The Eights by Joanna Miller: Questions and Answers
1. Why does Otto destroy the Ouija board in Chapter 13, and what does the word “coward” mean to her?
Otto burns the board after the planchette spells C-O-W-A-R-D and Marianne begins crying. She then reveals she failed her VAD nursing probation and was reassigned to driving, claiming the word for herself. Beatrice argues “coward” is a weapon of war, and Dora agrees.
Evidence context: The séance in Otto’s room—candles, a covered mirror, Elgar’s music, claret from her father—turns dark when the planchette spells “coward.” Otto’s confession connects to Chapter 14, where her VAD probation at the Third Southern General Hospital ends in “mental collapse” and failure. She is reassigned to chauffeuring doctors, becoming the “Red Baroness.”
Interpretation: By claiming the word for herself, Otto refuses to let it be used as a weapon against her or Marianne. The burning of the board is both destruction of a dangerous object and an act of self-naming.
2. What chain of events leads to Dora’s rustication in Chapter 22?
Miss Jourdain summons Dora to discuss her second failed Responsion, listing further complaints: missed Divvers coaching, poor behavior at the Ashmolean, unorthodox conduct at a Sheldonian lecture, an unauthorized evening outing to the Covered Market, and alcohol on college premises. Rustication is pending a Responsion resit.
Evidence context: The Ashmolean incident in Chapter 21 involved Dora kissing another man forcefully and fleeing sobbing after seeing Charles Baker at the piano. The Sheldonian incident in Chapter 16 saw her forcibly removed and sedated after raving about the Ouija board. Miss Finch defends Dora’s Old English work, but it is not enough.
Interpretation: Dora’s rustication is the institutional response to grief that has no sanctioned outlet. Her “poor behavior” is really the visible symptom of unresolved war trauma—Charles’s deception, George’s death, and her own guilt.
More on Dora Greenwood
3. How does Marianne’s confession to Otto in Chapter 31 transform their friendship?
Marianne confesses she had a child with Thomas Ward after an encounter on Armistice night, married him, and he died two days later. She gave birth to Constance Olive Ward on August 8, 1919, and believes her daughter spoke to her through the Ouija board. Otto becomes her confidante.
Evidence context: The confession happens on the grass after Otto returns drunk from Summer Eights. Marianne has been avoiding Otto, and her anxiety is explained by this secret. The Ouija board connection links back to Chapter 13, where Marianne received a message and retched.
Interpretation: This confession is the moment Marianne’s carefully constructed identity cracks. Otto, who has her own secrets (the failed VAD probation), becomes the friend who can hold Marianne’s truth without judgment.
4. What does the suffragette penny symbolize for Beatrice across the novel?
Elizabeth Rix gives Beatrice a suffragette penny in Chapter 19, telling her persistence is the key to change. Beatrice presses the coin to her lips and feels she matters. In Chapter 3, during matriculation, she checks her lucky penny—the same talisman.
Evidence context: The penny appears at two key moments: the historic matriculation day and the moment Beatrice receives it from Miss Rix in 1918. Miss Rix says “Persistence and ingenuity” as she leaves. The penny connects Beatrice’s suffragette inheritance to her own path.
Interpretation: The penny is a physical link between the older generation of suffragettes and the new generation of women undergraduates. It is Beatrice’s private talisman of worth—something her mother never gave her.
5. How do the epigraph quotations about change and cowardice frame the novel’s central conflicts?
Lucretia Mott’s words about change shaking privilege and Thomas Fuller’s observation about cowards needing courage frame both the institutional battle for women’s education and the personal battles each woman faces. The word “coward” recurs—Otto claims it, Dora shouts it at Charles.
Evidence context: The epigraph stands alone as Chapter 1. The opposition to women’s matriculation appears in the Oxford Times article (Chapter 2) with the don’s black armband. Otto claims “coward” in Chapter 13; Dora shouts “Coward!” at Charles in Chapter 18.
