51 pages • 1 hour read
Lisa BarrWoman on Fire
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.
Chapter 40-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 40 Summary
Jules hurries back to her apartment. She berates herself for having been so relaxed about security and for having made so many mistakes. She feels she might be in over her head. However, she must focus and save her mom. She remembers what Adam said about the game being the most important thing to Margaux, so she decides to keep Lillian a secret. She will also use old-school methods to buy her some hope.
Chapter 41 Summary
Margaux speaks with Wyatt. He feels that kidnapping Liz Roth was a bad idea. They have made a good amount of money so far, he adds, so they should lie low now. Margaux doesn’t care what he thinks and decides to send Liz to Correns, ordering Wyatt to watch over her. After hanging up with him, Margaux goes upstairs to speak to Liz. She asks her about Adam, why she and Jules went to Baden-Baden, and why they met with Bakker in Amsterdam afterward. Liz is defiant and refuses to say anything.
Chapter 42 Summary: “Art Basel, Miami”
The scene from the Prologue finally plays out. Wyatt tries several times to call Margaux, but she won’t answer until after she has unveiled Woman on Fire. When she finally speaks to him, he tells her not to lose sight of Jules, because Jules knows the location of the real painting.
Chapter 43 Summary
Jules is placed in the back of a vehicle, her head bagged and hands cuffed. She is driven to a mansion, where Margaux confronts her. Margaux tells Jules more about her history. She had a close relationship with Carice Van der Pol. She almost loved her. And then there was Adam. She loved her grandfather and hated her parents, who were frivolous and unloving.
One day, Margaux’s father told her that he wanted to celebrate her birthday on his yacht. She made the mistake of inviting Carice and Adam. Adam had been using heroin, and one night, she had to take him to the hospital. When she returned to the yacht, she found Carice and her father having sex. The next evening, she planned to sleep with Carice and taunt Adam with heroin. She wanted Adam to push her sleeping father into the ocean. Adam balked, so Margaux pushed him. Carice came on deck as Margaux’s father took his last breath.
Margaux tells Jules that she wants Jules to write a story praising her and also to tell her where the real painting is.
Chapter 44 Summary: “Baden-Baden”
Margaux and Jules go to see Lillian. Margaux lies to Lillian, claiming she wants to donate the painting to a museum, but Lillian knows that Margaux is evil, because she learned to discern liars and bullies in Auschwitz. Margaux has Jules tell Lillian the truth. Lillian tells them the painting is in the basement of the Dassel Schloss, the house where Otto Dassel hid her family from the Nazis.
Before they leave, Lillian thanks Jules for the bench she and Liz purchased with their casino winnings during their original trip to Baden-Baden. The bench sits under Lillian’s favorite tree at the convalescent center in her honor.
Chapter 45 Summary: “Grünewald, Berlin”
Margaux holds Jules at gunpoint and forces her to help her in the basement of the Dassel Schloss. They quickly find the painting nailed to a wall in the basement. Jules extracts the nails holding the frame and pockets one of them. She gives the rolled-up canvas to Margaux. Margaux is ready to shoot Jules, so Jules buys herself time and distance by telling Margaux that she made hard copies of all the information. Jules will destroy it and write a good article for Margaux if Margaux lets her and her mother live. Margaux doesn’t see the need to make such a deal, so Jules lunges at Margaux with the nail, jabbing it hard into her neck. Margaux’s blood soaks into the bottom half of the canvas. As Margaux is dying, she asks Jules to preserve her grandfather’s legacy. Jules promises to do so if Margaux frees her mother. Just before she dies, Margaux calls Wyatt and tells him to free Liz and to escape.
Chapter 46 Summary: “Manhattan”
Jules visits Ellis in the hospital. So much has happened, but Adam has visited him every day and has informed him about most of what transpired. Ellis’s true history has been told, Dan has been vindicated, and Griffin Freund has been arrested. Jules has brought Woman on Fire with her. Even though Ellis is now blind, she and Adam help him feel the painting, because as Ernst Engel once said, “Art is not what you see, but how it makes you feel” (385). Ellis passes away.
Epilogue Summary
Everyone comes to Ellis’s memorial ceremony, even Lillian Dassel. Jules unveils the true Woman on Fire painting, along with the dedication to Ellis and all of the artists who suffered because of the Nazis. Adam then takes Jules aside and shows her the shoes Ellis designed specifically for her: “The Jules—a woman on fire” (392).
Chapter 40-Epilogue Analysis
As the novel comes full circle to the events in the Prologue and accelerates toward its climax, Jules is in full crisis. Despite her independence, her victory depends on support from others. The loyal doorman, Owen, provides a secret opportunity for help, as does Louise, Dan’s loyal assistant. These characters are even more classic stock characters than Dan. They are the minions used by the protagonist to achieve ultimate victory. Their roles have not yet been established, but their presence at a critical moment is not coincidental, which is a common device in the thriller genre. The author juxtaposes Jules’s acceptance of help with Margaux’s refusal of it: Wyatt is hardly a saintly character, but he is more level-headed than Margaux, and his attempts to bring her back to a sensical place go unheeded. Thus, Margaux’s hubris in thinking she can do anything and get away with anything is highlighted, foreshadowing her ultimate demise.
Jules’s victory is similarly foreshadowed. Lillian has an insightful glimpse into Jules’s tenacity, reassuring the reader that she will prevail, even if things get darker.
During the climactic moment when Margaux and Jules have their final confrontation, the author again employs a trope common in action and thriller narratives, the quintessential confessional. This trope is the scene when the antagonist/villain feels the need to confess all their crimes—the how and the why—to the protagonist. It is an easy way to tie up loose ends and it marks the ultimate rise of hubris. When the villain confesses, they believe they have won and are invincible, and thus, their fall is not far away. Margaux’s bloody demise cements the symbolism of the Woman on Fire painting. Margaux’s greed, ambition, and lust have consumed her completely.
In the denouement, Ellis reunites with the painting for which he has sacrificed so much, not to mention what the others have endured on his behalf. Ironically, however, Ellis has lost his eyesight. The only thing he wanted before he died was to see his mother’s face one more time. It is relevant to note that German Expressionism was not about truthful renditions of the world, but rather about the emotions surrounding human perception. Ernst Engel says as much about the invoking of emotion being more important than its aesthetic appeal. When Adam and Jules help Ellis “see” the painting by describing it to him, they appeal to The Power and Influence of Art and its ability to facilitate memory. Instead of seeing his mother as Ernst Engel perceived her, the painting helps him see her as her remembered her.
The Epilogue establishes Jules as a talented and tenacious investigative journalist who has a bright future with Adam, and she receives a symbolic representation of her own. While the Woman on Fire painting came to represent Margaux despite depicting someone else entirely, Ellis’s shoe—“the Jules”—is a bespoke, modern creation for a woman on fire.
