60 pages • 2 hours read
Jenny JacksonPineapple Street
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 15-20Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 15 Summary: “Darley”
Tilda hosts a gender-reveal party for Cord and Sasha. The gender of their baby is revealed to be a boy. Georgiana drunkenly yells about how inappropriate it is to label a baby’s gender because gender is a spectrum. Her objection causes a scene, and Sasha pulls her aside. Darley overhears Sasha telling Georgiana that it seems as though Georgiana is really upset about something else entirely. Georgiana storms off. Later, Tilda and Darley try to get Georgiana to come back to the group. When they ask her what’s wrong, she yells that they should ask the “Gold Digger.”
Chapter 16 Summary: “Sasha”
Sasha tells the Stocktons about Georgiana’s affair with Brady. Darley is angry that Sasha didn’t tell them sooner, which makes Sasha lash out at them about their unrealistic expectations of her and address the issue of Darley and Georgiana’s malicious labeling of her as a “gold digger.” In the midst of this drama, Sasha finds out that her father has been hospitalized with blood clots in his lungs, so she quickly packs a bag and returns to Rhode Island.
When Sasha arrives at her childhood home, she finds only Mullin. She is annoyed to see him but realizes that she has been treating Mullin the way the Stocktons treat her: as an outsider. Sasha decides to be kinder to Mullin. They revisit their tumultuous past, and Mullin tells Sasha that he has figured out why he was so in love with her. He explains that because Sasha grew up in a loving family and he didn’t, he was attracted to Sasha’s ability to give and receive love. He and Sasha may have broken up, and their relationship may have been tumultuous, but he still gained a new, loving family. They then learn that Sasha’s father is improving. When she texts Cord the good news, she wonders why he is not with her while her father is fighting for his life.
Chapter 17 Summary: “Georgiana”
Georgiana feels ashamed, not just of how she acted at the gender-reveal party, but also of the many times she acted like a spoiled rich girl over the years. Georgiana feels like she has hit rock bottom, and she desperately wants to change. She receives an email from Curtis asking her out, but she is too ashamed of herself to start dating again, so she dismisses him. Later, she remembers that Curtis rid himself of his inherited fortune. She logs into her own accounts and discovers that she has around 37,000,000 dollars. She decides that, like Curtis, she will donate all of her inheritance to worthy causes.
Georgiana meets with Bill Wallis, the Stockton family’s investment manager. He informs her that she is not allowed to withdraw her money because she is not the trustee of the account. Georgiana is the beneficiary of the trust, but her mother is one of the primary trustees. She can’t do anything significant with the money herself without permission from those who control the trust. After playing tennis with her mother, Georgiana sits down with Tilda and tries to tell her everything she’s been thinking and feeling about wanting to relinquish her financial privilege and become a better person.
Chapter 18 Summary: “Darley”
Darley resents Sasha for getting the house on Pineapple Street and not appreciating it. Darley loves the house and wants to live there herself; she can’t understand why no one asked her if she and her husband and children wanted to move in rather than Sasha and Cord. Meanwhile, Cy Habib reaches out to Darley, eager to meet her aviation-obsessed husband. After her parents babysit her children, Darley finds out from the kids, who eavesdropped on an argument between Tilda and Chip, that Georgiana wants to give away her inheritance. Darley immediately reached out to Chip and Cord to discuss the issue. Darley thinks that Georgiana is having a mental health crisis after Brady’s death and should go to therapy. She worries about Georgiana making a big mistake by giving away her inheritance. Darley understands what Georgiana does not yet comprehend: that maybe one day, Georgiana will need that money. Darley goes to the house on Pineapple Street to talk to Cord, who is in the middle of moving all the antiques from the house into storage so that Sasha can be more comfortable. He tells Darley that Sasha is in Rhode Island because her father is in the hospital, and the news shocks and horrifies Darley. Darley wants to know everything that’s going on in her family so she can be there for her family members, and she does consider Sasha to be her family.
