48 pages • 1 hour read
Cassandra ClareClockwork Angel
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2010A 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 5-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary: “The Shadowhunter’s Codex”
Back in her room, Tessa reads The Shadowhunter’s Codex. The Shadowhunters use a stylus tool called a stele to draw runes on their bodies and objects to do magic. This power is one of several gifts given to them by the angel Raziel, along with magical objects called the Mortal Instruments, and a small piece of land called Idris. Tessa falls asleep reading and is awoken by the sound of a violin. She follows the sound to another room, where she meets Jem Carstairs. Jem has silver eyes and hair and Marks across his body like Will, Henry, Charlotte, and Jessamine. Jem is from Shanghai and came to live at the London Institute after his parents’ deaths. Jem asks Tessa about her brother and her family. They are interrupted by a seemingly drunk Will who has returned from the Devil’s Tavern.
Will begins a story about his escapades, but Jem starts coughing up blood. Will asks Jem, “Where is it?” (109). Jem claims he doesn’t need “it,” but continues coughing. Will suddenly remembers that Tessa is in the room and pushes her out, commanding her to tell no one what happened.
The next day at breakfast, Jessamine offers to take Tessa shopping for new clothes. Charlotte and Henry plan to visit Nate’s employer, Axel Mortmain, and ask him about Nate’s whereabouts and the Pandemonium Club. Will plans to go investigate the Dark Sisters’ house where they found Tessa. Jem, recovered from the previous night, goes with Will. Charlotte and Henry expect Axel Mortmain, a mundane, not to have any information about the supernatural aspects of Nate’s disappearance, but he surprises them by immediately recognizing them as Shadowhunters.
Chapter 6 Summary: “Strange Earth”
Axel Mortmain seems excited to meet Shadowhunters for the first time. He is a member of the Pandemonium Club and claims to know quite a few Downworlders through his membership. He tells Charlotte and Henry that he had offered Nathaniel Gray a job because he knew Nate and Tessa’s father, Richard Gray. Mortmain had brought Richard to a few Pandemonium Club meetings when he and his wife still lived in London. Charlotte is furious that Mortmain would endanger himself and Nate by immersing them in the shadow world. Charlotte threatens to call the Clave, the Shadowhunters’ leadership, if Mortmain does not tell her and Henry everything he knows. Mortmain reveals that the club is run by a vampire, de Quincey, also known as the Magister.
Meanwhile, Will and Jem return to the Dark House, the place where the Dark Sisters imprisoned Tessa. They find a young woman who appears dead until she bolts up, shouting “BEWAREBEWAREBEWARE” (130). The young woman is not a woman at all, but a machine covered in human flesh—an automaton. Will and Jem plan to bring her back to Henry for further investigation.
After shopping for new dresses, Jessamine and Tessa go to Hyde Park. As they walk, Jessamine reveals that she plans to refuse her role as a Shadowhunter and rejoin London society. Jessamine cannot live alone as a single woman, so she asks Tessa to move out of the Institute with her. Before Tessa can respond, they are attacked by a goblin. Jessamine uses her parasol, which is outfitted with blades, to kill the goblin. They escape back to the Institute, where Jessamine confesses to Tessa: “I will not have this life, Tessa. I will not have it. I don’t care what I have to do. I won’t live like this. I’d rather die” (154). Sophie arrives in Jessamine’s room to tell Tessa that Henry would like to speak with her in his study.
Chapter 7 Summary: “The Clockwork Girl”
Sophie leads Tessa down to the Institute’s laboratory, which is in the church’s crypt. In the lab, Tessa recognizes the clockwork girl Will and Jem brought back from Dark House. It is Miranda, the sisters’ servant who tended to Tessa during her imprisonment. The automaton is made of machinery sourced from Axel Mortmain, and it is marked with the vampire de Quincey’s initials. Charlotte fills Tessa in on the information they gathered from Mortmain, and they agree that they should follow the de Quincey lead.
That evening at dinner, Will harasses Jessamine about the bit of blood on her clothes from her fight with the goblin, Henry tests an invention that fails spectacularly, and Jem and Tessa talk more about Shanghai. Charlotte leaves the dinner table. She returns with news that the vampire informant Lady Belcourt has come to speak with Tessa.
Chapter 8 Summary: “Camille”
Though Charlotte asked Tessa to meet their guest alone, Will and Jem follow her. They go to The Sanctuary, a portion of the Institute that is not on hallowed ground and is therefore safe for vampires. There, they meet a gorgeous vampire woman named Camille Belcourt, who has come to give information on the Pandemonium Club. Lady Belcourt used to be in a relationship with de Quincey, but she did not know he oversaw the club. She has come forward with information about him because the Clave is investigating his connection with the Dark Sisters. She also wants to meet Tessa, whose powers are unusual even for a Downworlder.
