52 pages • 1 hour read
Karin SlaughterPretty Girls
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2015A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Modernity, Grief, and the Necessity of Moving Forward
One of Pretty Girls’s major themes is the necessity of moving forward. This idea is neatly encapsulated in the novel’s depiction of inept and outdated law enforcement. Slaughter describes the Dunwoody police station as old fashioned, with fake wood paneling and sparse metal furnishings. The police are not just outdated, they are an anachronistic force ill-equipped to deal with modern crime. This bare description foreshadows the police’s deliberate commitment to ineptitude by purposefully avoiding modernity in the workplace.
This ineptitude is not unique to Julia’s case. When Claire sees Sheriff Huckabee for the first time since Julia’s disappearance, she notes that he was “older and more stooped, but he still sported the same finely combed, linear mustache and too-long sideburns that had looked out of date even in the 1990s” (337). The sheriff has been out of touch with society for decades, and the policing institution follows his lead, dragging behind in resolve, technology, and approach. This suspended development has slowed law enforcement to the point that nothing is ever resolved or fully investigated.
This lack of progress stemming from an inability or unwillingness to change is also reflected in Sam, who is just as stifled as the police. Sam is so mired in his guilt, so reluctant to move forward from Julia’s death, that he prefers to fantasize about the wedding she’ll never have than commit to the hard work of healing himself or his familial relationships. Rather than confront reality so that he can learn to live within it, he exists in a state of paralysis until his untimely death.
While Sam and the police are respectively paralyzed by grief and incompetence, Claire and Lydia successfully confront their trauma to move beyond it and embrace the possibilities of the future. Without adjusting her perception of Paul and mending her relationship with Lydia, Claire would not have found the strength to kill Paul. Without learning to respect herself and accept her sister’s aid, Lydia would not have endured Paul’s captivity long enough to be saved. Their determination to move forward gives the narrative momentum and leads to its resolution. While making progress is difficult, it is crucial to achieve meaningful change, both in our social institutions and within ourselves.
Paradox of Choice
Another major theme is the paradox of choice, exemplified through Claire’s red pill/blue pill ruminations. Throughout the novel the characters are confronted with actionable options that appear like simple opposites. However, these choices are more complicated than they seem, especially when considering the potential spiral of ramifications. The inability to see a choice in light of its consequences leads characters to ruminate on decisions indefinitely. Mayhew is one such character who approaches problems from a limited perspective. He fails to consider that Julia’s disappearance was a violence enacted against her and instead imagines that she ran away to live with hippies in the woods. This closedmindedness halts the investigation, condemns Julia to obscurity and peril, and holds her culpable for her own murder.
Helen is another example. Both Sam and Helen are desperate to learn the truth of Julia’s disappearance, but neither one willingly chooses to view the tape detailing her death. While Sam is forced to watch it, Helen presses play unaware that she will see her daughter brutally tortured; her curiosity overrides any other considerations. While there is relief in knowing the truth, that awareness also brings a different kind of pain. The dichotomy of knowing and not knowing is necessarily complicated by a million other factors that influence results. By stripping complex situations down to two simple options, characters like Helen fail to see the greater picture and its potential consequences. This is partially why Claire feels paralyzed when given the choice to watch Julia’s tape: She is so obsessed with the illusion of control over an impossible choice that she cannot imagine the extent of grief ahead of her, regardless of which choice she makes.
The red pill/blue pill dichotomy is so appealing to Claire because it gives her the illusion of complete control over a situation. As she pursues Paul, she wrestles with the desire to let others care for her and the latent urge to control her own life, a control she previously ceded to Paul. Claire’s continual framing of key events as red pill/blue pill scenarios further explains her struggle to wrest control from Paul.
This paradox of choice, yes or no, this or that, also echoes through the motifs of feminine beauty and police inadequacy. The “choice” of Julia’s public image is determined posthumously: She is either a “good, pretty” girl who doesn’t get in trouble, or a “rowdy feminist” who pushes boundaries. The problem with these options is that they frame Julia as responsible for her own death: She was either too “pretty” or too “rowdy,” but either way, the fault is her own. This “choice” perpetuates sexist stereotypes that plague missing women cases everywhere. By trying to say Julia was killed because she looked or acted like girls who are murdered, the police are reverting to a tautological argument that further exposes choice as not only paradoxical but also often nonsensical.
Scientific Theory Versus Emotional Intuition
A third important thematic element is the disparity drawn between scientific theory and embedded emotional intuition with lived experience. Both Paul and Sam describe themselves as men of science who value factual truth and replicable results. However, while Sam sets out to explore his hypothesis of Julia’s death by investigating leads and testing his suspicions, Paul merely spouts his thoughts as indisputable fact. Sam only tracks Paul down because of his attention to detail and careful testing of investigative theories, tedious work that Paul considers beneath him.
Throughout the novel Paul constantly name-drops ideas like “signal detection theory” (11), “Masters of the Universe Complex” (93), the “Law of Truly Large Numbers” (130), “Reductio ad Hitlerum” (183), “Dyadic completion” (248), and “Proactive interference” (406). He mention these concepts to stimulate discussion, he brings them up to flaunt his genius and expertise. By alluding to simple scientific theories using their official (or Latin) names, he bloats his importance but never truly puts his theories to the test. His attempts to impose an automatic authority on everyday situations through expert “knowledge” expose his desire to be in intellectual control of other people, not just physical control. He is aware that with emotional manipulation comes physical incarceration, and this is partly why his abuse is so deadly and initially imperceptible.
On the other hand, when Sam investigates the inaccuracies in Julia’s casefile, he is drawn back around to his intuition. For example, even though Sam is aware that he disapproves of all Julia’s boyfriends, he has a bad feeling about Paul specifically, likening “him more to some form of rat terrier: arrogant. Easily bored. Too smart for his own good” (324). The more facts he uncovers, the more his intuition is proved correct. He blends fact and truth-seeking in such a way that he comes too close to Paul’s secret, and the latter kills him.
Claire is similarly analytical, and because of this, she talks herself out of worrying over Paul’s suspicious actions instead of trusting her gut. An instance of this occurs when Mayhew mentions the Law of Truly Large Numbers and Claire realizes he must have heard it from Paul. She tells herself she’s exaggerating and doesn’t let herself use the information that her intuition supplies. Because of this inner conflict, Claire struggles to situate her trauma and thus heal from it.
It is only when Claire (and others) can confidently intuit and use contextual evidence for support that she stands a chance against Paul: Claire’s use of fire is unconventional, and her initial attempts at igniting the Fuller house fail miserably. She chooses fire as a weapon, however, because she trusts her instinct that Paul will fear fire as he did when he was a child. By leaning into that intuition, Claire gets one step ahead of Paul with the element of surprise, finally conquering his last dregs of control over her as she kills him.
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