51 pages • 1 hour read
Abby JimenezPart of Your World
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.
Themes
The Influence of Legacy
Content Warning: This section features discussions of emotional and physical abuse.
Both Alexis and Daniel are the last members of families with legacies that go back 125 years. The Montgomerys are a well-known and prestigious family of surgeons and doctors who hold sway over the Minneapolis medical community, as there has been at least one Montgomery working at Royaume Northwestern Hospital since its opening. Similarly, the Grants have lived in Wakan for generations and have had a major impact on its thriving community, with a member of the family being honorary mayor for the 125 years that the iconic Grant House has been standing. Despite the two family’s cultural and geographical differences, Jimenez draws overt parallels between the legacy of the Grants and that of the Montgomerys in terms of both length and precarity, as both Alexis and Daniel consider leaving their legacies behind.
However, Alexis and Daniel are influenced by their legacy in very different ways. The Montgomerys prize power and prestige, and although their profession revolves around helping others, their legacy mainly bolsters their own image. This self-absorption explains why Alexis, who values the outward focus of her work as a doctor, experiences her family’s expectations as “a life sentence” (33). Nevertheless, she feels she cannot be the one to undo the family legacy, even at the cost of working with her abusive ex-boyfriend. Alexis says she was “[b]red, molded, groomed, and told from [her] earliest age that [she] was destined to work at Royaume Northwestern and [she] was not to take [her] husband’s name if [she] ever got married” (35). All she has known throughout her 37 years is that her purpose is to uphold her family legacy, and Alexis lets that control all of her major life choices.
Though she is quick to recognize the uncanny similarities between the Montgomery and Grant legacies, Alexis also notices the differences, particularly in regard to how much each legacy actually helps those outside of the family. Alexis feels as if any Montgomery could take her place, as she expected her brother Derek to, but notes that Daniel specifically must stay in Wakan for the town’s well-being:
He had to be here. And he had to be in that house. I knew in my soul that’s part of what gave him strength to do what he had to do. A Montgomery working in any other hospital would still be a Montgomery, but it weakened us, made our influence thinner. I had to be at Royaume, and he had to be within Grant House (221).
Additionally, while Daniel feels bound to uphold his family’s legacy, he does so of his own free will rather than being manipulated as Alexis is. With no family left, Daniel is not pressured into staying in Wakan or being the mayor, but when Alexis asks him what would happen if he were to leave, Daniel responds, “Why would I ever leave?” (128). Daniel’s work and place in Wakan is meaningful to him regardless of his family’s legacy, showing the significant difference between the Montgomery and Grant influences on Alexis and Daniel, respectively.
Cycles of Abuse
Various forms of physical, verbal, and emotional abuse appear throughout Part of Your World, and Jimenez highlights how pervasive abuse is in both the lives of the characters and in their broader communities. When Alexis opens up to her friend Jessica about Neil’s abuse, she says, “I should have known, right? [...] I know what abuse looks like. But I just thought it was different, you know? Someone hitting you, calling you names, yelling. I didn’t know it was like this” (88). This shows how effectively Neil’s abuse influenced Alexis’s mindset, how unrecognized emotional abuse can be, and how taboo the discussion of domestic abuse is even in the 21st century. Alexis is worried that Jessica and others won’t believe what she tells them not only because of Neil’s ability to charm everyone into believing he is a kind person but also because of society’s consistent unwillingness to believe women’s personal experiences. When Alexis talks with Liz, who is being abused by her husband, she makes a point of telling her, “I believe you. I can handle anything you need to tell me. You don’t need to protect me from the truth and I’m here to help you in any way I can. It’s not your fault. And you don’t deserve it” (228). Alexis notices the immediate affect her faith has on Liz’s feelings about the possibility of leaving Jake, implying that Liz has rarely received such support before. Through such interactions, the novel suggests the systemic nature of abuse, which silence and disbelief allow to persist and recur.
Jimenez also emphasizes the ways in which abuse can influence someone’s thoughts and behaviors even after the end of an abusive relationship. Months after breaking up with Neil, Alexis still gets up early to put on makeup for Daniel and is shocked when he does something as simple as tell her he cares about her. Even before Neil, the emotional abuse Alexis experienced from her father (and its enablement by her mother) primed Alexis to think of abuse as normal. Only toward the end of the novel does Alexis begin to realize this, saying of her mother that she “made [Alexis] a participant [in the abuse], reinforced this behavior by giving [Alexis’s] father what he wanted when he acted this way. […] Made [Alexis] believe that this was what love looked like” (294). Even as she begins to stand up to Neil and break the hold of his abuse, Alexis is still influenced by her parents’ abuse. Explaining her own situation as well as Liz’s to Daniel, Alexis says, “She has battered women’s syndrome. It’s a cycle of abuse, and it’s going to be very hard for her to break [...] If you force her into going, she’ll only come back, and when she comes back, it’ll be worse” (226). From her own experience, Alexis knows that Liz has to save herself in order to truly break that cycle. Because abuse erodes one’s sense of confidence and self-reliance, recovering from abuse must begin with an assertion of one’s own worth and independence; otherwise, the same pattern is likely to repeat in future relationships.
Grace and Privilege
Ideas of grace and privilege run through the novel, especially in the development of Alexis’s character. Jimenez explores what it means to have privilege and to recognize that, highlighting grace as the ability to be generous in spirit to others regardless of personal privilege. Recounting a story about a time he showed kindness instead of cruelty as the mayor of Wakan, Daniel tells Alexis, “Grace costs you nothing. My grandma used to say it. She especially liked to say it to herself when I was being a little shit” (101). Daniel puts this aphorism into practice several times, even when showing grace does cost him, figuratively or literally. When Alexis’s friends complain about their stay at the Grant House, Daniel shows them grace by refunding their stay, going above and beyond in his role as a proprietor.
Although Alexis is impressed by Daniel’s saying in and of itself, it is this experience at the bed-and-breakfast in particular that makes Alexis begin to recognize both her privilege and the saying’s true relevance. Thinking about how much her friends’ thoughtless act of leaving a negative review could impact Daniel, Alexis observes, “He was in the worst position to be generous, yet he was. And [Gabby] was in the best position to show grace, and she didn’t. And doing it would have cost her nothing” (145). This shows how disturbed she is by the unfair power dynamic and how much of a difference it would make for those with privilege to show grace.
The ideas of grace and privilege are connected with the practice of helping others, one of the things that is most important to both Alexis and Daniel. Aware of the inequity of the American healthcare system, Alexis sometimes treats patients in the ER in the waiting room or in a way she knows will be cost effective, seeing and responding to the need of others. In a further example of grace, after seeing how the citizens of Wakan are forced to handle their own health problems, Alexis ultimately uses her privilege to open a free clinic in Wakan. This costs her nothing and allows her to continue her family’s legacy at Royaume. In opening the clinic, Alexis recognizes a difference between how she and her family want to help others: Her motivation is true compassion, whereas they do so only to increase their status and wealth. By contrast, the town of Wakan as a whole has adopted the Grant motto in the way in which they take care of one another. Alexis is surprised when the community comes together to help new parents after she delivers the couple’s baby, recognizing that the residents show kindness despite how little time and money they have to give. The theme of grace and privilege is key to Alexis’s growth as a character and how she comes to reconcile herself to a new way of life.
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