Whisper Network

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2019

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Chapter 5

Chapters 6-10

Chapters 11-16

Chapters 17-21

Chapters 22-26

Chapters 27-32

Chapters 33-37

Chapters 38-43

Chapters 44-48

Chapters 49-54

Chapter 55-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Symbols & Motifs

Closed Doors

Closed doors symbolize both danger and safety.

Women closely monitor whether Ames’s office door is open or closed. When his door is closed, tension rises: Rosalita and Katherine were assaulted in his office, and the memory of the door closing is still a trigger for Rosalita. When he asks her to empty his trash while he is in the room, she carefully listens to see whether he closes his door—her fear of being locked in is palpable. Ames uses other doors to threaten as well: When Rosalita puts an envelope of money on Ardie’s desk, he emerges and blocks Ardie’s office door menacingly until Ardie returns to her office and kicks Ames out, closing the door behind him and creating an illusion of safety.

Conversely, the closed door of the pumping room that Truviv is required to give Grace for a year makes this a safe space. The women know that no one will knock when the door is closed because of the maternal, physically intimate, and biological nature of the space. Ardie hides from Ames in the pumping room, Grace uses it to take mental health breaks, and Katherine only feels free to tell the other women what has been happening between her and Ames inside this space.

The novel uses the idea of closed doors metaphorically as well, describing women’s secrecy as a series of locked rooms: If only women “knocked at the door to one another’s world to find out how (their) histories knitted themselves together, weaving shared threads into a noose of (their) own making” (40). The image of the door shows how little actually stands between the women: Had they spoken more loudly, opening the metaphorical doors between them, the story would have transpired more differently.

BAD Men List

Based on the real-life Shitty Media Men spreadsheet created by New Republic assistant editor Moira Donegan in 2017 to document allegations of sexual misconduct in her industry, the BAD Men List is a symbol of the failure of society to support women and end rape culture. Women create the list because of systemic failures to believe women’s reporting of assault and persecute men accordingly.

At first, Sloane, Ardie, and Grace, see the list as their solution for warning Katherine about Ames. However, although Katherine sees Ames’s name on the list, it does not help her: “Once the warning had been issued, they’d fulfilled their legal liability. But not until now did they suddenly realize how untrue that was” (257). While the list warned Katherine that Ames has harassed other people, it did not change the workplace culture and material realities that made her vulnerable to his harassment, and therefore was mostly ineffective.

To men in the book, the list symbolizes a shifting culture that will no longer accept their bad behaviors. Scared of being asked to take accountability for their actions, the men demonize the list or dismiss it as mercenary (“Is it really so crazy to think that the very purpose for the list’s creation was to bring people down professionally?” [243]), or counter it with whataboutism (“What I want to know is, where’s the list of women?” [242]). Ultimately, the list does nothing to curb behavior—Bobbi reports that Ames’s demeanor changed after he was added to the list, but as Ardie and Katherine’s experiences on the day of his death show, Ames remained just as violent as ever.

Listening

The book’s Prologue warns that everything could have been avoided if men had simply listened to women, while its Epilogue demands that readers listen going forward. Listening represents basic respect for women, something men like Ames are unable to display.

While the men at the company refuse to listen to women, the women are constantly listening to each other, and to the men around them. They need to hear the warnings that keep them safe, to check whether doors are being closed behind them when they have meetings with dangerous men, to know whether they are being followed at night. When Truviv asks to meet with the women, their lawyer recommends that they go and hear the company out. Astutely, Grace responds: “Have they listened? To us?” (386). Ultimately, the women in this book decide to stop whispering, so that they do not have to keep listening so closely; they demand that the world start actually listening to their stories and taking accountability.