The Paper Palace

“And I thought: now there is no turning back. No more regrets for what I haven’t done. I love him, I hate myself; I love myself, I hate him. This is the end of a long story.”

Elle thinks this after finally sleeping with her childhood best friend, Jonas, after years of longing for him. Elle and Jonas have an unrequited love because of her guilt regarding Conrad’s death, and Elle is clearly conflicted. This quote signals that the story isn’t linear; it begins at the end and then recounts the events that led Elle here.

“The shit always builds up, and surviving it is the key, but this I will not learn for many years.”

When Elle is a baby, she has to have a tumor removed, which she says is the shit inside her building up. Elle acknowledges that throughout all of life, there is always a buildup of heartbreaks, mistakes, and regrets; however, Elle learns the important thing is learning how to survive the mess of it all.

“[W]here we really live—where we read, and eat, and argue, and grow old together—is on the screen porch, as wide as the house itself, which faces out to the pond.”

The most significant place for Elle and her family is the Back Woods of Cape Cod, where she has returned every summer of her life. This quote establishes that the screen porch is the place for many of Elle’s life-shaping moments. It is also significant that it faces the pond because of the importance of water in the novel.

“The best lesson my mother ever taught me: there are two things in life you never regret—a baby and a swim. Even on the coldest days of early June, [..] I hear her voice in my head, urging me to plunge in. [...] Her worst advice: Think Botticelli. Be like Venus rising on a half shell, lips demurely closed, even her nakedness modest.”

These lessons from Elle’s mum tell her that the sole purpose of a woman is to always be the smaller, more compliant partner to a man. Wallace helps condition Elle to think that her opinions and needs are secondary. This becomes a difficult lesson for Elle to unlearn as she grows older and must stand up for herself against her father, Conrad, and Peter. This moment also foreshadows the novel’s emphasis on purity, such as when Elle lies that she’s a virgin after being raped by Conrad, and it underlines Elle’s tendency to stay silent about injustices done to her—”lips demurely closed.”

“The odd thing is, [...] my mother lost her respect for women but not for men. Her stepfather’s perversion was a hard truth, but it was her mother’s weak-willed betrayal that made her go cold. In my mother’s world, the men are given respect. She believes in the glass ceiling.”

Wallace was sexually harassed by her stepfather, and when it was discovered, Wallace’s mother punished eight-year-old Wallace with a slap in the face. Elle notices that Wallace continued to give and submit herself to men and passed this mentality down to Elle and Anna. This helps provide context for Elle’s sexual abuse at the hands of Conrad. It’s evident to Elle that she’ll receive no help from Wallace.

“I hold my breath for ten seconds, trying not to explode. I am under-water, watching the fish through murky green. I close my eyes. I am Peggy. I choose the quiet of the reeds.”

When Elle is trying not to lose her cool in front of her kids, she compares herself to Anna’s friend Peggy, who drowned in the pond. Elle compares the water to the stresses in her life. It is both frightening and calming to Elle to be consumed by the water the same way she feels frustrated and consumed by her life. Heller establishes water early on as a symbol of death, fear, and rebirth.

“‘I hope you killed him, [...] But Wallace, dear,’ she added, ‘That sort of behavior is unbecoming in a girl.’”

This quote helps establish how Elle’s mother was raised, which also influences Elle’s upbringing. The juxtaposition between what is expected of women and the need to protect and defend oneself from predatory men demonstrates the inequitable gender dynamics throughout Elle’s life.

“All Peter did was laugh when our teenage son disrespected me, which is a daily occurrence. But it’s the tone of warning in Peter’s voice that makes me rise to the bait.”

This fight between Peter and Elle shows the slight tension and opposition between them. Elle says she knows she should back down from the argument, but something compels her to talk back, indicating that Elle feels trapped by the dominant man in her life.

“When he waves goodbye to us from the car he always looks sad, and I know it’s my fault.”

Here, Elle blames herself for her father’s decision to leave her and Anna while he spends time with his new wife, Joanna. Elle tends to carry everything on her shoulders even when she doesn’t have to, not realizing that this is not her fault. Her character flaw is to be so selfless without realizing the damages she causes to herself. We see this again when she hides Conrad’s abuse to avoid family upheaval. 

“In my mother’s family, divorce is just a seven-letter word. Letters that could easily be replaced with I’m bored or bad luck.”

Elle makes this comment about her family and her mother’s flippancy when it comes to marriage and divorce. For Wallace, it’s easy to leave commitment. For Elle, it’s hard to deal with the revolving door of men in her life. This standard that Elle has grown to think is normal helps establish the context for when Elle is a grown woman and must make her own choices about her marriage and other relationships. Unlike Wallace, Elle heavily weighs the consequences of breaking up her family.

“We are not a family of cowards. You have to face your fears head on. Otherwise you’ve already lost the battle before it’s begun.”

This is important, transformative advice from Elle’s mother that ends up shaping much of Elle’s life. This advice helps Elle stand up to preying men looking to take advantage of her. It gives Elle the courage to spit in the faces of men trying to hurt and mug her, which is important along her journey of womanhood and adulthood as she learns to take responsibility for her choices, actions, and regrets.

“Or maybe he, too, wants to avoid this moment of acknowledgement—keep his old life alive for one moment longer, before everything changes. Because, either way, it will.”

Connecting to the theme of facing reality and consequences, Elle thinks this after seeing Jonas for the first time after they had sex. Elle wants to prolong this moment where she doesn’t have to make a choice, and she can continue living with her secret.

