Chapter 17 Summary and Analysis – All Fours by Miranda July
⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.
Summary
The narrator, having grown noticeably stronger from weightlifting, arranges to stay regularly at the Excelsior Motel. Skip gives her a free recurring Wednesday reservation. She films a sensual dance video in the motel parking lot and posts it online, hoping to summon Davey. When Davey does not respond, she learns from Audra—the antique-shop owner—that Davey and Claire moved to Sacramento two months earlier. Audra then recounts her two-year sexual affair with a teenaged Davey, which began after he discovered her erotic video. The two women end up having sex in the motel room. Afterward, the narrator walks through Monrovia, experiencing a liberating epiphany about continual surprise and intimacy. She returns to the room and reexamines an old motel painting she had hidden under the bed, noting a female figure sealed before a cave.
Key Events
- Brett and Scarlett praise the narrator’s lifting progress; she notices her own physical transformation.
- She tells Harris she will stay overnight at the Excelsior regularly to work; he agrees.
- Skip offers the room free of charge and sets up a recurring Wednesday reservation in her name.
- The narrator changes into Davey’s plaid shirt and films a dance video in the parking lot at night, posting it with the caption “rn.”
- She waits in the room for Davey to respond, refreshing her phone, but he never interacts with the post.
- After ninety minutes she walks through Monrovia, bargaining for any sign from him.
- She encounters Audra at an antique-mall wine-and-cheese event and asks for Davey’s address.
- Audra reveals that Davey and Claire moved to Sacramento two months ago and bought a house.
- The narrator collapses on a fainting couch; Audra takes her home for tea.
- Audra tells the story of how eighteen-year-old Davey discovered her erotic VHS tape and initiated a two-year affair.
- The narrator asks for explicit details; Audra instead produces the same black leather belt from the video.
- Audra narrates their first sexual encounter while the narrator masturbates; the two eventually have sex.
- Afterward, the narrator walks alone for miles, feeling unmoored and euphoric, reconsidering her life.
- She returns to the motel room, finds the belt left for her, and pulls out the old painting from under the bed.
- She interprets the painting—a woman sealed before a cave—as a cautionary image about missed opportunities.
Character Development
- The narrator: Shows increased physical strength and confidence. Her obsessive pursuit of Davey shifts when she learns he has left; she then undergoes a raw, unexpected sexual experience with Audra that forces her to confront her own fantasies and limitations. Her night walk marks a turning point toward embracing continual surprise over rigid longing.
- Audra: Initially appears as a pitiable older woman, but reveals herself to be sexually adventurous, candid, and wise. She refuses to be a mere source of erotic detail and instead pushes the narrator toward real experience. Her story reframes Davey’s past and challenges the narrator’s self-perception.
- Davey: Remains offstage but his absence is definitive. Audra’s account of his teenage affair with her adds complexity to his character—simultaneously vulnerable, predatory, and hungry for connection.
- Harris: Briefly appears; he accepts the narrator’s plan without resistance, highlighting the distance in their marriage.
Themes, Symbols, or Motifs
- The bowerbird nest: Audra compares the narrator’s decorated motel room to a bowerbird’s nest, a symbol of elaborate, obsessive courtship that may never attract a mate.
- The fork in the road: The narrator recalls Mary’s reference to rumspringa and reinterprets the choice not as Davey or bitterness, but as a life of longing versus a life of continual surprise.
- Aging female desire: Audra’s body and story challenge the narrator’s prejudices about older women. The chapter explores how women’s sexual fantasies can consume them unless they pursue lived experience, linking this to dementia and memory loss.
- The belt and the painting: The black leather belt is a tangible artifact of Audra and Davey’s affair, passed to the narrator as a token. The motel painting—an old woman sealed before a cave—becomes a cautionary portrait for women who fail to act boldly.
- Physical transformation: The narrator’s new muscular strength parallels her psychological readiness to break through old patterns; her deadlifts and dancing reflect a raw, liberated physicality.
Why This Chapter Matters
Chapter 17 is the emotional climax of the narrator’s Monrovia arc. Her plan to summon Davey fails utterly, yet the failure opens the door to an entirely unforeseen encounter with Audra. This night reshapes her understanding of intimacy, aging, and desire. The chapter crystallizes the novel’s central question—whether fantasies sustain or imprison—and offers a provisional answer: real, surprising experience is more nourishing than rehearsed longing. It also recontextualizes Davey, showing that he was shaped by an earlier, formative affair with an older woman, and that the narrator is not the first to fall under his spell. The painting under the bed serves as a mythic warning, one the narrator now has the chance to heed.
3 Study Questions and Answers
1. Why does the narrator decide to post the dance video, and how does she react when Davey does not respond? She believes the video will act like a ritual to summon him, thinking his attraction will compel him to come to the motel. When he fails to reply or appear, she gradually realizes her plan was naive; she then walks the streets bargaining for any sign, showing her desperation.
2. What does Audra’s story about her affair with a teenaged Davey reveal about his character and about the narrator’s own situation? It shows that Davey has a history of initiating intense, secretive relationships with older women, starting with Audra when he was eighteen. This mirrors the narrator’s experience and suggests that his pattern of desire is long-standing. It also forces the narrator to see herself not as unique but as part of a continuum.
3. How does the narrator’s perspective on older women and on her own life shift after her night with Audra? She realizes she had pitied Audra as a sad figure, but Audra is actually sexually active and content. This shatters the narrator’s age-based prejudices and opens her to the possibility of continual reinvention. She resolves to live a life of surprising intimacy rather than fantasy, gaining a new sense of freedom and time.