Educated: A Memoir Summary and Analysis

Section Five Summary: Pulled in Two Directions (Chapters 30–34)

Now 21, Tara starts her graduate studies at Trinity College, Cambridge. She continues to feel awkward around her peers, but makes an effort to try new things. Despite having been told all her life that feminism is evil, Tara reads foundational feminist texts and finds comfort in the work of the philosopher John Stuart Mill, who refused to assign any specific definition to womanhood.

While Tara is back at Buck’s Peak for Christmas, Shawn’s wife Emily shows up distraught and barefoot after Shawn throws her out of the house for buying the wrong brand of crackers for their infant son. Emily asks for help, but Tara’s parents send her back to Shawn. Soon after she returns to England, Tara receives an email from her sister Audrey, who has decided to confront Shawn about his violent behavior. Faye reaches out to Tara to apologize for not having protected her and promises that she and Gene will deal with Shawn, which makes Tara feel closer to Faye than ever before.

Over the next year, Tara decides to write her thesis on Mormonism as a 19th-century intellectual movement and also starts dating her former BYU classmate Drew, who joins her at Cambridge for graduate school. When Tara returns to Buck’s Peak, it becomes clear that her mother has lied about dealing with Shawn, who threatens to kill Audrey. When Tara tries to confront her parents, they call Shawn, who shows up and threatens Tara with a bloody knife he has just used to violently kill his dog. Although Tara’s parents witness this, they side with Shawn.

Section Five Analysis: Pulled in Two Directions (Chapters 30–34)

In Chapter 30, Tara emphasizes two transformative quotations that she first encountered at the beginning of graduate school. The first, “Emancipate yourself from mental slavery / None but ourselves can free our own minds,” is a snippet of Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song,” which her college friend Drew emails to her. After learning about Marley’s life and death (ironically, from a curable form of cancer for which he refused medical treatment), Tara decides to take her health into her own hands and receives vaccinations for the first time. The second quotation, “Of the nature of women, nothing final can be known,” comes from the work of the 19th-century philosopher John Stuart Mill, whom Tara reads after finding twentieth-century feminist writers beyond her understanding. Mill’s words are a stark contrast to what Tara has been taught about women her entire life, which is that women who refuse to adhere to very strict behavioral guidelines are defective in some way. Tara is now able to accept herself, even if her family can’t.

Although Tara is able to make great personal strides in England, her family life remains volatile. On Tara’s visits home over holidays, it becomes clear that Shawn has been abusing Emily, and Tara finds herself unable to speak up in Emily’s defense. When Audrey and Faye both express a desire to put a stop to Shawn’s behavior, Tara naively lets herself think that the family’s damage is repairable. She is proven wrong the following Christmas break when it becomes clear that Faye is willing to lie to keep the peace and that Gene will always side with Shawn over Tara and Audrey.