The Devil Wears Prada

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2003

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-5

Chapters 6-8

Chapters 9-10

Chapters 11-12

Chapters 13-15

Chapters 16-19

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Chapters 11-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 11 Summary

An unexpected phone call awakens Andy early on a Saturday morning. Much to her surprise, it isn’t Miranda. Andy’s parents have come to help her move out of her tiny apartment. Lily managed to find a place that isn’t roach-infested with an actual balcony for a reasonable price. When she calls Andy to give her the good news, Andy can barely finish the conversation to approve the lease before Miranda begins harassing her. Lily is understandably upset that she must handle all the details because Andy is so afraid of Miranda that she can’t spare a moment to help her friend.

By moving day, they’ve ironed out all the details, though Lily is absent during the move. Alex informs Andy that Lily was arrested the night before for indecent exposure after getting very drunk. Lily later tells Andy that she didn’t want to bother her friend to bail her out because Andy is always so busy at work.

Back at the office, Andy receives a rude phone call from a woman named Judith Mason. She is the stuttering, abrasive travel writer for Runway and impudently asks if Andy is disenchanted with her job yet. Andy gives her a tart response, which seems to make Judith like her.

Miranda continues to be outrageously demanding and has Andy handling all the details of her brother-in-law’s engagement party at the Met. As Andy leaves Miranda’s office, she thinks, “I could feel her eyes examining the size of my butt as I walked back to my desk and briefly considered whipping around to walk backward like a religious Jew would do when leaving the Wailing Wall” (219).

Chapter 12 Summary

Andy is elated that Miranda will be in Europe for two weeks to meet with designers. Emily warns her that Miranda can be even more demanding at a distance, but Andy pays no heed. Alex calls to ask Andy for a callback at 3:30 because he has something important to tell her. She assures him that she’ll remember to do so.

Unfortunately, Miranda begins harassing her assistants that morning until the minute her plane leaves the ground. Andy learns that she must interview a new nanny for Miranda’s twin daughters. The previous nanny was fired for giving the girls a timeout after they were rude to her.

The first crisis of the day occurs when Miranda calls and demands that her assistants connect her with designer Karl Lagerfeld. Both Emily and Andy are frantic when they run through all his contact numbers and can’t reach him. It turns out that, like Miranda, he’s in Paris—and that she’s holding his cell phone number in her hand. She roundly abuses her assistants for not figuring this out.

A second crisis occurs when Miranda calls again to say that her limo driver has disappeared. Another fire drill ensues until the man is located. Andy is so overwrought by all the overseas drama that she forgets to eat lunch. She says:

That was it! The starvation so endemic at Runway was not, in fact, self-induced; it was merely the physiological response of bodies that were so consistently terrified and all-around anxiety-ridden that they were never actually hungry (235).

Back at home that evening, Andy realizes that she forgot to call Alex. When she does reach him, he’s upset that she couldn’t spare five minutes during her day to speak to him. Eventually, Andy calms him down and coaxes him to tell her his important news. Alex has arranged for the two of them to attend their first homecoming together in Providence. Knowing how badly Andy wanted to go, Alex has rented a car, a hotel room, and made brunch reservations so that the two can connect with old friends. After the call, Andy thinks, “The effort to win him back, to find the right words not only to convince him that I hadn’t overlooked him but also to reassure him that I was appropriately grateful and enthusiastic had drained the last reserves of my energy” (243). She skips yet another meal because she’s now too tired to eat dinner.

Chapters 11-12 Analysis

Miranda’s abusive behavior continues unabated. In fact, it seems to escalate whenever she’s out of the office. In Paris, she manages to create more distress for her assistants back home by her unwillingness to handle two local situations herself. The fire drill seems to be nothing more than a way to exert her power from a distance.

Of far more importance than Miranda’s narcissism is the way that this segment depicts the consequences of Andy’s devil’s bargain. Her personal life has begun to unravel because she’s focusing all her attention on meeting the devil’s demands. Lily must handle all the details of the apartment lease because Andy can’t spare two seconds to consult with her on the phone. On moving day, Andy is so exhausted from work that she forgets her parents and Alex have shown up to help her move.

When they all arrive at the new place, Lily is nowhere to be found. Her growing drinking problem has landed her in jail, but she hesitates to call Andy for help, knowing how busy she is at Runway. Alex is the one who intervenes to assist Lily, and this represents the first sign of strain in his relationship with Andy. He is disappointed by her inability to be there for her friend.

The estrangement between Alex and Andy grows stronger when she fails to call him back as promised to hear his exciting news. Because Miranda enmeshes Andy in yet another crisis, the assistant completely forgets to return her boyfriend’s call. Although Andy successfully soothes Alex’s injured feelings, Miranda’s incessant demands have so depleted her energy that she has nothing left to give those closest to her.