57 pages • 1 hour read
Ann PatchettThe Patron Saint of Liars
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1992A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2, Chapters 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “Rose”
Part 2, Chapter 4 Summary
At Saint Elizabeth’s, the girls are expected to work while living there, and Rose is assigned to the kitchen to work with Sister Evangeline, who is very old. Rose becomes very interested in this work and begins looking through cookbooks to find new recipes. Sister Evangeline takes a liking to Rose and tells her that her baby is going to be a girl. Sister Evangeline has the ability to predict the genders and futures of the girls’ babies, though Mother Corinne doesn’t like her to. When Rose tells Sister Evangeline that she plans to place her baby up for adoption, Sister Evangeline tells her that she won’t.
Later that night, Rose tells Angie what Sister Evangeline said. Angie immediately wants Sister Evangeline to tell her about her baby’s future, and she reflects on potential baby names. She reveals to Rose that her former boss at the pharmacy she worked at impregnated her. She has never told anyone this, especially not her boyfriend, Duane. When she got pregnant, her boss offered to pay for the baby’s expenses, but Angie didn’t want to have a married man’s baby. Her mother sent her to Saint Elizabeth’s, telling friends and family that she was visiting cousins.
The following morning, Sister Evangeline drops her rosary in the small space between the stove and one of the cabinets, and she asks Rose and Son to help her retrieve it. The two work together to get the rosary back, and then Rose offers to make Son some breakfast. Rose enjoys talking to him and learns that he’s been working at Saint Elizabeth’s since he was 18.
Later, Angie comes to see Sister Evangeline to ask her about her baby. Sister Evangeline protests at first but then agrees to tell her what she can. When she touches Angie’s stomach, she looks extremely sad. She tries to pretend like she doesn’t know what will happen to Angie’s baby and eventually tells her that she’s having a girl. After Angie leaves, Sister Evangeline tells Rose that Angie’s baby is going to die. Sister Evangeline is very upset about this and wants to go to her room to lie down. Rose helps her there and then stays with her for a while. The two talk about Rose’s mother, and Rose sings to Sister Evangeline until she falls asleep.
Later that night, Rose goes to sit in her car, which she hasn’t been in since she arrived at Saint Elizabeth’s. She falls asleep in it, and Son wakes her up after coming to find her. Even though it is very late at night, he takes her on a walk to visit June Clatterbuck. While talking with June, Rose realizes that June is the reason that Hotel Louisa exists at all. After a long chat, June makes Rose promise to come back and visit.
When Rose gets back to her room, Angie asks her about Sister Evangeline’s reaction earlier in the day. Rose lies and tells her that Sister Evangeline behaved in the same way when she revealed Rose’s baby’s gender; she has trouble falling asleep after lying to Angie.
Part 2, Chapter 5 Summary
As Rose’s pregnancy progresses, she tries to forget that she is pregnant. Angie, on the other hand, begins to make clothes for her daughter. When Angie gets sad about placing her daughter for adoption, she and Rose imagine what kind of luxurious lives their children will have once they are adopted by rich parents.
Rose’s cooking becomes extremely popular with the girls and the nuns. Sister Evangeline doesn’t mind this because, suddenly, the girls are flocking to the kitchen to praise the food and speak to Sister Evangeline. Son starts eating dinner in the kitchen as well. Sister Evangeline implies that Son eats in the kitchen so that he can be closer to Rose, but Rose ignores her. Every afternoon, Rose takes Sister Evangeline to visit June and loves seeing the two women together. Once, when Rose tells Sister Evangeline that she might want to be a cook once she leaves Saint Elizabeth’s, Sister Evangeline laughs knowingly and tells her that she will be a cook.
Three Sundays a month, Father Bernard from Owensboro comes to say mass and take confessions at Saint Elizabeth’s. On the fourth Sunday, the nuns take the girls to Owensboro to attend mass in person at the Church of Incarnation. This is primarily because many of the women congregants at the church serve as donors to Saint Elizabeth’s, supporting it financially. Many of the girls dread the service in Owensboro, as they have to be on display and it is difficult for many of them to move around in the narrow pews when they are further along in their pregnancies. Every time they visit the church, Rose refuses to participate in communion. Mother Corrine goes so far as to sit next to her and pinch her, but she continues to refuse to take communion.
