That Summer

“She has been waiting for this, waiting for him, since the day her sister gave her the yellow bikini; since the first day of that summer, since, maybe, the day she was born.”

In this quotation, the symbol of the yellow bikini is utilized to demonstrate Diana’s belief that she is moving from childhood to adulthood and is about to become initiated into the world of sex and love. She feels that her whole life has been building up to her night at the beach with Poe. In some respects, she is correct; however, that night will have an impact in ways she cannot yet imagine.

“Daisy Shoemaker couldn’t sleep. She knew, of course, that she was not alone, awake in the middle of the night. She’d read Facebook posts, magazine articles, entire books written about women her age consumed by anxiety, gnawed by regret, tormented by their hormones, fretful about their marriages, their bodies, their aging parents and their troublesome teenagers and, thus, up all night. In bed, on a Sunday night in March, with her husband’s snores audible even through her earplugs, Daisy pictured her tribe, her sleepless sisters, each body stretched on the rack of her own imagination, each face lit by the gently glowing rectangle in her hands.”

The image of Daisy Shoemaker’s sleepless night was the initial inspiration for Jennifer Weiner to write the entire novel. From the book’s outset, Daisy is united by her anxiety with a whole “tribe” of other women, a sisterhood of women who are intangibly bonded by their shared experiences of motherhood and marriage. This quotation introduces the theme of The Bonds of Female Friendship, which becomes increasingly significant as the novel progresses and Daisy’s security in her own life and marriage is challenged.

“‘You understand, though, that there’s such a thing as due process? That your expression of honor and integrity cannot impugn the character of another student?’

Beatrice shrugged.

‘And that we can’t just punish students on one another’s say-so? That we have to take our time, gather the facts, do our due diligence? That we can’t resort to vigilantism and vandalism?’”

The Dean of Emlen Academy presents one perspective on the novel’s theme of Justice Versus Revenge and Beatrice presents a contrasting perspective. The Dean and Emlen Academy itself both symbolize an attitude that to Beatrice appears to be an artifact of an outdated patriarchal system that protects men from the consequences of their wrongdoings and refuses to hold abusers to account for their behavior.

“She dressed to please herself, and to feel comfortable, and if these boys believed that her body was an object that existed for their pleasure, she’d be happy to tell them otherwise.”

Beatrice is the novel’s most politically minded character and is resolute in her strong feminist ideology. She is remarkably mature and incisive in her defense of women’s rights and puts her words into practice in her radical behavior and unorthodox dress sense. She also refuses to play into the conventional expectations of women and girls, an attitude that her mother struggles with.

“Oh my God, Beatrice thought. Her mom had flour on her midsection and crumbs on her bosom. She’d been making brioche, and she smelled like yeast and sugar. It was like a loaf of bread had invaded her room. A loaf of bread that wanted to talk about sex.”

This interaction between Beatrice and Daisy is an example of the vast gap that exists between mother and daughter, who both have vastly different attitudes toward The Challenges Facing Women. Beatrice sees her mother as entirely asexual, as a “loaf of bread” rather than a woman. It is no coincidence that Beatrice connects her mother’s lack of sexuality to her cooking, which to Beatrice is symbolic of the restricted position of wife and mother that Daisy has uncritically accepted for herself, losing her own identity as a woman in doing so.

“She could see all the privileges that Hal enjoyed, and why he would want his daughter to be able to access that aid. She could see, too, some of her own complicity, the way that she benefited from his status by proximity, and how, instead of protesting or pushing back or trying to make it right or share what she’d been handed, she mostly went along with it, quietly enjoying all those unearned benefits.”

That Summer explores the nature of wealth and privilege and how they function in contemporary American society. Hal strongly believes that his upper-class status will protect him from Diana’s accusations, and here Daisy acknowledges that she, too, has benefited from the privileges his position offers. Another central theme in the novel is complicity and how even women can be complicit in supporting social structures that protect abusers and harm other women.