Interpretation: The novel’s two epigraphs are not decorative—they name the twin forces the Eights must navigate: external opposition to change and internal questions of courage. Every character must decide what cowardice and courage actually mean.
Explore the theme of intellectual legitimacy
6. Why does Charles Baker let Dora believe he is dead, and how does his explanation land?
Charles explains in Chapter 30 that wartime survival required cutting emotional ties—he burned her photograph and letters, felt ambushed at their reunion, and plans to leave for Cambridge. He thought it kinder to remain dead after asking a friend to send the letter ending their engagement.
Evidence context: In Chapter 18, Charles admits he survived, was released in 1919, spent time in Florence, and asked a friend to send the letter while drinking rum—the friend died the next day. Dora confronts him about three years of mourning and threatens to report him.
Interpretation: Charles’s explanation is self-serving but also reveals the war’s capacity to make people unrecognizable to themselves. Dora’s refusal to accept it—and her shout of “Coward!”—is her reclaiming of agency.
Explore the theme of war’s psychological impact
7. How does the novel contrast the women’s and men’s matriculation ceremonies in Chapter 3?
The women attend a short Latin ceremony in the Divinity School with its fan-vaulted ceiling, while the men undergo theirs separately at the Sheldonian. The women pose for photographs afterward and receive congratulations; an elderly woman remarks they have waited sixty years for this moment.
Evidence context: The Oxford Times article in Chapter 2 announces the historic first. The women process through Oxford in the “crocodile” formation, facing Balliol freshmen who mock them with a megaphone. Otto bluffs about knowing the Master of Balliol.
Interpretation: The physical separation of ceremonies mirrors the institutional separation of the sexes. Yet the women’s ceremony carries more weight—it is the culmination of sixty years of struggle, witnessed by those who fought for it.
Explore the theme of tradition versus modernity
8. What is the source of tension between Beatrice and her mother Edith Sparks?
Edith is a formidable public figure who dismisses Beatrice’s private distress. After the 1912 rally assault, Edith says Beatrice was a burden. Beatrice never speaks of the incident. At Oxford, Beatrice seeks her mother’s approbation less and less.
Evidence context: In Chapter 7, thirteen-year-old Beatrice is assaulted at the suffrage rally after being separated from her mother and Miss Davison. Her mother dismisses her distress. In Chapter 33, at the Union debate, Beatrice notes she has sought her mother’s approbation less since arriving at Oxford.
Interpretation: Edith’s public activism and private neglect create a wound Beatrice carries silently. The suffragette penny from Miss Rix becomes a substitute for maternal recognition.
9. How does Marianne’s secret—her daughter Connie—connect to the novel’s ending?
Marianne reveals she has a two-year-old daughter, Constance, in Chapter 35 when the friends drive to Culham to tell her about her scholarship. Henry is present. Miss Jourdain knew and swore everyone to secrecy. Otto declares herself unofficial aunt.
Evidence context: Chapter 36 details Connie’s birth in August 1919, Marianne’s insistence on feeding her herself, and the plan to apply under her maiden name. Marianne returns to Culham fortnightly on the pretext that her father is unwell, removing her wedding ring.
Interpretation: Marianne’s secret is the novel’s most carefully guarded one. Her scholarship and her daughter represent two lives she has managed to hold together through deception—and the ending suggests her friends will help her keep both.
10. What happens to Beatrice at the 1912 suffrage rally, and why does she never speak of it?
Thirteen-year-old Beatrice is separated from her mother and Miss Davison during the rally at Martyrs’ Memorial. A man assaults her, kissing and groping her. Afterward, her mother dismisses her distress, saying she was a burden. Beatrice never speaks of the incident.
Evidence context: Chapter 7 shows the rally with Sylvia Pankhurst, Dorothy Pethick, and Maude Royden speaking. Miss Davison pins a rosette on Beatrice. Students from Balliol disrupt with music and sugar cubes; stones are thrown. Beatrice is pulled into a taxicab with her mother and Miss Davison.
