56 pages • 1 hour read
Laura Amy SchlitzSplendors and Glooms
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2012A 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 1, Chapters 11-19Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: “Fog”
Part 1, Chapter 11 Summary: “Constable Hawkins”
Five nights after Clara’s disappearance, Lizzie Rose tells the constable about Grisini’s link to children who went missing years ago. The night of the performance at the Wintermute house, Grisini disappeared on the walk home, and Lizzie Rose “can’t help wondering if he was looking for a place to hide someone” (77).
Part 1, Chapter 12 Summary: “November the Fourteenth at Kensal Green”
Eight days after Clara’s disappearance, Clara’s father, Dr. Wintermute, receives a ransom letter promising her return. As he waits at the mausoleum where his other children are entombed, he remembers how much Clara disliked coming there. Repentant, he vows to do better: “if Clara came back to him alive, he would see to it that she was never forced to come here again” (79). Dr. Wintermute also realizes how much he truly loves Clara, even though he hasn’t shown her love since her brother died.
Part 1, Chapter 13 Summary: “November the Fourteenth at Strachan’s Ghyll”
Cassandra dreams of Grisini saving her from the phoenix-stone’s destructive powers. When she wakes, she chastises herself because “Grisini was no fairytale prince” (84). She climbs to her tower room, from which she casts her most powerful spells, and looks into a seeing crystal. It shows her Grisini and the shadows of three children, followed by more images of herself burning. Cassandra fears what will happen to her without Grisini’s knowledge of the phoenix-stone, and though she promised herself she wouldn’t, she calls him to her.
Part 1, Chapter 14 Summary: “November the Fourteenth at the Juniper Bough”
Grisini sits in a pub, silently congratulating himself for his ploy to demand a ransom from Dr. Wintermute. Suddenly, Cassandra’s summons slams into him. He starts to obey, but angered by her timing, he fights instead. If he holds out for a few hours, he will have the ransom money and be free to flee London. Emboldened, Grisini moves in the opposite direction of the call, albeit distracted that his focus slips: “he was nearly home before he saw the man who followed him through the streets” (91).
Part 1, Chapter 15 Summary: “The Staircase”
Grisini storms inside, startling Lizzie Rose and Parsefall. After changing his clothes and appearance so he’s barely recognizable, he orders Lizzie Rose to distract the cop who’s watching the house. Lizzie Rose protests, and Grisini realizes she betrayed him. He begins to beat her, and Parsefall attacks, freeing Lizzie Rose. The two children run downstairs to get Mrs. Pinchbeck. Grisini follows but falls down the stairs, badly injuring himself. Mrs. Pinchbeck goes for a doctor. Before she leaves, she locks the children in her room, promising them “no matter what ‘appens, you’ll be safe from him tonight” (101).
Part 1, Chapter 16 Summary: “The Morning After”
The next morning, Grisini is gone. Lizzie Rose feels conflicted about the previous night. She fears what Grisini did and what he might still do, but she also feels she should have helped after he was hurt. She sends Parsefall out to find breakfast and sets to work cleaning the house to soothe herself: she “had a vague hope that tidying the room might make the world seem less chaotic” (105). Mrs. Pinchbeck wakes and informs the children that, though she went out to get help, she ended up drinking at the pub instead. By the time she got home, Grisini was gone.
Part 1, Chapter 17 Summary: “An Unexpected Discovery”
Grisini never returns, leaving Lizzie Rose and Parsefall to wait and wonder. Parsefall rewrites the puppet show acts to make them doable for two people. Lizzie Rose has no interest in the show. She’s too tired from the housework she does to earn their keep, and she lashes out at Parsefall for refusing to help: “you’re a horrid, wicked, selfish boy” (117). Parsefall finds the ballerina puppet has been gnawed on by one of Mrs. Pinchbeck’s dogs, and he demands Lizzie Rose help him fix it. She refuses and looks through the trunk of puppets for a replacement, finding a puppet that looks exactly like Clara.