“She tried to explain it—how repetitive motions of peeling and chopping felt like a meditation, the comfort of knowing that our and yeast, oil and salt, combined in the correct proportions, would always yield a loaf of bread; the way that making a shopping list could refocus her mind, and how much she enjoyed the smells of fresh rosemary, of roasting chicken or baking cookies, the velvety feel of a ball of dough at the precise moment when it reached its proper elasticity and could be put into an oiled bowl, under a clean cloth, to rise in a warm spot in the kitchen, the same steps that her mother’s mother’s mother would have followed to make the same kind of bread. She liked to watch popovers rising to lofty heights in the oven’s heat, blooming out of their tins. She liked the sound of a hearty soup or grain-thickened stew, simmering gently on a low flame, the look of a beautifully set table, with place cards and candles and fine china. All of it pleased her.”

Cooking and food are motifs that recur frequently throughout the novel. Here, as Daisy attempts to tell Diana about the joy that cooking gives her, she begins to express herself without restriction or inhibition for the first time. The novel is mostly written in straightforward language, but here Weiner places emphasis on descriptions of food through evocative imagery, as is demonstrated in this long, asyndetic sentence (a sentence without conjunctions). The free flow of the language thus mirrors the freedom that Daisy feels when cooking.

“‘Oh, sure,’ said Diana, rolling her eyes. ‘Because the world is just so delightful to women who don’t get married or have kids. Nobody ever thinks there’s anything wrong with me, and nobody ever asks if I’ve frozen my eggs, or when I’m going to meet Mr. Right.’ Diana raised her glass. ‘To the grass always being greener.’”

Toward the end of their meeting in New York, Diana and Daisy compare their lives and each woman finds the other’s life preferable to her own. This scene is a key moment in which the two characters’ roles as foils of each other can be fully explored. It is also an example of The Challenges Facing Women, for neither a life dedicated to marriage and family nor a life dedicated to a successful career seems to provide ultimate satisfaction or allow either woman to garner approval from society at large.

“Thank you,” she said, and thought of something Hannah had told her once, long ago, about how, for old married ladies like them, making a new friend was the closest they could get to falling in love.”

Diana and Daisy’s friendship is at the heart of That Summer, as is Weiner’s exploration of The Bonds of Female Friendship. Here, in Hannah’s remembered words, the theme acts as a stand-in for the more conventional romantic love that usually dominates the typical beach read. In this way, Weiner demonstrates that female friendship is vital in empowering women and allowing them to have a full and complex emotional life beyond the expectations of marriage and motherhood.

“In the bathroom, Diana removed her drag carefully. She peeled off the false lashes and wiped off the makeup; she slipped out of the suit she’d borrowed from Rent the Runway and folded it, and the blouse, carefully in a garment bag. She pulled on jeans and a plain jersey top and replaced her suede kitten-heel pumps with sneakers. She removed the earrings, zircons she’d borrowed from a work friend, and slipped them in her pocket. She brushed the spray out of her hair, which she’d had done at a blowout bar that morning. When she washed her hands, she avoided her face in the mirror. She felt, for reasons she couldn’t name, as if she might not recognize the woman staring back at her.”

Here Weiner invokes the tradition of drag, the art form that consists of imitating and performing as a member of the opposite sex. This scene also reveals Diana’s intricate web of lies and reveals who she truly is. Diana’s artifice is a complex issue within the novel, and the morality of lying for a “good” reason is brought into question. In this scene, Diana’s lies are so successful that she worries she might no longer recognize herself, a demonstration of how The Lasting Impact of Sexual Assault functions to fracture her identity.

“Diana walked the length of the cabin, back and forth. She had the same feeling she got when she set down a heavy backpack or took off a too-tight bra—the same easing, the same sense that she could breathe freely, and move without restraint. She rolled her shoulders, still stiff from the drive, and imagined casting off all her years of numbness and sorrow and turning into someone else. Maybe not the woman she’d once dreamed of being, the writer, the artist, the professor, but at least someone different than she’d been back home.”

The settings of Philadelphia and Cape Cod are juxtaposed throughout That Summer. Here, as Diana visits the cottage in Truro for the first time, she feels a physical sense of relief as the setting begins to heal the wounds she has suffered. It is no coincidence that it is here that she begins to find comfort in her own body again and to explore her physicality and sexuality in a way she has never been confident to do since her assault. At the novel’s conclusion, it is suggested that Daisy’s escape to the Cape is likely to have a similarly liberating and healing effect.

“She thought about the kind of harm a person could inflict intentionally—through murder or robbery or rape—and about the kind that happened by accident, to people who weren’t the targets at all, but just happened to be proximate, or in the way. Undeserving, innocent people who suffered for the crimes of others. She thought about women and children whose only crime was wandering into the blast zone or being the son or daughter of the wrong man. The son, or the daughter, or the wife.
The lady or the tiger, she thought. Truth or dare. Your money or your life.”

