chapter summaries and analysis from our literary experts.
- Grasp challenging concepts with clear, comprehensive explanations
- Revisit key plot points and ideas without rereading the book
- Share impressive insights in classes and book clubs