After mass, the girls go to the basement to chat with the women of the church. One day, a woman gives Angie her baby to hold, which upsets Angie. Rose offers to take the baby, and she is surprised that she becomes upset as well, not wanting the mother to take her baby back. She eventually gives the baby back to the mother and goes to find Angie outside.
After they visit with the women of the church, the girls walk around downtown Owensboro for a bit. They buy personal items and candy. On the bus ride home, one of the girls named Beatrice asks Angie and Rose to help her give birth at Saint Elizabeth’s. Sister Evangeline previously predicted that Beatrice is having twins, and Angie tells Beatrice that she should give birth in a hospital if this is the case. However, Beatrice is insistent on delivering her babies at Saint Elizabeth’s; she has even checked out books on midwifery from the library to prepare. Angie agrees to help her, though she later tells Rose that she is certain that Beatrice won’t go through with it.
When they get back to Saint Elizabeth’s, Rose goes on a walk because she is still feeling upset after holding the baby at the church. She thinks about how her pregnancy would have been different if she hadn’t left Thomas. As she walks back to Saint Elizabeth’s, she sees Son’s house and watches him without his knowledge, noting that he seems lonely and “empty.”
Later that night, for the first time, Rose writes to her mother. When she mails the letter, she sends it to a post office in Chicago so her mother will not be able to track her down by the postmark.
Part 2, Chapter 6 Summary
During Christmas at Saint Elizabeth’s, the nuns try to make the girls feel at home. They decorate and distribute gifts from the women congregants of the Church of Incarnation in Owensboro. Rose makes Christmas cookies and misses her mother terribly, but Sister Evangeline reminds her that she’s not the only young woman who misses her mother at Saint Elizabeth’s. June comes over for Christmas Eve dinner.
On Christmas, Son gives Rose a drawing of a chair and writes on the back, “Merry Christmas to Rose, from your friend, Son, 1968” (115). He tells Rose that he’s made her a chair, but it’s at his house. Rose requests that he take her to see it. She assumes that he will take her to his house to kiss her, but instead, he just takes her to see the chair, which has the same inscription as the drawing. When Rose leaves his house, she finds that she is happy that she owns something, and she feels hopeful about her future.
A few days after Christmas, Angie comes to get Rose from the kitchen because Beatrice is in labor and needs their help; they cannot tell the nuns about this since they will insist on taking her to the hospital. Angie and Rose go to Beatrice’s room, where they find her having contractions. They try to comfort her, but they only end up annoying her. She sends them away, saying she’ll call them when she needs them.
Beatrice makes sure to come to dinner since she doesn’t want to make the nuns suspicious. All the girls can tell she is in labor, but the nuns don’t notice. The girls help her hide her contractions by laughing and talking loudly when she experiences one. Rose and Angie sneak into Beatrice’s room later that night to help her. Rose reads true crime magazines to Beatrice to keep her mind off the pain. They stay up all night with her, and when it’s finally time for her to deliver the baby, all of them are frightened and exhausted. Rose gets Sister Evangeline to help them, and soon, Beatrice delivers two sons. Mother Corrine comes into the room after the second birth, upset that the girls didn’t come to her. While the room is a mess, Beatrice is ecstatic and can’t stop laughing as she holds her babies in her arms.
After Beatrice goes to the hospital, Rose has a crisis of faith and goes walking in the woods. She realizes that she cannot place her child for adoption and asks God for a sign of about what she should do. Right then, she hears Son calling for her. When he finds her, Rose is exhausted and cold; he picks her up and takes her to his house. He changes her clothes, and Rose falls asleep on his couch.
When Rose wakes up, she tells Son she wants to keep her baby. He tells her that if she marries him, the nuns will let her stay at Saint Elizabeth’s. He offers to help her raise the baby. Rose agrees, and Son is ecstatic. He offers to take her back to Saint Elizabeth’s, but she insists on getting married that night. Son knows a justice in Owensboro who can marry them, and they head to town to meet him. On their way there, in the car, Son tells Rose that she doesn’t need to tell him about her past and that the future is the only thing that matters to him. He says he’d like to give her child his last name, and Rose agrees to this.