“The Lady, or the Tiger?” (1882) is a short story by Frank R. Stockton about difficult choices and their consequences. The phrase is conventionally used to signify an unsolvable problem, and here Diana considers the choice she has to make: either to pursue her attackers, and perhaps cause harm to the women in their lives as a result, or to leave her attackers unpunished and continue to suffer herself as a consequence. The novel repeatedly asks questions about just punishment and whether taking revenge is justifiable and explores how The Lasting Impact of Sexual Assault can affect not just the survivor but the family of the perpetrator as well.

“I don’t know what’s fair. These guys…what they took…I mean, how do I ever get that back?” She made herself breathe, made herself loosen her grip on the railing. “I feel like they stole my life. Like they took the person I was supposed to be, the person I was on my way to being, and they killed her, and now I’ll never get her back.”

In this conversation between Diana and Michael, Diana expresses most clearly what she has suffered as The Lasting Impact of Sexual Assault. She feels that her joy, hope and ambition were taken as well as her ability to have romantic relationships and even children. She believes that the person she used to be died that night on the beach. Diana struggles to decide what she wants to gain in return for what was taken from her.

“She’d learned that his wife’s real name was not Daisy. It was Diana, and, somehow, that unsettled her almost as badly as finding the picture had. It made her think that she was the rough-draft Diana, the one who got crumpled up and tossed in the trash, while his wife was the final version, the one who was beloved, cherished, marriage material.”

Diana and Daisy’s lives are distorted mirror images of each other. Diana’s life was irrevocably changed by one night when she became Hal’s target, and Daisy’s life is constantly impacted by his subtler emotional abuse. The fact that the two share a name draws this parallel in clear lines and to Diana makes a harsh comparison between her and the woman whom she sees as a better version of herself.

“Look, just because a girl agrees to something once doesn’t mean she’s signed, like, a permanent permission slip. That isn’t how it works. We’re allowed to change our minds.”

Beatrice functions as the character who most clearly demonstrates Weiner’s approach to feminist political expression. Here Beatrice explains to Cade the basic concept of consent. The crisp clarity of Beatrice’s assertive explanations is threaded through the novel in such a way that readers can view the male characters’ actions through a progressive and well-defined feminist prism.

“‘So what, then?’ Before Diana could answer, Katrina said, ‘You want to know if Poe’s capable of raping someone. Because that’s what happened, right?’

Diana shut her eyes. ‘Yes.’ 


Katrina gave a mirthless laugh. ‘I guess anyone’s capable of anything, right? That’s our lesson for this evening.’”

The lesson Diana learns in her phone conversation with Katrina—that “anyone’s capable of anything”—is one of the novel’s main moral quandaries. Rather than caricatured stereotypes, the abusive characters are brothers, fathers, and husbands, and they are viewed by many of their family members as redeemable. Daisy’s mother, for example, insists that Hal is a good man. Katrina’s words therefore foreshadow the novel’s conclusion, in particular the moment in which Daisy contemplates letting Hal die, thus raising the question of whether she, too, is capable of great cruelty.

“She knew that her father had loved her. Hal loved her, too. He didn’t treat her like a child, just like…someone less than him, her mind whispered. Someone who wasn’t as smart or as important, someone whose opinion barely registered, and whose voice didn’t matter much. At least, not as much as his did.”

Throughout most of the novel, Daisy is stymied, belittled, and controlled by her husband. As the novel progresses, she begins to realize how trapped she is in her relationship with Hal, and she comes to understand that although he may love her on some level, his beliefs about a woman’s place in a marriage and about his own status have had a profound impact on her confidence and happiness.

“That’s it. That’s right. Boys will be boys. Boys have always been boys. And nothing—not political correctness, not all of this ‘Me Too’ stuff, not feminism—none of it will ever change that. It’s their nature.”

Vernon is resolute in his opposition to the #MeToo Movement and to the strides being made by feminists for women’s rights. He repeats the idiom, “Boys will be boys” to excuse behavior that would otherwise be unacceptable as well as to reinforce the strict gender roles with which he has grown up and with which he has raised his son. It is uncertain whether he knows about Hal’s assault of Diana; however, it is clear that he believes such behavior ought to be seen as simply part of male character and therefore forgiven.

