Life After Life: Like a Fox in a Hole, May 1926 Summary & Analysis

In May, Pamela learns that she failed her entrance exam to Cambridge, and she admits that she panicked when she found a few questions that she couldn’t answer. She is particularly upset to learn that Maurice is going to get the highest honors, even though she thinks he’s an idiot. Sylvie thinks that “academia [is] pointless for girls,” believing that a “woman’s highest calling is to be a mother and a wife.” She argues that science only invents “better ways of killing people.”

Maurice turns up again with Howie in tow, stopping at the house on their way to London. Ursula has thought of Howie frequently, though upon seeing him she realizes he does not know her name. As she climbs the back stairs to fetch something from her room, she encounters Howie on his way down. He pins her to the wall, covering her mouth and “fiddling with her clothes” as “she squeal[s] in protest.” He rams his penis inside her, and Ursula thinks that “the arch that led to womanhood did not seem so triumphal anymore, merely brutal and uncaring.”

Howie finishes and bounds down the stairs, completely unphased by what has just happened. Ursula is left to stare at the floral wallpaper—wisteria. She descends a half hour later, once the boys have left. Howie asks if she’s all right, and Ursula can only say yes. Ursula goes over the incident again and again, trying to understand what she did wrong.

The summer continues. Pamela is accepted at Leeds University to study chemistry. There are dances in the village hall on Friday evenings, and Fred Smith is waltzing with Ursula when the memory of the back stairs overwhelms her. She steps outside for air, feeling queasy.

Maurice had gained his expected first and returns home for a few weeks before going off to train as a barrister. He comments that Ursula looks like a heifer, and a realization dawns on Ursula. She hunts down Sylvie’s copy of The Teaching of Young Children and Girls as to Reproduction, but the book only advises distracting girls from the topic of sex by giving them bread and cake.

Ursula finds a medical encyclopedia, which explains the mechanics of sex and its consequences. Ursula realizes she is pregnant but doesn’t know where to turn. She walks to the train station and finds Fred Smith, who offers her a free ride. She gets on and spends the afternoon walking through London’s parks. She has no money—a mistake, she realizes—but she knows where she is inevitably going. Ursula arrives at Izzie’s apartment and explains her condition, sobbing.

Izzie phones Hugh, explaining that Ursula had shown up at her door and would be staying with her for a few days, but not telling him anything else. Izzie gently scolds Ursula, telling her “prevention [is] better than a cure,” though Ursula doesn’t know what she means. Izzie says that they must get rid of the baby, and Ursula agrees.

Izzie takes Ursula to a large house in Belgravia, dropping her off and promising that she would return later. Ursula has no idea what is about to happen. Ursula enters the room and a doctor orders her onto the operating table. She is confused that she’s having an operation. The nurse places a mask over her face, and the next thing she knows, Izzie is driving her home, telling her that she’ll feel strange for a while. Ursula wonders how Izzie “know[s] so much about this appalling process.” At Izzie’s apartment, Ursula asks “what happened to the baby” and if “they [gave] it to someone nice.”

That night, Ursula vomits and develops a fever. The world blurs until Hugh appears, smiling at her and saying he will get her to a hospital (though Izzie protests that she’ll be prosecuted, to which Hugh says that he hopes that she is thrown in jail). The next thing Ursula knows, she’s in a hospital with Sylvie watching over her. Sylvie says, “How could you?” Ursula falls asleep again, feeling the black bat approaching her, but when she reaches out her hand to the darkness, her hand is rejected, and she wakes up. Hugh smiles at her, saying, “Welcome back.”