When they get to Owensboro, the justice is annoyed that they are so late, but he marries them with his wife and son acting as witnesses. When the justice asks Rose for her maiden name, she gives him her married name. He then asks for a birth certificate, which she doesn’t have. Son bribes him, and the justice agrees to overlook Rose’s missing birth certificate.
Son gets ready to drop Rose back at Saint Elizabeth’s, but she reminds him that they are now married and says she plans to move in with him immediately. Rose goes to her room to grab some belongings. Angie is there, and Rose tells her that she married Son because she wanted to keep her baby and couldn’t do it alone. Angie says that she’s jealous.
Rose finds Son in the kitchen with Sister Evangeline. Sister Evangeline reveals that she knew the two would get married and that she even orchestrated an opportunity for them to meet when she dropped her rosary between the stove and cabinet. Then, Son and Rose go home and get in bed. Son tells Rose how pretty she is. Rose notices that he has a tattoo on his arm that reads “Cecilia.” Son asks her what she wants to name the baby, and Rose says, “Cecilia.” Son begs her not to do this.
Part 2, Chapters 4-6 Analysis
Even though the “average age of a Saint Elizabeth’s resident in 1968 was twenty-three years old” (99), the pregnant residents are almost exclusively called “girls” by the nuns. While there are some teenagers and minors at Saint Elizabeth’s, most of the women there are old enough to make their own decisions. However, by calling them “girls,” these women are continuously infantilized and reminded that they are not old enough—or socially acceptable enough—to be mothers. Additionally, this wording of “girls” upholds the hierarchy that Mother Corrine creates at Saint Elizabeth’s, stripping the girls of any power or agency. This is an example of The Frustrations and Comforts of Tradition and Faith; while it can be comforting to be taken care of, the young pregnant women at Saint Elizabeth’s are infantilized to the point where they have no say in what happens to their babies right after they are born. Their powerlessness is not just frustrating but also terrifying.
The young women feel especially frustrated when they are forced to go to mass in Owensboro once a month. Since Saint Elizabeth’s receives donations from the women at the church, the young pregnant women must perform for these donors, dressing up beautifully and chatting with them after mass “as part of [their] responsibility to charity” (101). The women of the church seem to be detached from the reality of the lives of the Saint Elizabeth’s residents. For example, one gives her baby to Angie and then Rose to hold, which upsets both women deeply. This reveals that many of the women at Saint Elizabeth’s don’t want to place their children for adoption; however, they feel forced to do so. This is emphasized in Beatrice’s decision to give birth to her twin boys at Saint Elizabeth’s—sacrificing medical care and risking complications—just so she can hold them a little longer, on the ambulance ride to Owensboro, before she will be forced to place them for adoption.
While Rose ultimately decides she wants to keep her daughter, she does it primarily because she realizes that her daughter is hers and she wants to possess something—similar to the satisfaction she felt when Son gave her a chair for Christmas. Later, Rose struggles to feel maternal because she is not ready to give up her role as a daughter. She enjoys working in the kitchen at Saint Elizabeth’s because it puts her in a daughter-like role in her relationship with Sister Evangeline. Rose enjoys this dynamic with Sister Evangeline and the kitchen work so much that this is part of the reason she marries Son—so she can continue working in the kitchen, which also means working with Sister Evangeline. Since Rose is not able to return to her own mother, she recreates a similar relationship that feels right and safe. This means that Rose is slipping back into her traditional daughter role, despite seeming like a strong-willed woman to everyone who sees her and despite being on the brink of motherhood herself.
When Rose thinks of her own mother, she continues to think of her beauty. She remembers that her mother once wanted to buy her “a jade green cocktail hat with two feathers that came down along one side of [her] face” (103). She didn’t let her mother buy it for her, which she now regrets because she “would have liked to have that hat, maybe wear it alone in the bathroom while [she] brushed [her] teeth, just to have a beautiful thing” (103). While this hat would have been a reminder of her mother and The Power of Mother-Daughter Relationships, it also would have been a tangible reminder of the two women’s shared genetic beauty, something that Rose doesn’t always see in the mirror. This passage also reflects Rose’s desire to own things—the hat, the chair, her baby—since she feels that she lost so much when she left her old life behind.
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