Interpretation: The assault is doubly wounding—the violation itself and her mother’s refusal to acknowledge it. Beatrice’s silence is a survival strategy, but it also shapes her relationship to activism and to her own body.
Explore the theme of secrecy as strategy
11. What does the number eight motif signify throughout the novel?
The four friends discover their first names each contain eight letters in Chapter 4. Otto’s room is on Corridor Eight. Marianne’s daughter Constance is born on August 8, 1919. The motif recurs at key moments of connection and identity.
Evidence context: The name discovery happens in Otto’s room after dinner. The corridor assignment comes in Chapter 1. Constance’s birth date is given in Chapter 31. The motif also appears in the Summer Eights rowing event in Chapter 31.
Interpretation: The number eight becomes a private code for the friendship—a way of marking belonging. It also connects the women to the rowing eights and to the cyclical nature of their lives.
More on the Eights’ friendship
12. Why does Marianne initially resolve to leave Oxford in Chapter 3, and what changes her mind?
Marianne feels ill and homesick in a café washroom and resolves to leave that afternoon. But she returns to the table where Dora, Otto, and Beatrice are having tea. Otto recognizes the waitress Betty, and the group walks together to the Bodleian and the Divinity School.
Evidence context: Marianne holds an exhibition of twenty pounds a year and thinks about her father and the lies she has told. The tea room becomes a refuge. Otto insists on taking Marianne for tea after the Balliol incident.
Interpretation: The decision to stay is made collectively, not individually. The friendship that forms over tea is what keeps Marianne at Oxford—and it is the same friendship that will eventually hold her secret.
13. What leads to Otto’s failed VAD probation in 1918?
Otto works as a VAD probationer at the Third Southern General Hospital, performing menial tasks poorly and loathing the work. She suffers nightmares and insomnia, barely eats, receives a warning in her fifth week, faints in her sixth, and is put on indefinite sick leave for “mental collapse.”
Evidence context: Chapter 14 details the sluice work, the sister’s berating, the lurid dreams of maggots and offal. She fails her probation—“an achievement so rare, it has not happened at the hospital before.” She is reassigned to driving, where she becomes the “Red Baroness.”
Interpretation: Otto’s failure is a wound she carries into Oxford. Her claim on the word “coward” in Chapter 13 is an act of reclamation—she names her own failure before anyone else can.
Explore the theme of war’s psychological impact
14. How does Dora’s relationship with Charles Baker finally end?
Charles proposes to Dora with his mother’s ring in Chapter 34, but she refuses, explaining she is already engaged to someone else. She has decided she can never marry him—the truth would unravel between them. Frank Collingham has proposed, and she has not answered.
Evidence context: In Chapter 35, Dora tells her friends about Frank’s proposal. She reflects that since the balloon ride, she has believed Charles leaving is for the best. She feels justified in deceiving him—it was only a half lie.
Interpretation: Dora’s refusal is a choice for self-determination over romantic delusion. She has spent three years mourning a man who chose to stay dead; her engagement to Frank is a commitment to the living.
More on Dora Greenwood
15. What is the significance of Marianne’s locket?
Marianne carries a locket containing a lock of Connie’s hair. In Chapter 6, Maud enters Marianne’s room but the locket remains untouched. In Chapter 36, Connie fishes the locket from Marianne’s blouse and sucks on it. The locket connects Marianne’s secret life to her Oxford identity.
Evidence context: The locket appears at moments of surveillance and secrecy. Eleanor Jourdain remembers Constance wearing the locket the day she was married. Marianne’s mother-in-law Olive helps care for Connie while Marianne studies.
Interpretation: The locket is a physical secret—a piece of Connie that Marianne carries into a world that must not know she exists. It is also a link to her mother, who died in childbirth, and to the maternal line she is continuing.