52 pages • 1 hour read
Heather MarshallLooking for Jane
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A 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 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3, Chapter 19 Summary: “Nancy”
It is July 1984. Michael and Nancy get engaged. Nany is volunteering for the Jane Network, helping Alice and Evelyn with their patients. Nancy has not told her adoptive parents or Michael about her volunteer work with the network.
Nancy is welcoming a patient and talking to her about the procedure when the patient reveals that she is an undercover police officer wearing a wire to record their conversation.
Part 3, Chapter 20 Summary: “Evelyn”
Evelyn hears Nancy’s encounter with the police officer from the other room; the police officer’s recording equipment makes a loud screech. Five officers rush in to arrest Nancy, Evelyn, and Alice. Evelyn remains calm and demands respect and an explanation from the police. The Jane Network is very careful, so there isn’t any evidence around the room that could prove they were providing illegal abortions. The only evidence is one piece of paper, a list of patients that Evelyn is holding. She manages to fold it up and stash it in the waistband of her pants.
The three women are arrested and loaded into a police van. Evelyn sees another one of their volunteers, Doris, on the street, and they make eye contact. Evelyn is confident that Doris will make sure there isn’t any incriminating evidence anywhere. Handcuffed in the back of the van, the women eat the piece of paper listing the patients so that it can’t be used against anyone.
At the police station, Evelyn is taken into a room alone so that a sergeant can ask her questions. Doris has called her cousin, a lawyer. With the lawyer’s help, the three women are released. The recording from the undercover officer did not work, and there is no other evidence to point to a crime.
Part 3, Chapter 21 Summary: “Nancy”
More than a year after the raid on Evelyn’s clinic, the Janes are being more careful than ever. At a meeting with other doctors and volunteers, they are learning about a new abortion method that would allow for in-home abortions that are safer for longer into a pregnancy term. Nancy still has not told Michael about her work with the Jane Network.
In the newspaper, Nancy sees a classified ad published by someone looking for their “lost child,” adopted from St. Agnes’s in 1961. Nancy calls the number listed, wondering if it could be her. She panics when a man answers the phone and hangs up. Nancy has not told Michael that she is adopted, so she tries to act normal when he notices she’s upset after the call.
Nancy and her (adoptive) mother go wedding dress shopping, and Nancy agrees to purchase a dress she doesn’t like because her mother likes it so much.
Part 3, Chapter 22 Summary: “Angela”
Angela visits Evelyn at her apartment in Toronto. Evelyn is very emotional when Angela asks her about Maggie and tells her that she is trying to locate Maggie’s daughter. She agrees to meet with Maggie’s daughter if Angela succeeds in finding her.
Angela and Tina go to a doctor’s appointment, where they find out that Angela is pregnant with twins.
Part 3, Chapter 23 Summary: “Nancy”
It is the spring of 1987. Nancy is six months pregnant and married to Michael. The secrets that Nancy is keeping from Michael—about her own parentage, her personal experience with abortion, and her volunteering for the Jane Network—are a point of stress and sadness.
Nancy heads to Evelyn’s home; the Jane Network has moved many procedures into private homes to be more discreet. The patient that arrives, named Brenda, is surprised that Nancy is pregnant and volunteering for an abortion network. Brenda reveals that she is a police officer but that she is there for herself, not for work. She wants an abortion and hopes the Jane Network will help her. Nancy, Evelyn, and Alice are nervous about the risks but decide to help Brenda.
Nancy’s mother, Frances, throws Nancy a baby shower. She gifts Nancy the yellow booties that Nancy’s birth mother, Maggie, knit. Frances does not know that Nancy has ever seen the booties before.
After the baby shower, Michael can tell that something is bothering Nancy. He pushes her to tell him what’s going on, and she reveals that she had an abortion before they met. He is hurt and upset that she kept this secret.
Part 3 Analysis
Secrets are a dominant motif in Part 3. In Chapter 23, Nancy is troubled by the secrets that she continues to keep from Michael. She longs for the deeper connection and relief that would come from sharing her secrets with him, but something holds her back. At the end of the chapter, after she has finally revealed one of her secrets to him, his negative reaction hurts her and fills her with regret:
Nancy understands now why her parents haven’t told her about the adoption. You can control the internal damage caused by keeping secrets far easier than the external damage. The consequences, as Michael has just shown Nancy, are unpredictable. Lethal (299).
This passage emphasizes the connection between secrets and control; the motif both underscores the characters’ need for control and explores what happens when they can’t exert control in their lives, reinforcing the theme of Bodily Autonomy and Reproductive Rights.
Chapter 22 includes foreshadowing to prepare readers for the major twist that will come in Part 4: Evelyn’s true identity as Maggie (and as Nancy’s mother). The text occasionally hints at this, as when Angela is talking with Evelyn about Maggie and “watches Evelyn’s features morph as a wave of emotions color the canvas of her face” (277). The imagery of Evelyn’s face as a canvas that can be painted and repainted hints that she is wearing a mask—hiding behind the disguise of someone else’s name. This passage also includes the image of her features “morphing,” or changing into something else. This imagery builds on the mask/canvas imagery and foreshadows Maggie’s transformation into Evelyn, revealed in flashback in Part 4. The “wave of emotions” with which Evelyn reacts to Angela’s words is of course a clue as well; Maggie and Evelyn were good friends, but Evelyn’s response evinces an emotional intensity that the novel reserves for its depictions of motherhood.
The yellow baby booties are an important symbol and make another appearance in Chapter 23. These booties, tangible items that connect all the main characters across time, are also a symbol for motherly love, as they were knitted by Nancy’s birth mother and are now given to her at a baby shower by her adoptive mother. The symbol of the booties reinforces the theme of Motherhood as Both Universal and Personal, as the booties bring up complicated emptions for Nancy and for Frances but are always a symbol of motherly love.
In Part 3, the Jane Network continues to seek Justice Under Unjust Systems, working to provide safe abortions for women in a country where that service is illegal. As the years pass, this work wears on the characters, revealing one of the consequences of the fight to secure one’s own justice; the characters must make great sacrifices to fight for what they believe is just and right. In Chapter 23, Evelyn tells Nancy, “We’re getting closer to legalization, but we aren’t there yet […] The truth is, this has been a long haul, and I’m getting tired, Nancy. I’m frustrated. I know this is all worth it. But sometimes […] Just barely” (290). The exchange develops the characterization of both Nancy and Evelyn, who express and come to terms with the sacrifices that they are making for the Jane Network. It is also an important moment of intimacy between mother and daughter, although they don’t know their relationship yet. Instead, they have come to trust and depend on each other as friends and colleagues. Rather than overwriting this bond, the eventual revelation of their familial relationship will deepen it; it is no coincidence that Evelyn provides her own daughter’s abortion, as her work is in many ways a gift to future generations of women.
