55 pages • 1 hour read
The Briar Club
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Symbols & Motifs
Recipes
Content Warning: This section of the guide features depictions of domestic violence and murder.
Because the Briar Club dinners revolve around food, the recipes that the novel includes symbolize communal gatherings that relate to the theme of Finding Support and Overcoming Differences in a Circle of Friends. Most of the chapters feature one or more recipes that relate to the central character whose story that segment tells. Frequently, this character is paired with a lover or an adversary, and the text also includes a recipe representing that person. The final instruction in each recipe describes the group of people who ought to share the dish and the music that should accompany it. These details are often a humorous commentary on the state of mind of the character who prepared the recipe. When Pete meets Grace for the first time, he talks about his absent father and the meatball recipe his father used to make. Grace, in turn, offers to share her sun tea with Pete. Therefore, that chapter includes a recipe for sun tea and a meatball recipe.
However, not all the pairings are so harmonious. Arlene’s unintentionally pornographic Candle Salad appears in the same chapter as Reka’s Haluski. Both women are outsiders in the group and antagonistic to each other. The most unusual inclusion is Kirill’s Rassolnik, which appears in the chapter where Grace ultimately kills him. At an earlier point, Grace says, “A successful dinner party needs just one person all the others loathe […] it gives everyone something to unite against” (33). By that measure, Kirill’s intrusion into this circle of friends provides a notable finishing touch to the novel.
McCarthyism
McCarthyism is a ubiquitous element in the novel and a part of American life in the early 1950s. It symbolizes repressive ideologies and relates to the theme of Navigating American Identities and Societal Restrictions Amid McCarthyism. During this period, everyone in the United States is doing their best to conform to stereotypical notions of what it means to be American. Those who don’t conform risk losing their livelihoods or even their lives. Reka is outspoken in her belief that a tyrant is a tyrant, whether he waves an American or a Russian flag. After hearing this, Arlene reports Reka to her boss and gets her fired. Harland has misgivings about the way J. Edgar Hoover is running the FBI, but he keeps these ideas to himself. When he is presented with the choice of following orders or protecting a former communist, he chooses to shield Grace, demonstrating how he ultimately understands this issue isn’t exclusively black and white.
After Grace’s secret is exposed, Nora sensibly points out that turning her in will ignite another firestorm of persecution. McCarthy would use the incident to expand his power base and exert even more control over everyone. During Claire’s work with Margaret Chase Smith, she is impressed by the senator’s willingness to stand up to McCarthy, even though it might cost her political career. Claire quotes Smith and says, “No matter what idiocy McCarthy’s hammering us with, it isn’t illegal. It’s one of the basic principles of Americanism: the right to hold unpopular beliefs” (385). This statement highlights that a true “America” should allow for nonconformity and diverse standpoints and experiences, including that of an ex-communist like Grace.
Abusive Authorities
The Briar Club highlights multiple examples of people who abuse their positions of authority. Such individuals symbolize tyranny and relate to the theme of The Struggle for Freedom. The novel frequently mentions Senator Joe McCarthy and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover but is never seen in a positive light. The only person who idolizes the autocratic behavior of either man is Arlene, and she is an antagonist with tyrannic beliefs of her own. While Arlene and her role models are busy proclaiming their patriotism as freedom-loving Americans, they engage in tactics that are more in line with the ideology they fear. At one point, Grace, a former communist, says of McCarthy, “He could have been kissing cousins with Joe Stalin. If there was ever a man who would have thrived in a police state, it was McCarthy” (348).
While these people are examples of tyrants at the national level, the novel also contains authoritarians operating at home. Mrs. Nilsson scolds her tenants when they violate any one of her myriad house rules. She also steals money from her children and destroys their father’s letters to them. She even works her son relentlessly to line her pocketbook. At the opposite end of the social spectrum, Barrett Sutherland controls his wife cruelly, physically abusing her whenever she shows signs of thinking or acting independently. Kirill attempts to exert the same level of control over Grace until she escapes. Through the experiences of its characters, the novel highlights political ideology alone doesn’t guarantee freedom, as the characters experience oppression on an interpersonal level and must fight to overcome it and find safety and happiness.
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