According to Belcourt, de Quincey has been pretending to follow the Accords, but is, in secret, killing humans for sport at his parties. The Shadowhunters cannot act on this information unless they see it for themselves, so Camille Belcourt proposes that Tessa Change into Camille and attend one of the parties. Will suggests that he accompany Tessa since he has been undercover at the Pandemonium Club before, and Camille agrees that Will would be the best choice. Camille says that her current lover, Magnus Bane, will also be in attendance and can provide support. Tessa is terrified but agrees to try Changing into Camille to find more information about her brother. Later that evening, Charlotte suggests to Tessa that her brother may have known about her Changing ability, which is how The Magister came to find her. Tessa, conflicted about her power, confesses to Charlotte: “It is hard to think of something as a gift when you have been tormented and imprisoned for it” (197). Charlotte encourages her to accept and love the truth of who she is.
Chapters 5-8 Analysis
Tessa spends time with each of the teenage Shadowhunters—Will, Jem, and Jessamine—who provide her with three different perspectives on the Shadowhunter world, set alongside the facts about the world that Tessa has gleaned from The Shadowhunter’s Codex. Tessa’s relationships with each character also reveal new facets of Tessa’s character and development. Tessa first encounters Jessamine through the hand-me-down dress that Tessa struggles to fit into. Jessamine later confides in Tessa that she longs to return to life as an ordinary Victorian woman, begging Tessa to make this possible by agreeing to leave the Institute and live with her since women cannot live alone. Whereas Tessa comes to admire Charlotte’s fighting prowess once her shock wears off, Jessamine hates and resents hers. Jessamine opens the door for Tessa to return to the mundane world, and to accept the limitations placed on women, illustrating the theme Women and Power in Victorian England. But the fact that Tessa struggles to fit into Jessamine’s old dress symbolizes how Tessa already no longer fits into society’s mold for a young woman. Unlike Jessamine, Tessa wants to defy patriarchal limitations and pursue her power.
Tessa’s developing relationships with Will and Jem introduce the theme of Love in the Face of Despair Creates Hope. Tessa’s relationships with each boy illustrate different aspects of her personality, but each represents a different way Tessa can survive the internal and external conflicts she will face. From Will, Tessa experiences the power available to her as a supernatural being, represented by the immediate physical attraction between the two characters. Will represents what happens to a person who has experienced trauma and chooses to repress those feelings; he uses sarcasm and humor to deflect from vulnerable conversations. Tessa is immediately bothered by Will’s guardedness, foreshadowing how Will’s refusal to be honest about his feelings will come between them. In Jem, Tessa sees how honesty and vulnerability can create safety. Jem is the first to ask her about her brother, and the two bond over their experience as orphans. Tessa’s first conversation with Jem acts as a foil to Tessa’s relationship with Will: where Will and Tessa’s conversations are combative, Tessa and Jem immediately share intimate details. Will and Tessa met during an escape from the Dark Sisters, a heated, high-tension scene, but Tessa and Jem meet one another late at night, in safety, at the Institute. The author uses these two contrasting scenes to foreshadow the role these relationships will play in Tessa’s life throughout the series.
Tessa’s interactions with Will and Jem prepare her for her first major decision as a Downworlder: becoming Camille Belcourt to infiltrate de Quincey’s vampire party. Jem assures Tessa after she has Changed into Camille: She is “wearing a different skin, but [she’s] Tessa, and [she’s] alive” (187). Jem’s reassurance alludes to the human versus monster motif, implying that interpersonal connections are part of what makes Tessa human and not a monster. In the aftermath of Tessa’s decision to become Camille Belcourt, she asks Charlotte for advice about her growing powers and her new understanding of the world. Charlotte, as a woman with power, represents a possible future for Tessa that Tessa hadn’t imagined for herself. Charlotte offers an alternate vision for Tessa’s future from the one Jessamine proposed: “You have a power of incalculable value. You need ask nothing of anyone. You need depend on no one. You are free, and that freedom is a gift” (197). Yet, while both Camille and Charlotte have power, neither has a reliable, loving relationship. In Camille’s case, de Quincey killed her lover. For Charlotte, the problem is her power: she and Henry struggle to communicate, and the other Shadowhunters only see Charlotte as an authority figure. Tessa will eventually find a way to marry power and love, creating hope for herself and characters like Charlotte.
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By Cassandra Clare
