66 pages • 2 hours read
Ashley AudrainThe Whispers
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.
Chapters 1-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “Blair. Thursday Morning”
Nine months after the party, Blair is up early, thinking about her unfaithful husband, Aiden. She imagines the explicit details of his sex with another woman while she stays home, “[s]taring at the shelf of stain removers” (13). She wonders if this is how every woman feels, but Blair reasons that it’s better to keep her misery secret. She blames Aiden for her unhappiness, especially now that she’s found a tiny piece of foil in his pocket which she is sure is part of a condom wrapper. This and her intuition confirm the affair she suspects.
Chapter 2 Summary: “Rebecca. Hours Earlier”
Rebecca works on Xavier Loverly in the ER. The EMTs who brought him said that Whitney reported checking on Xavier before bed and found his room empty and his window open; Xavier was on the ground below. Rebecca used to be intimidated by Whitney, but this has lessened. Rebecca has often heard, from Whitney’s home, “the unmistakable pitch of a mother who has had enough” (19). She encourages Whitney to sit with Xavier, who is in a coma. Whitney asks Rebecca if this kind of experience is why Rebecca is childless, and Rebecca’s recalls her multiple miscarriages, though she doesn’t tell Whitney about them.
Chapter 3 Summary: “Blair”
Blair thinks of her daily routines and wonders if her husband ever notices all she does. Aiden was gone when Blair woke even though he got in late the night before. She assumes he slept in the spare room. Chloe leaves for school, and Blair considers how much Chloe’s needs “consume” her; she “finds herself needing to be consumed” (22). She sniffs the sink for Aiden’s toothpaste and notices his white towel hanging on the door.
As Blair scrubs the tiles, she hears Chloe return. Chloe went to the Loverlys’ so she and Xavier could walk to school as usual, but no one was home. Blair walks her to school instead, wishing her husband would notice how important she is to their daughter. Their neighborhood is a mix of older homes and some expensive and new ones. Blair thinks about her part-time job at a local children’s boutique. Most people patronized Blair when she told them about her job there, but Whitney was encouraging. Blair sees a group of mothers at Chloe’s school wearing trendy clothes and high heels, and she thinks about how she too was supposed to want both children and a career. After she had Chloe, she found that “there [wasn’t] room inside her for anything else” (27). Blair reflects that Whitney at least treats the events in Blair’s life as worthy of consideration. During their conversations, she senses that Whitney might wish to care about the things Blair does, and this gives Blair some satisfaction.
Chapter 4 Summary: “Mara”
Mara sees Chloe knocking next door and is surprised no one is home, knowing the nanny is always there. She thinks that mothers these days are “all busy […] creating urgency where there is none” (30). Mara judges Blair for her leggings and Whitney for her bleached hair and “masculine suits,” but she likes Rebecca, a naturally pretty doctor. Mara is 82, and she resents her neighbors and the “newness” they bring to the neighborhood, which was once populated largely by Portuguese Americans like her. Feeling “invisible”—she is alone except for her estranged husband, Albert—she decides to sit outside and try to figure out what’s going on at the Loverlys’.
Chapter 5 Summary: “Whitney. The Hospital”
Whitney considers how infrequently she recalls Xavier’s birth; she isn’t the type of mother who does photo albums and keepsakes. Now Whitney wishes Xavier were back inside her stomach, thinking she’d do everything better this time. She would care for the children herself at night, forcing herself to like it. Whitney texts Jacob, who’s in London, telling him to check on the nanny, Louisa, and the twins before coming to the hospital. She isn’t ready to see Xavier yet: “He’ll take one look at her and he’ll know everything. She is sure of it” (35). Whitney recalls a conversation with Xavier months ago, when he asked her what it would be like if he was not there. She parroted his question, chastised him for not explaining himself, and cursed aloud. Now, she cannot remember what he said in response.
