67 pages • 2 hours read
Katherine FaulknerGreenwich Park
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Illusion of Safety
Content Warning: The source text depicts domestic violence, pregnancy loss, rape, and death by suicide, which this section of the guide discusses.
Thriller novels often take place in settings that characters believe are safe. Greenwich Park is set in an upscale neighborhood of London, where mansions abound, most people have high income, and crime appears to be relatively low. However, as the novel suggests, the socioeconomic class of the neighborhood’s residents does not mean that Greenwich Park lacks danger. Crime, murder, and secrecy can occur anywhere, and if it’s hidden under the surface, this can make it even more terrifying. Helen believes Greenwich Park is safer and even superior to other parts of London, such as Hackney, the working-class borough where her younger brother Charlie lives. Helen tells Charlie, “I don’t know why you insist on living here. Not when you have all that money. You could live somewhere better. Somewhere with a garden. That roof terrace isn’t even safe” (274). Ironically, although some of the apartment buildings in Hackney are not up to code and Helen’s house is fancy, the murder in the novel occurs in Greenwich Park, whereas no murders are mentioned in Hackney. Moreover, the perpetrators of the murder are Greenwich Park residents, whereas Rachel was a resident of Hackney before she moved in with Helen. When homicide detectives arrive on her doorstep, Helen reflects that “None of this seems real […] None of it belongs in our kitchen, on our quiet Sunday evening, with the sounds of the washing machine, a car outside, the next-door neighbor’s girl doing her clunky piano practice” (221). The novel suggests that despite expectations, the concept of a “safe neighborhood” is an illusion; living in a particular neighborhood does not protect someone from crime. On the other hand, living in a working-class neighborhood does not automatically present a risk to one’s safety, as Charlie points out that his daughter Ruby has a comfortable, wholesome, happy life in Hackney.
In addition to believing her neighborhood is safe, Helen initially also believes that her home and her family are safe. People often feel safe in their homes because they’ve intentionally cultivated these spaces to be secure and comfortable havens, barriers from the dangers of the outside world. When Rachel appears at Helen’s house with a bruised neck after having been abused, Helen reflects “I look again at her neck and find myself involuntarily touching my own. […] In my world, such a thing feels unthinkable. But elsewhere, apparently, things are different” (126). Ironically, the person who abused Rachel is Helen’s own husband. Thus, the danger that Rachel faces is very much part of Helen’s world, and also poses a threat to her, as is shown later in the novel when Daniel attacks Helen. Whereas Helen at first suspects that Rachel may be an unsafe person, the most dangerous people in the book are members of Helen’s own family. The novel complicates the idea of the home as a safe haven from the outside world: In reality, the home is potentially just as dangerous as anywhere else, and family members are potentially more dangerous than new friends or even strangers. The troubling of the home and the family are hallmarks of the domestic thriller.
Lastly, Helen believes that by following pregnancy health guidelines, she can protect her babies from harm, a belief that is false because despite following the guidelines, Helen has had four miscarriages. With Leo, she again follows the guidelines, and although she doesn’t lose him, his health is still jeopardized by Serena’s drugging of Helen. This suggests that even medical science is not capable of promising safety, because some factors lie outside the control of the patient. Overall, the novel suggests that the concept of absolute safety and control are illusions.
The Complexity of Identity
Like many thrillers, Greenwich Park suggests that people are not always as they seem, and personal identity is more complex than it appears to be. When Helen meets Rachel, she forms a quick, misguided first impression. While Rachel intentionally misleads her, Helen’s own prejudices color her perception of this new acquaintance. Helen assumes that Rachel is irresponsible, troubled, and somewhat dangerous because she drinks, smokes, and otherwise ignores the pregnancy guidelines to which Helen adheres so closely. Helen says that when Rachel smiles, “there is something wolfish about it, her canine teeth protruding slightly, small but sharp” (11). In reality, Rachel proves much less dangerous than Daniel, Serena, or even Rory. Ironically, the reference to her “wolfish” nature is a red herring: Daniel is the true “wolf,” a nickname that symbolizes his affair with Serena and how he’s willing to kill for her.
Initially, Helen trusts Rory, Serena, and Daniel almost unconditionally, believing they’re like-minded people who are moral, upstanding, and innocent. Meanwhile, she thinks her younger brother Charlie is “useless,” “hopeless,” and untrustworthy because he’s a DJ, uses drugs, had a child on accident, and lives in Hackney. In reality, her older brother Rory also uses drugs, and also has affairs and helps cover up a murder, while Serena and Daniel have an affair, witness a rape and lie to the police about it, and commit murder. Helen’s prejudices prevent her from seeing reality until the end of the novel, at which point she realizes that Charlie is a good parent and one of the few people she can trust.
