Pigs in Heaven

Study Guide

Summary

Chapters 1–3

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Summary Chapters 1–3

Chapter Three serves to further develop Alice's character. Whereas in the first chapter, leaving her husband was only a bizarre idea she thought up in the middle of the night, Alice now proves herself a strong-willed woman who is going to find a way out of her marriage. The lonely, defeated voice of the first chapter has turned to one more self-reliant and proactive. One detail that helps produce this change in tone is the fact that Alice picks up the phone and calls her daughter. Now, she can articulate her loneliness to a listening ear, and her decision to leave her husband becomes concrete. The reader should note the irony of the kitchen gadget mentioned at the end of the chapter. Alice's thought that she would use it to make an onion milkshake is a humorous way of subverting the traditional ideas of an ideal wife. Alice is not only leaving Harland, but a lifestyle. She will no longer take the back seat to the T.V. The details of the home shopping channel gives the narrator a chance to show Alice fighting back against her role as a passive housewife.

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