Chapter 20: Violet

Summary

• Violet examines her reflection thinking about her first kiss and pondering if she looks different.
• She reminisces about overhearing servants talking about her mother, thinking the word "uncanny" they used and her mother's instability.
• Violet's thoughts move between her sore lips from the kiss to her mother's mysterious past and uncertain fate.
• Preparing for dinner, Violet is critical of her appearance and clothes, unsure if she looks childish or inappropriate.
• The setting of the dining room is described with details about its grandeur and deterioration during the war.
• At dinner, Violet is repulsed by the appearance of the pheasant and resolves to become a vegetarian when she is older.
• Frederick's focus on the opulence of the room and Violet herself is highlighted.
• A conversation about World War II takes place, and Violet's father expresses disdain for American help, while Frederick insists it is necessary.
• Violet observes Frederick, noticing his drunken state and his spiking his own drink with brandy.
• She reflects on her own limited experience and what she has learned from Shakespeare's works about inebriation.
• The wartime scarcity of food is discussed, notably when Father is pleased by the presence of suet in the pudding.
• Frederick praises Mrs. Kirkby's cooking, nostalgically noting the lack of tinned foods since the war started.
• Violet contemplates her future, feeling sympathy for a solitary cricket and comparing her possible fate to that of Elizabeth I.
• She muses on the possibility of having both love and a career in science but doubts whether she can really achieve both.
• Violet wonders if she has ever truly been loved, uncertain of her father's affection, and feels it may be connected to her likeness to her mother.
• The chapter concludes with Violet's father sending her to bed early, highlighting the strict paternal control of the era.
• As Violet returns to her room, she ponders the silence of the cricket that had been chirping earlier, symbolizing her own feelings of isolation.