Chapter 19 Summary: “Sasha”
With some much-needed distance between her and the Stocktons, Sasha realizes that part of her anger stems from Cord’s failure to defend her when she clashes with the other Stocktons. Even when Sasha was not fair or kind to Mullin, her brothers always held her accountable for that behavior. By contrast, Cord does nothing to correct his sisters’ unwelcoming behavior. In the midst of these realizations, Cord surprises her with an unannounced arrival in Providence. He apologizes for not having gone with her to Rhode Island in the first place. They discuss why Sasha is angry at Cord, and he promises to put her before his family in the future. Sasha receives an apology note from Darley and forgives her.
Sasha and Cord meet Shelby, who is the new girlfriend of Sasha’s brother Nate. Shelby is vivacious and funny and works in app development: a lucrative field. Sasha learns that Shelby is only in app development as a hobby because she has been retired since the age of 30.
Chapter 20 Summary: “Georgiana”
Georgiana thinks more deeply about her animosity toward Sasha. She recalls the story of Truman Capote’s townhouse down the street from Pineapple Street. When a videogame millionaire bought the house and tried to modernize it, the Landmarks Preservation Commission had to intervene and prevent him from completely devaluing the house’s literary history. Georgiana thinks of this story because she realizes that she’s been preventing Sasha from reinventing and revitalizing the Pineapple Street house, and by extension, the family unit. Georgiana realizes that she has behaved cruelly toward Sasha. She calls Sasha to apologize by inviting her to play tennis.
Georgiana reaches out to Curtis by writing a mock lifestyle piece articulating her flaws, her affair with Brady, her desire to be a better person, and her hesitancy about dating Curtis. Georgiana also starts going to therapy.
Chapters 15-20 Analysis
This section focuses on dramatically recalibrating the various relationships and conflicts currently unsetting the Stockton family, and this new narrative direction becomes particularly clear when Sasha’s own family emergency brings her back to her roots and grants her some distance from New York and the Stockton family drama. With the benefit of a fresh perspective, she finally gains the space she needs to reassess the source of her various resentments and brainstorm potential solutions. Notably, Cord doesn’t join her at first, a dynamic that emphasizes the ways in which the Stockton family unfairly puts the burden on Sasha to adapt to them, without making any effort to adapt to her way of perceiving the world. The trip to Providence therefore compels Sasha to evaluate her own recent behavior and realize that, within the context of her own family, she treats Mullin the same way that Georgiana treats her. Despite the discomfort that this realization causes her, however, Sasha appreciates that her family holds her accountable for her treatment of others.
This realization highlights yet another core difference in the cultures between Sasha’s family and Cord’s. Cord’s family requires ingratiation and time to nurture relationships, whereas Sasha’s family readily accepts people just as they are, easily allowing them to become members of the family as a whole. Sasha’s revelation about Mullin is important because she unexpectedly puts herself in Georgiana’s shoes. She understands how easy it is to reject someone out of a family. However, Sasha does not want to be like Georgiana and values what love and family can look like when everyone is accepted unconditionally. Although welcoming an ex-boyfriend into the family is decidedly untraditional, the decision to welcome Mullin is proof of how loving Sasha’s family truly is. Mullin’s point that he fell in love with Sasha because of the love of her family is notable. Sasha gives and receives love, and expects love in return, because it’s how she was raised. Given the Stocktons’ attitude of suspicion toward anyone outside their tight circle, they are necessarily much less welcoming. But Sasha’s aptitude for family is reflected in Darley’s immediate concern for her, indicating that despite these class- and culture-related difficulties, Darley still considers Sasha to be part of the family. In this novel, Jackson explores what family means and the capacity for the family unit to be giving and accepting of the world around them.
