The Other Woman

Jones transforms parties and events meant as celebrations into angst-filled societal obligations, a motif symbolizing dread instead of excitement. Pammie’s medical trauma overshadows Adam’s proposal, the first of many ceremonies to deteriorate for Emily: “I smiled through my tears, desperately trying to remember the moment he’d proposed, the moment that I’d spent years dreaming about. As a child, I’d imagined my prince going down on one knee…” (79). Emily establishes the expectations for joy and exhilaration she previously held while envisioning a proposal. The fact that Emily can’t even remember the moment Adam proposes indicates how this important event has transformed into a meaningless moment overshadowed by other drama. Emily loses a small part of herself in trying to recover from her ruined proposal, and she becomes warier of her expectations for future events.

Emily naively hopes her final dress fitting will be a special event, but she approaches the event with more caution than she approached her hen do. However, Pammie also manages to ruin this special occasion, and Emily recognizes, “On what was supposed to be a special day, relaxed and easy, my chest was already tight, a coiled spring of anxiety” (152). Even though Emily knows Pammie will try to sabotage her dress fitting, she still feels defeated and unhappy when the day is ruined. Emily tried to prevent Pammie from attending this event, knowing Pammie would find a way to hurt her. Emily’s lack of control over these special occasions directly reflects Pammie and Adam’s power over Emily, also causing her harm.

When Emily plans Poppy’s christening, special occasions fully come to symbolize trepidation and dejection. She notes, “I worked myself into a frenzy about seeing Pammie, James, and, for some reason or another, Kate” (274). Although these celebrations are meant to embody the coming together of friends and family for a joint cause, special events in The Other Woman grow to symbolize isolation and detachment. Adam and Emily’s relationship becomes more toxic and abusive as they progress through the ceremonial events typically associated with wedding preparations and the birth of a baby.

Adam repeatedly bursts through closed and locked doors while disrupting Emily and making a loud, chaotic scene, symbolizes Adam’s disrespect of other people’s boundaries. Arriving at Pammie’s house for Boxing Day tea, Emily observes, “The white wooden door swung open before I’d even turned my lights off, and Adam’s bulk filled the porch, his cold breath billowing, at odds with the warmth of the light that spilled out from the hall behind him” (45-46). Adam loudly establishes his presence in all settings, particularly when he enters rooms with his overbearing presence. In doing so, Adam establishes his character as aggressive and egocentric. His lack of concern for other people’s personal space indicates his general lack of empathy.

Adam’s domineering entrance into rooms becomes more obvious with a baby present in his and Emily’s apartment. Emily recounts Adam’s behavior after he arrives home from a night out drinking:

[He] got home just after three o’clock in the morning and made such a racket that he woke Poppy up, who then cried solidly until her next feed. “Thanks a lot,” I spat, as I rocked her back and forth, pacing the bedroom. He belched, grunted, and rolled onto his back (246).

Adam’s disrespect of boundaries transfers into his ability to co-parent Poppy. He neglects and disrespects Emily, who is still recovering from childbirth while taking on the bulk of Poppy’s care. Adam continues disregarding Emily’s wants and needs while putting his desires first. At the novel’s conclusion, Adam nearly breaks down the apartment door, intending to abuse Emily physically. He shows a complete disregard for Emily’s life as he barrels through the threshold of their shared apartment.

Photographs and picture-taking symbolize the limited truth a single, posed moment in time reveals about a person or couple. When Pammie excludes Emily from the family photo at Adam’s birthday party, Emily “tried to smile, to pretend that I would never have expected to be in the ‘family’ photo. After all, I reasoned, I wasn’t family, so it was no big deal. Except it was, and it really hurt” (73). Adam’s photo with his family will undoubtedly portray a happy, smiling group. In truth, it will not capture Emily’s hurt or Pammie’s medical episode that occurs later in the evening. Knowing he will propose marriage to her in a few short hours, Adam still leaves Emily out of this photo. Emily feels hurt from being excluded, knowing how lasting photographs can be. She wants to have her spot in the big picture of Adam’s life. Adam later dismisses Emily’s hurt feelings, demonstrating how little he cares for her.

Pammie’s photographs also represent how the dynamics of a relationship cannot be discerned from a single image. Emily looks at old pictures of Pammie and Jim “clearly in the first throes of love, gazing adoringly at each other, while others around them could only look on” (197). Emily assumes that Pammie and Jim shared a strong, loving, albeit traditional marriage. Only after Poppy is born does Emily learn about Jim’s physical abuse. In Pammie’s photo with her late husband, the other people in the photo are looking away from the couple, representing that the couple’s friends and family couldn’t “see” the truth about their relationship. Outsiders can’t see and understand the complete picture of another couple’s relationship; only the people in the relationship can truly know what goes on between them.