55 pages • 1 hour read
Susan MeissnerA Fall of Marigolds
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2014A 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 7-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary
Clara shares Andrew’s story with her friend and roommate, Dolly MacLeod. However, Dolly does not see this in the same way as Clara but instead “seemed appalled more by Andrew’s marrying Lily than by Lily’s deceit” (61). This upsets Clara, who cannot help but see Dolly’s condemnation of Andrew’s foolishness in marrying a woman whom he did not know as a similar condemnation of Clara’s grief for Edward. This leads to Clara confessing the truth about why she has been so upset about the fire. Dolly is very sympathetic and comforts Clara, though it is clear that she does not believe “you can love someone you’ve only just met” (61).
Dolly makes it clear that she thinks Clara is stuck and points out that she never leaves Ellis Island, even on her days off. She encourages Clara to find out more about Edward: “Maybe if you did know him, you’d be able to come to terms with this. Get off this island. Get on with your life” (65). Dolly believes that Clara should tell Andrew about Lily because he does not “[deserve] to mourn all his days a wife who did not love him” (65). Clara, however, is not sure this is the correct thing to do and regrets again opening the trunk and finding the book with the letter.
Chapter 8 Summary
Clara recounts other times she has been in love: First was a patient of her father’s, Otto Hertz, who never even knew Clara was attracted to him because Clara was so young. Clara also fell in love with her father’s apprentice, Daniel, who seemed to love Clara in return, but he met someone else when he left to continue his education. Clara knew something was wrong but refused to admit it to herself, acknowledging that his “letters began to arrive less frequently” (68), so she wrote even more letters. When “[h]is words of affection […] became less ardent,” she “intensified” hers (68). Even when he stopped writing altogether, Clara continued to write, stopping only when Daniel finally admitted to being in love with someone else. This incident spurred Clara to enroll in nursing school. Dolly tries to convince Clara to leave the island for a night of dancing with the other nurses and offers to take Lily’s letter to Andrew herself so that Clara “can still be his lovely Florence Nightingale” rather than “the hated messenger” (72). This offer irks Clara, who refuses, instead staying on the island, writing letters to her family and reading. She dreams again of Edward and the fire.
Chapters 7-8 Analysis
These chapters explore Clara’s secret: her love for Edward, who died in the fire, and her anxiety over whether she has a right to be as grief-stricken as she is, because she admittedly did not know Edward well. Clara believes that Dolly’s response to the story of Andrew and his wife is typical: namely, that Clara is foolish to believe she and Edward shared anything at all, let alone true love. Clara’s descriptions of her other loves demonstrate that she is a person prone to loving quickly and intensely, as is the case for both her father’s patient, Otto, and her father’s student, Daniel. Her descriptions of her feelings for these two men reinforce the idea that Clara may be prone to falling in love with people who do not love her in return, and may not even know that she was attracted to them at all. Clara’s behavior with Andrew is at first typical of a nurse’s relationship with a patient. However, her increasing need to see parallels between them foreshadows the possibility that Clara might again be falling in love with someone who does not or cannot return her feelings.
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By Susan Meissner