A significant character arc occurs in Georgiana’s evolution from self-centered to introspective. Her abysmal behavior at the gender-reveal party marks her lowest point. For the first time, Georgiana properly holds herself accountable for her actions. While her family sees her as a shy girl who needs to be protected from the world, Georgiana is in reality an overly entitled adult who has too long been infantilized by her money and her family. Georgiana acknowledges this issue and faces up to the more unpleasant aspects of the person she has become thanks to her extreme privilege. Georgiana wants to be a good person, and that motivation is the first step in moving away from the spoiled girl she was and realizing her full potential as a mature woman. Brady, a man she was madly in love with, worked toward the greater good, and she can honor that memory by improving herself and her behavior. Furthermore, she resolves to rid herself of shame and guilt over her spoiled moments by striving to be a better person. Thus, Georgiana makes the radical decision to emulate Curtis and divest herself of her fortune, all 37,000,000 dollars of it. Even if she one day needs medical care or, like Darley, has a husband who becomes unemployed, her fortune is well above what she may ever need.
It is important to note that Georgiana does not directly use the 37,000,000 dollars. Her family owns the apartment she lives in, and the money sitting in her accounts is there to accrue interest and solidify the value of the Stockton family’s investment holdings. If Georgiana were to take that much money out of her accounts all at once, the drastic action could devalue her family’s investments. Thus, it’s clear that this inherited wealth is not intended for individual use. Instead, it is meant to uphold the financial wealth of the entire family. Another notable aspect of this situation is how Jackson reveals the ways in which money is often kept in such extremely wealthy families. Georgiana cannot access the money or use it to fulfill her whims. Technically, she is the beneficiary of the account but not the trustee, which means that she does not have the freedom to make any individual decisions about how the entirety of the money is used. This reality reflects the habit of wealthy people to hire investment managers whose job is to ensure that no individual family member can upend the fabric of the family’s collective resources. Such managers create a structure that protects the entire family’s wealth from individuals who may be too flippant in their use of money for one reason or another. In short, rich people stay rich because they safeguard their wealth. For the Stockton family, this dynamic is reflected in their determination to safeguard their family’s interests against outsiders like Sasha with pre-nuptial agreements and cold demeanors. Georgiana has internalized this caution in ways that close her off to the greater part of the world around her.
Georgiana’s rock bottom also brings a transformative breakthrough with her mother. They often use the ritual of tennis to come together, but this time, Georgiana allows herself to be vulnerable with her mother. She reminds herself of the connection she does have with her mother despite Tilda’s inability to talk about conflict and chooses to confide openly in her. Thus, Georgiana is growing in more than one way. By initiating an honest conversation with her mother, she helps her mother to see her as more than just a shy little girl.
Another important confrontation in these chapters is the one that Sasha has with Cord about the issue of Navigating Class Relations. Like Tilda, Cord is uncomfortable with confrontation and with acknowledging differences in class. Class conversations are considered crass to the Stockton family because of their extreme privilege. Because they are at the very top of American society, any discussion acknowledging class forces them to assume a position in which they are looking down on everyone else; thus, refraining from mentioning their wealth is the only way the Stocktons know to show some measure of humility despite their extreme good fortune. By confronting the issue of wealth head-on, Sasha helps to ensure that no topic is off-limits when initiating discussions with her husband. Until Cord consents to acknowledge and discuss the class issues that stand between them, he cannot truly comprehend the nature of Sasha’s resentments against his family. Even for those whose finances rank on the lower end of the spectrum, the issue of class in America is historically an awkward topic. The capitalist system of America celebrates wealth and prosperity, but it also celebrates the middle class. In a capitalist system, wealthy families like the Stocktons can’t exist without middle-class families like Sasha’s. But certain stereotypes about class in America permeate the overall culture and are detrimental to the whole. These stereotypes prevent Sasha from feeling included in the Stockton family, in part because wealthy people like the Stocktons assume that middle-class individuals like Sasha wouldn’t want to be part of their exclusive club. By confronting and acknowledging the true extent of their class differences, Sasha opens a deeper layer of communication between herself and Cord.