“‘Do I think there’s kind of a one-size-fits-all mentality to the punishment, where a guy who hits on a subordinate is treated the exact same way a violent rapist is treated?’ Hal continued doggedly. ‘Yes. Do I think there should be some way for men to make amends and rejoin polite society? Yes. And on the whole…’ He looked around the table, his gaze touching on each woman’s face, first Judy’s, then Evelyn’s, then his daughter’s, then his wife’s, before his gaze found its way to Diana. ‘I think this country is long overdue for a reckoning.’”

Hal’s contribution to the debate over the #MeToo Movement at Daisy’s dinner party explores the theme of Justice Versus Revenge and is more complex than his father’s. It is clear that his knowledge, if not guilt, about his own past behavior impacts his belief that rehabilitation ought to be possible. He also creates a clear division between what he sees as harmless joking and real violence. However, it is unclear into which category he believes his own actions might fit.

“She thought about Hal, the man she’d lived with for almost twenty years, the man she’d slept beside almost every night. She remembered a famous optical illusion; a drawing that could be either a beautiful young woman or an ugly old hag, depending on how you saw it. For almost twenty years, she’d seen only the good—a loving, kind, generous husband; a beautiful house; a beloved, cherished daughter. But for the past weeks and months, things had been changing. It felt like she had finally seen the witch, after years of only seeing the young woman, and now she couldn’t un-see.”

The image of the optical illusion is utilized here to demonstrate Hal’s two-faced nature. Daisy begins to realize that the face she had been seeing for so long was only one side of his personality and that she had been taken in by what was at least partially an act. Just as she discovers Beatrice’s mice in her freezer, Daisy begins to realize that there are dark secrets hidden at the heart of her marriage.

“She imagined that Hannah was with her, watching, following along as she made one last pass through the bathroom, gathering sunscreen, toothpaste, and soap. She called the pet hotel where Lester occasionally stayed, and made a reservation for a week, with some extra daily one-on-one time, because she felt terrible about leaving him. Glad you’re looking after the dog, she imagined Hannah saying. But what about you? What about Beatrice?”

Daisy’s friendship with Hannah plays a large role in the novel even though Hannah herself is dead by the time it begins. In moments of conflict with Hal, Daisy often imagines Hannah’s voice in her head, defending her in ways she is not brave enough to defend herself. As she finally begins to take action to leave her husband, The Bonds of Female Friendship allow Hannah, although deceased, to exist as a physical presence and a reassuring voice supporting her in her courageous decision.

“Diana buried her face in her hands, because, as Michael undoubtedly suspected, the answer was all the time. It was her biggest fear—that her rapist hadn’t stopped with her, that, to the contrary, she’d been the first, in a line, maybe a long one. She’d spent many of her recent sleepless nights wondering what her obligation was to that possibility, what she owed those girls and women.”

In an example of The Lasting Impact of Sexual Assault as well as The Challenges Facing Women, Diana is overwhelmed by guilt imagining that her silence about Hal’s assault has allowed him to repeat his actions with other girls and women. The novel explores how sexual assault can lead to self-hatred and misplaced feelings of culpability and also examines the heavy burden placed on women and survivors of sexual assault to themselves hold their abusers to account in a society which attempts to protect men above all else.

“‘I gave you everything,’ Hal shouted.


‘No, you took everything!’ she yelled back. ‘You took my name away!’


Hal looked as bewildered as if she’d slapped him. Then his jolly, reasonable look was back, the mask once again in place.

‘Daisy,’ he said, his voice calm.

‘That’s not my name!’ she shrieked.”

In the final confrontation between Hal and Daisy, Daisy finds a powerful voice with which to defend herself. While Hal insists that he has provided the perfect life for his wife with his wealth and status, Daisy realizes that by taking away her name, Hal also took away her autonomy, her ambition, and her youth. The novel suggests that although Hal uses much less violent means, he has stolen something fundamentally precious from Daisy, just as he stole from Diana. Hal’s calm demeanor here contrasts sharply with Daisy’s emotional tone and implies his complete lack of understanding or remorse; faced with his wife’s defection from her marriage, the only response he makes is to use the pet name he gave her in a tone designed to bring her to heel like a misbehaving dog.