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On Beauty and Being Wrong: Chapter 12
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in On Beauty, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Nature of Beauty
Politics in Academia
Race and Identity
The Value of Family
Summary
Analysis
Time passes. In August, Jerome gives Howard a letter from the bank that he says Howard needs to sign it to separate his bank account from Kiki’s. Howard and Kiki are separated, although Howard claims it’s just temporary. The house has been full of stinking food ever since two weeks ago when Howard let Monique go to save on expenses.
The story skips forward a few months. This chapter shows how in just a short period of time without Kiki, Howard’s life has begun to fall apart, and he might even be on track to end up alone, like his father.
Themes
There’s an apple tree in the backyard, and Howard has been learning every possible apple recipe he can think of, but some still go to waste. He has more free time because he’s on a forced sabbatical. As Levi walks by, Howard offers him his allowance, then he complains that Kiki probably already paid Levi with money she got from Howard. Levi tells Howard he can keep the money if it means Howard will just be quiet.
Howard has devoted so much of his life to academia that he doesn’t know how to take a break, and his obsession with new apple recipes provides a hint about how he has struggled to find ways to fill his time. Rather than try to stay connected with his remaining family members, Howard instead lashes out at Levi unnecessarily about money, further alienating him from his children.
Themes
Levi, Jerome, and Zora have all been instructed not to tell Howard where Kiki lives now. The children speculate about what Kiki will do with the Hyppolite painting—whether she will keep it, sell it and keep the proceeds, or sell it and donate the money.
The fact that the children have all agreed on a promise for Kiki’s sake suggests that, even more so than after the previous affair, they have taken a side and blame Howard for the separation.
Themes
Zora tells Howard he needs to get dressed for his big day. He is giving an important lecture that people are coming from other universities to hear, and Smith emailed Howard earlier to say this is his big chance to get tenure. Howard has gone without tenure at Wellington for 10 years and feels that if he doesn’t get it soon, he’ll have to move on to a new university.
In spite of his many failures over the course of the novel, Howard nevertheless has one last chance to turn his career—and his life—around. This suggests that Howard has privilege, and while it’s difficult for him to advance his career, he also has a lot of leeway to make mistakes and redeem himself.
Themes
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Howard knows that Zora could have gotten both him and Monty fired. Instead, she got Howard to take a sabbatical for a semester and got Monty to give up his campaign against discretionary students. Zora herself dropped Claire’s class, hoping it might allow Carl to stay, but he also dropped the class and disappeared from Wellington.
And so, after so much talk from opposing sides about radical change on campus, everything mostly returns to the status quo. Even the career-focused Zora feels too guilty to capitalize on her success, perhaps because she knows that she didn’t truly succeed and in the end campus politics drove Carl out of the college without the administration having to explicitly ban him.
Themes
Howard offers Zora, Levi, and Jerome a lift into town, but they all refuse him, so he heads over to his lecture alone. On the way, Howard calls Smith on his new cell phone. Smith greets him calmly, but Howard knows he’s going to be very late because he took a long time to find the car keys earlier. Howard tells Smith where he is, and Smith tells the crowd Howard will be there in 20 minutes. Howard arrives in 30 minutes.
The way all the Belsey children refuse to accept a ride from Howard shows how they are determined to try to get along without him. Howard himself was foolish to offer them rides when he himself was running so late for his lecture—it seems as if Howard is self-sabotaging, perhaps as a way to punish himself for all his mistakes.
Themes
Howard quit smoking after Kiki left, but he’s still winded by the time he gets out of his car and runs to see Smith. Smith assures Howard that the PowerPoint is ready to go and that lots of important people are in the crowd, including Claire, Erskine, and Dean French and his family. Howard is nervous because he’s late and because he’s afraid people see him as irrelevant since he’s on sabbatical and still hasn’t set a publication date for his Rembrandt book.
Howard’s struggle to run is a sign of how his age is catching up with him. Like nearly all of the adult characters in the novel, his big fear is his own irrelevance, but as much as he would like to blame this on the younger generation, his own stalling on his Rembrandt book is also an important cause of this.
Themes
As Howard apologizes for the delay and starts his talk, he realizes he left an important folder in the backseat of his car. He turns down the lights and begins the PowerPoint, noticing Kiki sitting up in the sixth row. He begins to silently press a button to flip through slides of pictures by Rembrandt without saying anything. The audience is confused, except Kiki, who is looking down and smiling.
Kiki’s appearance in the audience and her smile are both ambiguous. Howard clearly seems to believe that Kiki is there to support him in spite of everything he’s done wrong. While it’s entirely possible that is true, particularly given how Kiki has forgiven Howard in the past, it’s also possible that Kiki is there to witness what she believes will be Howard’s downfall and that she is smiling at him rather than with him. During his big presentation, Howard can’t say a word, emphasizing how even after making mistakes and realizing it, his character remains unable to say things when it’s most important.
Themes
Howard stops on a picture called Hendrickje Bathing. It’s a picture of Rembrandt’s lover wading into water. Howard and Kiki make silent eye contact. Howard makes the picture on the slide bigger. He looks back at Kiki—she’s still smiling, although eventually she looks away. Howard keeps zooming in on the picture until it’s close enough to see the blue of the woman’s veins.
Hendrickje Bathing is a real painting, and the fact that it depicts Rembrandt’s lover makes Howard naturally consider Kiki. The novel ends ambiguously and does not offer any definitive resolution about Howard and Kiki’s relationship. What is clear is that Howard, who famously never much cared for paintings of humans, seems to notice something in this Rembrandt painting that he never noticed before. This is potentially a problem, since Howard has dedicated his life to a book about Rembrandt’s shortcomings as a painter, and now Howard seems to finally be appreciating one of Rembrandt’s paintings. Perhaps this leads to an epiphany, or perhaps it's just to another blip in Howard’s life before he returns to his old ways.
Themes