Throughout the text, Helen remarks that Daniel no longer seems like “himself.” She reflects that identity is not stagnant and that people tend to shift over time: “I try to think back to those days, two students in an attic room […] Are we really the same two people? Is it possible to be?” (81). Everyone changes with time, but in Daniel’s case, there have always been parts of him that Helen couldn’t see, both because he intentionally kept them hidden and because her prejudices got in the way of her perception. Because Daniel seems responsible and respectable, she (and Katie) don’t suspect him of being capable of murder or other nefarious acts. The disjuncture between Helen’s perception of Daniel and reality is shown through Serena’s photograph at her exhibition, about which Helen thinks “It takes me a moment to recognize the outline as Daniel’s. […] He looks strange, unknowable. The outline of his face seems no more human than the squiggle of the London skyline” (280). Later, before Daniel attacks her, Helen again reflects that Daniel doesn’t look like himself. In reality, he does look like himself; he simply doesn’t look like Helen’s perception of him, which has been incorrect all along. The novel thus suggests that identity is complex and that it’s not always possible to truly know someone, even after decades of intimate interactions.
The Meaning of Parenthood
As a novel about an expectant mother who has already lost four pregnancies, Greenwich Park explores the anxieties associated with pregnancy, parenthood, and marriage.
Firstly, the narrative explores the question of when, exactly, someone becomes a parent. On the one hand, Helen considers the possibility that she will only become a mother once Leo is actually born: “I start to become desperate for it—for the drama of birth, the cataclysm everyone talks about […] And that’s what I want, more than anything. To be transformed, to shed the skin of this dead time I am stuck in” (264). On the other hand, Helen is already a mother from the novel’s beginning because the four children she’s lost are still her children. To symbolize the importance of these children, Helen buried their ashes in her garden and planted roses above them, so that something physical grows in place of their human bodies as a reminder of their existences. The grief Helen experiences over the deaths of her children rivals the grief she felt after her parents’ deaths, illustrating their significance.
Helen’s miscarriages also inform her present pregnancy and the anticipation of Leo’s birth. For example, she tempers her expectations and delays purchasing items for Leo until enough time has passed to negate the impossibility of a miscarriage. At the same time, her grief over her other children fuels her hope that Leo will be safe: “My grief is raw and bloody, tearful, and surfacing often. It is kinetic, feverish, greedy. It makes me impatient, makes me clutch at hope, at progress, at the anticipation of the new baby, the expectation of healing” (35). The level of care that Helen directs toward Leo before he is born illustrates her dedication to motherhood. Overall, Helen’s lost children are not less important than Leo; they’re equally important, although in different ways.
Due to Helen’s privileged socioeconomic status, she has particular ideas about what makes a suitable parent and a suitable lifestyle for a young child. She tends to judge parents and expectant parents whom she thinks are less deserving than herself, such as Rachel and Charlie. Because Charlie and Maja conceived Ruby by accident, Helen at first thinks they don’t deserve to be parents, ignoring the fact that Charlie is a good parent and Ruby is happy. Helen’s judgments are also classist; she thinks Charlie’s apartment in Hackney is inferior to her house in Greenwich Park and that it would be better for Ruby if Charlie moved somewhere more expensive. However, Charlie points out:
I live here, because Ruby lives here […] Her school is here. Maja and Bruce live here. My work is three streets away […] Normal children don’t live in mansions in Greenwich Park with seventy-foot gardens. Normal families live like us […] We take her to the playground. We take her to Brownies and football and forest school and karate. She loves her school. She has friends. She has hobbies. Occasionally she even eats fucking vegetables. She is happy (274).
Charlie helps Helen realize that the ingredients for a healthy, happy childhood need not include financial excess. Through her experiences with Daniel, she also realizes that financial excess does not protect children from harm.
Throughout most of the text, Helen is grateful to have a husband to co-parent with and pities Rachel, who will presumably be a single mother: “I think again how lucky I am to not be Rachel. How grateful I should be to have a loving husband. Imagine being pregnant and going home to an empty house” (51). Daniel’s later assault of Helen shatters her illusion that having two parents around is better than one, as her “loving husband” becomes the primary threat to her safety and her child’s existence. The exposition of Daniel’s evil is a significant turning point in Helen’s views on family and single parenthood, as evident in her choices to move into a small apartment with Katie and raise her son around Charlie. Helen ultimately realizes that money, material goods, and fancy houses do not translate into good parenthood and childrearing. Instead, love, care, safety, companionship, and a lack of trauma make for a good life.