Chapters 1-5 Analysis
These chapters establish the attitudes and behaviors of four women who live on the same street but whose lives differ in significant ways. Blair feels her life is inconsequential and tries to prove her value, but she does so with reference to sexist norms and expectations, developing the theme of Female Rivalry. She does not feel attractive, comparing herself unfavorably to women like her husband’s mistress, whose legs she imagines “her husband spreading […] as wide as butterfly wings” (13). This simile depicts the other woman’s body as beautiful, delicate, and shapely, contrasting with Blair’s own “soft middle.” Patriarchal beauty standards are therefore no consolation to Blair, but neither is career. Blair does not truly want a career but feels that she ought to, feeling “embarrassingly unevolved” with her stay-at-home routines and desire “to be consumed” by motherhood (22). Unused to appreciation or feelings of importance, Blair is grateful for the “dignity” Whitney gives her, which simply consists of listening to her describe a bake sale—the kind of interest one would expect a friend to show in another’s life. Blair’s sense that Whitney finds Blair’s life in some way enviable also makes Blair feel better about it. Blair adores her own child and takes comfort in this when she considers Whitney’s high-powered career and perfect-looking marriage: “At least she has that [Claire]” (29).
Rebecca’s chapter provides insight into her private pain as well as another character’s perspective on Whitney. Rebecca longs to be a mother and cannot, and this pain seems to make her more acutely aware of Whitney’s failings as a mother. Though she was once in awe of Whitney, Rebecca now recognizes Whitney’s attempts to create the perfect appearance; her “outward perfection” seems an attempt to veil her shortcomings, especially her lack of patience with Xavier. However, Rebecca’s recognition of Whitney’s shortcomings doesn’t alleviate her own guilt at “failing” to live up to gender norms by becoming a mother. Her sense that she doesn’t have children because “she cannot keep [them] alive” implies that she feels responsible for her inability to carry a child to term (20), as though this physical limitation was under her control or said something about her nurturing capabilities.
Mara is from a different generation than Blair, Whitney, and Rebecca and dislikes the way women their age act and dress. She also resents the intrusion of wealthy elites into a neighborhood founded by Portuguese immigrants. Mara feels “she’s being swallowed by all the new” (31), an overstatement that emphasizes how small and overwhelmed she feels in her older home with Albert, her husband. Unlike Blair, however, Mara has found a way to weaponize her invisibility: She listens at fences and watches her neighbors’ movements, reflecting, “It’s amazing what you can learn about people when you’re […] invisible. It’s the things they don’t want you to see that tell you the most” (32).
Like Blair, Whitney assesses her own weaknesses by comparing herself to other women. Overtly, these comparisons tend to favor Whitney, dismissing other women’s concerns as trivial: “She has no time for the kinds of details and measures and particulars that seemed to matter so much to other women” (34). Blair’s intuition proves correct, however: Whitney is not fully secure in her choices, at times feeling pressured to conform to a more traditional maternal role. Xavier’s accident brings these feelings to a crisis, and she wants a do-over, new bedtimes and stories, promising that “she will learn how to enjoy that kind of time” (34). Evidently, she never has enjoyed those kinds of conventional motherly activities. Given the often-conflicting pressures women face, the novel suggests, Whitney’s confusion about her own desires is understandable. It is less sympathetic to Whitney’s lack of affection for her oldest child, which even she feels the sting of when she recollects his question about not being “here”—a query that could reflect thoughts of self-harm.
Ultimately, each woman’s thoughts betray feelings of inadequacy and self-doubt, no matter what their choices. Blair feels inadequate because she gave up a career to be a mother but attempts to justify her value as a devoted carer. Rebecca has a fulfilling job that she loves, but her childlessness makes her feel deficient. Whitney keeps up her outward perfection most of the time, but her impatience feels like failure. Mara’s resentment of her neighbors originates in her feeling of invisibility, and she finds fault with them rather than considering the challenges these women face when dealing with modern social pressures.
As they flesh out the novel’s themes and characters, these chapters also build on the suspense of the Prelude and Prologue. Aiden’s habit of sleeping in the spare room, in addition to Blair’s suspicion of his infidelity, hints that he could be the unnamed man in the opening pages. Details from Rebecca’s chapter, which largely revolves around her treatment of Xavier, further suggest that Whitney is the woman having the affair and that Xavier is the child at the center of the man’s guilt. These ultimately prove to be red herrings: Whitney is not having an affair with Aiden. By dropping these apparent clues, Audrain seeks to keep readers invested in deciphering the mystery while ensuring a bigger emotional pay-off from the eventual twists.