“I have always known there was something bad in me, a secret perversion I have tried to hide from Peter. That I hope he will never see.”

Elle keeps many secrets from Peter, including the truth about her part in Conrad’s death. She hopes that he will never see this dark side to her because she doesn’t believe that he will still love her if he knew the whole truth about herself. Connecting the theme of facing reality, Elle hides from the ugly, dirty parts of herself that she doesn’t want anyone to see. By hiding this side of herself from Peter, she is also able to keep it bottled inside and prolong acknowledging it herself.

“It has never been the same between them since Anna was sent away. [...] there’s a distance in Anna, a coolness that will never thaw—as if her last life is in the rearview mirror, still visible, but her eyes are only on the road ahead.”

Leo decides to send Anna away to boarding school, and Wallace lets it happen. This causes Anna to retreat from her mother and Elle. She becomes more of a loner, as she contends with having to face reality and dealing with its consequences, focusing more on the present than the past.

“I knew our friendship made no sense. I wasn’t a loner, or even lonely. Becky was down the road, and I had Anna. I was fourteen and a half, he was twelve. But for some reason that summer, when so many things were falling away, when I began to feel like prey, Jonas made me feel safe.”

Elle says she starts to feel like prey when she’s 14 years old. She fears cat-calling men on the street and the threat of her stepbrother in her own home. She doesn’t feel any protection from the rest of her family, so she turns to Jonas as a friend. While many of the male figures in her life exert a negative force, Jonas offers a sanctuary to her, connecting back to the theme of gender and family influences.

“I would be tainted forever—an object of pity. So, I will carry the weight of this shame rather than tell on him. I know my silence protects him. But it also protects me.”

Elle says this when Conrad first comes to her room, and she has to decide whether to keep it a secret or tell her mother. Elle sacrifices herself to protect an illusion of normalcy. This develops the theme of protecting others to one’s own detriment.

“I am no longer myself. [...] My flesh revolts me. I have to go home. I can never go home.”

After Conrad rapes her, Elle feels as though everything has changed. She wants to go home, but she has no sense of where or what home is any longer. Conrad has stolen Elle’s innocence, and she recognizes that she can never go back to how things once were. This moment is the inciting incident for everything that comes after, including Conrad’s death and the affair with Elle’s only ally following the trauma, Jonas. Each of Elle’s decisions that follow are influenced by this moment.

“I’m happy to be breathing. Happy to be here with Jonas. Safe from Conrad. I can do this, I think as we sail out farther and farther. I can survive this. No one needs to know. [...] If he touches me again, I’ll kill him. The thought of that uplifts me.”

Elle feels safe from Conrad when she is sailing on the water with Jonas. The water symbolizes a comfort place for Elle in this moment, as she puts more and more distance between herself and the realities of her life. The water provides safety and an opportunity to prolong facing any choices or hardship. Elle thinks that she will be able to survive this, carry all the burden, and that she will be able to protect herself if need be. Connecting to the theme of protection in the novel, Elle believes she has control of her life and all the consequences by keeping her trauma a secret.

“I know it is because I have tethered him [...] forced him to collude, to carry my lie. It’s as if I have stolen his virginity.”

Elle tells Jonas the truth about Conrad, and she knows she has tainted him by doing so. Now, she and Jonas are forever connected in the secret and the choice to keep silent. Elle compares telling Jonas to raping him; she “steals his virginity” in that she sullies his mental innocence. This quote reveals again the tremendous guilt Elle feels both for being raped, as a product of her mother’s inequitable teachings, and for exposing the dirtiness of that reality to others. In truth, nothing that has happened to Elle is her fault, and she’ll only begin to heal when she chooses herself over the wellbeing of everyone else.

“I stopped to catch my breath, treading water, afraid to turn back and see Jonas standing there, afraid to swim home to Peter, to my life.”

When Elle goes into the water for a swim alone, she is afraid to return to the shore and face reality. Water symbolizes death and rebirth in the novel, and in this case the water is a place of purgatory for Elle. It is symbolic of the space in between the choice Elle has to make between Jonas and Peter. She holds her breath, emblematic of Elle’s desire to pause and escape reality.

“I wonder if he would love me if he could see inside my head—the pettiness, the dirty linen of my thoughts, the terrible things I have done.”

On her wedding day, Elle wonders if Peter would still love her if he knew everything about her. As a rape survivor, Elle feels an unjustified shame. She frequently describes herself as unclean and tells Peter she’s a virgin. Because her mother emphasized Venus-like purity, and a person can’t possibly live up to these standards, Elle considers herself inadequate. Having shouldered the burden of sexual abuse on her own, she continues to blame herself.

“I have no idea what has happened to break Anna like this. I only know that whatever it is, it led her back here. Like a homing pigeon, who, deaf to everything but pure instinct, hears the wind blowing across a mountain range two hundred miles away and sets its course.”

When Anna gets the news that she has ovarian cancer, she has the desire to return to the Back Woods. Elle compares it to an animal-like instinct to return home in the face of danger. Anna returns home when she is feeling weak, hoping that it will give her strength and clarity the same way it gives the same to Elle.

“When the tears come, they are not for what I have lost, but for the truth about Jonas I cannot seem to shed.”

Elle thinks this at the end of the novel when she has sex with Peter. She has already made up her mind to choose Peter; however, she cannot seem to shed the truth about her love for Jonas. Elle has to face this truth in order to fully understand what she wants and what will make her happy.