Part 1, Chapter 18 Summary: “Awakening”
Hearing her name rouses Clara to awareness, but she can’t move or close her eyes. The night of her birthday, she woke near midnight with the urge to return Grisini’s watch. She found the man on the streets and gave the watch to him—she remembers nothing after that. Parsefall convinces Lizzie Rose the puppet really is Clara and that Grisini changed the girl using magic. Parsefall plans to give Clara strings, and the chapter ends with Lizzie Rose wondering what to do next: “how on earth are we to change her back?” (125).
Part 1, Chapter 19 Summary: “Another Awakening: Strachan’s Ghyll”
Grisini wakes in Cassandra’s chambers, his head bandaged. After the fall, he made his way to her; he has been unconscious for days recovering. Cassandra commands him to tell her what he knows of the phoenix-stone. It possesses incredible power, but every woman who has ever possessed it died by fire. Some were accidents and others suicide, but in every case, “the stone itself always escapes the blaze” (131). The only women who survived had the stone stolen by a child. Grisini urges Cassandra to invite Parsefall and Lizzie Rose to her home to give them a chance to steal the stone.
Part 1, Chapters 11-19 Analysis
Splendors and Glooms continues to build tension and suspense by way of omniscient narration in these chapters. Dramatic irony contributes to this effect as well: the reader often knows much more than any individual character. For example, the reader is with the distracted Grisini as he strives to avoid his summons from Cassandra, only to realize the police are following him. At this moment, Grisini does not know that Lizzie Rose tipped the police off, and the children do not know that Grisini is entangled with a powerful witch. The reader’s knowledge creates a sense of gravity and inevitability: these intertwining threads will have consequences for all players. Similarly, due to the omniscient narration, the reader is aware that Cassandra decides to summon Grisini out of desperation: Her visions of fire have become more prominent, and using the phoenix-stone’s powers is more difficult. However, the children are not aware of Cassandra’s deterioration until days after they arrive at Cassandra’s home in the second half of the book. In other words, while the reader is aware of the adult characters’ motivations and scheming, the child protagonists know only a fraction of the mounting danger they face. The multi-perspective nature of the chapters in this section also plays more dramatically into the theme of The Shades of Gray Between Good and Evil. The structure of the novel emphasizes at once the depth of what we don’t know about others—information that could evoke empathy—and the importance of our choices, which have a far greater impact on those around us.
These chapters push Lizzie Rose and Parsefall toward self-discovery by intensifying the challenges they face and increasing their independence. The Strength of Youth develops as a theme as Grisini’s abuse escalates, and the children must take a stand for each other and for themselves. In Chapter 15, Grisini attacks Lizzie Rose. This moment offers definitive proof that Grisini is an antagonist and a bad guardian; he is unwilling to take any responsibility for the trouble he has brought upon himself. Yet just as Grisini demonstrates a failure to adapt, Parsefall’s desire to protect Lizzie Rose from the abuse of an adult motivates him to find courage and strength. In turn, after Grisini’s injury, Lizzie Rose finally wrestles with her need to protect herself. Though she continues to believe that all people deserve a certain level of compassion, she recognizes Grisini’s actions toward her as unacceptable. In the aftermath, the two children’s unique natures and backgrounds also emerge further in how they process the sudden absence of Grisini, indicating their progress in coming of age. While Lizzie Rose cleans to help herself adjust, Parsefall restructures the puppet show for two. Notably, in parallel with Lizzie Rose and Parsefall’s initial character growth, Clara awakens; this awakening marks the first step toward her escape from her guilt, which has long controlled her, and from her symbolic imprisonment in puppet form.
The return to Dr. Wintermute’s character also provides an important reminder of all the characters’ progress toward Managing Grief Through Love. Dr. Wintermute’s journey to find his daughter, in an emotional sense, reflects the children’s efforts to escape their more tangible circumstances. His thoughts in Chapter 12 build on his troubling realization in Chapter 6, when he first wondered if he truly loved Clara and grappled with his complicated feelings about the death of Clara’s brother. Now that Clara has gone missing, Dr. Wintermute understands that he does love his daughter and that he has done harm by allowing his grief to shape his actions toward her. Clara could sense her father’s thoughts through his behavior. This made her feel unwanted and unloved, which contributed to her falling into Grisini’s trap.
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By Laura Amy Schlitz
