51 pages • 1 hour read
Nicola SandersDon't Let Her Stay
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Evie
Content Warning: This novel contains descriptions of emotional abuse, death by suicide, and stigmatizing and potentially offensive language and stereotypes regarding people with mental health conditions. Its contents are reflected in this study guide.
Although Evie is a human being, as a newborn, she functions more as a symbol than a character, representing the stakes of the power struggle between Joanne and Chloe. This becomes evident the first time Chloe meets Evie in Chapter 7. When Joanne shows Chloe the nursery, Evie, a terrible sleeper, is sleeping soundly until Chloe picks her up and bounces her “in a way that looked very uncomfortable, bordering on dangerous” (43). Seeing this, Joanne panics about Evie’s safety but struggles to justify her panic to Richard after Chloe denies what happened. This scene places Evie’s safety at the center of the battleground between Joanne and Chloe. When Chloe takes on the responsibility of watching Evie, Joanne’s struggles to maintain control over Evie’s safety increase. In Chapter 12, for example, Joanne catches Chloe with the bottle of paracetamol in the middle of the night, seemingly tampering with Evie’s medicine. However, she has trouble convincing Richard of the danger, making her feel helpless. Evie is again the source of conflict when Chloe is absent during Joanne’s meeting, causing the meeting to be a disaster and demonstrating that Joanne cannot trust Chloe. For much of the rest of the novel, Joanne keeps Evie close. Despite this, Chloe still finds ways to use Evie to manipulate Joanne, such as the sweet behavior she displays in the hidden camera footage and, when she holds on to Evie at the end of the novel, forcing Joanne to stay with her in the lead-up to the climactic showdown with Richard. Joanne is not willing to abandon Evie. Joanne wields Evie to manipulate Chloe as well. In Chapter 28, for example, Joanne decides to get to know Chloe by force. When Chloe declines the invitation to join Joanne at the markets, Joanne declares that she needs Chloe’s help with Evie to force Chloe to come with her. Evie’s position at the center of their power struggle makes her a symbol of it.
The House
Part of Joanne’s loneliness comes from the novel's setting. Richard bought the house, which is much larger than the family needs and far out in the countryside, while Joanne was pregnant, tying it closely to her motherhood and establishing it as a motif for The Isolation and Challenges of Full-Time Motherhood. In the first chapter, Joanne considers her excitement when she and Richard moved in, when she “believed, foolishly, that [she]’d have the energy to do it all and that having a baby would be a walk in the park” (4). Once Evie is born, however, Joanne realizes she is far from her old life and support system, and motherhood is difficult. The contrast between Joanne’s dreams for the house before Evie’s birth and the reality of her exhaustion and the difficulty of motherhood establishes the house as a symbol of motherhood’s effects. At the end of Chapter 1, after failing to engage housekeeper Roxanne in conversation, Joanne wonders “what on earth [they] were thinking, moving to such a big house miles away from town” (7). She describes the house, its size and recreational spaces, noting that it is more than they could ever need. The house embodies Joanne’s loneliness and feelings of isolation, alone with her infant most of the time. In Chapter 2, Joanne thinks about her struggles to make decisions about the house now that she’s busy with Evie. Despite working in real estate and feeling as though she should know how to renovate the house, Joanne struggles to make simple decorating decisions. Even Roxanne, the housekeeper, avoids talking to her, bringing earbuds to work to avoid conversation. Joanne’s isolation and uncertainty about the house as she works through the challenges of new motherhood emphasize her loneliness and struggle to re-establish herself as something other than Evie’s mother.
The Doctored Photo
The doctored photo of Joanne kissing Simon, the gardener, that Chloe presents to Joanne in Chapter 17 symbolizes Joanne’s good instincts about Chloe. Though it initially appears as another way in which Chloe tries to control Joanne, it is also Joanne’s first concrete evidence of Chloe’s malicious intentions. Though the photo could exacerbate the problems between Richard and Joanne, Joanne clings to its existence as proof that she is not experiencing mental illness. In this way, the photo emphasizes the theme of The Effects of Gaslighting. It allows Joanne to trust that she isn’t paranoid or overreacting. For example, in Chapter 22, Joanne cites the photo as proof that she is not experiencing post-partum psychosis: “[I]f Chloe hadn’t shown me that stupid doctored photo, I would definitely be thinking I need my head examined” (135). After days of gaslighting from Chloe and denial from Richard, the photo provides a welcome reprieve from her growing self-doubt. Knowing that the doctored photo exists gives her the clarity she needs to regain her confidence.
