The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks

“She grew into her angular face, filled out her figure, and transformed from a homely child into a loaded potato.”

This metaphor compares Frankie’s physically maturity and attractiveness to a “loaded potato.” This comparison is intentionally comical and emphasizes how women are often objectified, reduced, or compared to something equally inane. Later, when Trish says that Alpha backed off when Matthew “got ahold” of Frankie, Frankie feels like a piece of meat. This metaphor shows how ridiculous and arbitrary such objectification is.

“When Frankie was five, her parents had divorced. Ruth found Senior dismissive of her intellectual capacities and personal endeavors.”

Senior grew tired of Ruth when she became less compliant, preferring someone who does not exercise her own intelligence or have her own goals. Similarly, Matthew rejects Frankie when she develops ambitions and goals of her own. Through the generations, the Old Boys and Bassets haven’t changed. By highlighting this, the novel demonstrates how deeply entrenched this kind of male privilege and thinking are.

“It’s not nepotism, it’s how the universe operates. People hire people they know, schools admit people they know—it’s natural. Frankie is forming loyalties—and people are forming loyalties to her.”

Considering that nepotism means favoritism based on kinship, nepotism is precisely what Senior describes here, though he denies it. By hiring from his closed circle, he contributes to a lack of diversity and a failure to accept groups and individuals who are different from him and his friends. The kind of loyalties Senior describes are precisely the relationships that reinforce and maintain male privilege.

“It is crucial […] to understand this: Frankie Landau-Banks was and still is, in many ways, an ordinary girl.”

The novel begins with Frankie’s thoughtful, reasonable, and well-informed letter of confession, showcasing her cleverness, meticulousness, and care. In order to understand just how significantly she changes in such a short time, the narrator assures readers that, just three or four months prior, Frankie lacked ambition and focus. This illuminates her dynamism and shows that anyone can undergo a similar transformation.

“Like the other students at Alabaster, Matthew wore none of his wealth on his back.”

Unlike poverty, which is much more difficult to disguise or escape, Alabaster students tend to enjoy so much financial and family privilege that they feel no need to demonstrate it. Matthew doesn’t flaunt his wealth, because he has no need to show others how privileged he is; this security and confidence is produced by his privilege and it also reinforces that privilege by making him likable and attractive to others.

“When Matthew hadn’t remembered her, Frankie had felt mildly pleased to have changed so radically that he didn’t even know she was the same girl; when Alpha hadn’t, she’d felt small. Just another girl he’d chatted up on the beach and then forgotten. But when Dean didn’t remember her, she got angry.”

Frankie is willing to overlook Matthew’s failure to remember her because she hopes it is evidence that she has transformed into the kind of girl he does notice. Alpha, however, had met her under very different circumstances—only two weeks prior and not at school, where he’d be surrounded by many new faces—so his apparent failure to remember Frankie makes her feel like she is forgettable. However, when Dean cannot seem to remember her, either, she begins to suspect that there is something else going on: This “forgetting” is actually a power play to unsettle her, allowing the boys to retain the upper hand in their power dynamic. It signals that she’s not important enough to remember and that she is not their social equal.

“The boys mounted the stairs, making noise in the library like they owned it.”

The Bassets act behave with such security and confidence that their behavior is compared, via simile, to that of individuals who actually own the place. Though they break no laws by being noisy in a library, they do break a social rule that mandates quiet in this space. In choosing to disregard this standard of conduct, they demonstrate their privilege and certainty of escaping negative consequences.

“[Senior] and his friends seemed to want Frankie and Zada to know the society existed—and that they’d been members; but they didn’t want to answer any direct questions.”

The men believe that secrets are more powerful when people know they exist. If others don’t know they are being excluded from a club, then inclusion in the club carries less weight. The privilege and cultural authority afforded to the Old Boys and Bassets only exist because the rest of the culture understands that there are the select few—the “elect”—who enjoy it. They gain their power through exclusion.

“What could she say that was most likely to get her where she wanted to be? Her synapses went into a series of calculations and evaluations.”

Frankie goes from a state of childlike naivety to the kind of person who strategizes during nearly every social interaction, especially when those interactions involve boys. She weighs her response options, especially when things don’t go her way, assessing the effect each response would have on her power, relative to the other person in the relationship. This behavior shows how quickly her mind moves and how focused she is on maintaining or increasing her power. She shares this quality with Alpha, who is not wealthy and is therefore insecure about his status, but not with Matthew, who doesn’t need to engage in power struggles to acquire and keep his privilege.

“Frankie was very happy. Her favorite quality of Matthew’s was his seeming immunity to embarrassment.”

Frankie enjoys having a charismatic, popular, and attractive boyfriend. This is her social reward for appearing to embody the qualities he and the other boys deem desirable in a young woman: physical beauty and helplessness. Frankie enjoys being around Matthew because he embodies the qualities that are often considered desirable in young men: confidence, self-assurance, handsomeness, and athleticism. His “immunity to embarrassment” is an effect of his privilege, and though this doesn’t make it less attractive to Frankie, it problematizes her enjoyment of it. When she enjoys the effects of Matthew’s privilege, she reinforces the institutions that confer it, and they are responsible for the social expectation that she be adorable and helpless.

“This chronicle is an attempt to mark out the contributing elements in Frankie Landau-Banks’s character. What led her to do what she did: things she would later view with a curious mixture of hubris and regret.”

The narrator is self-aware, often speaking in the first person or drawing attention to the nature of the text in lines like this, though they never reveal their own identity or relationship to Frankie. Their knowledge of Frankie’s private thoughts and feelings reveals the extent of her ambivalence. Though she is quite proud of her “projects,” she also recognizes that she cannot be fully accepted by a community she actively criticizes, and she finds this painful.

“She could see immediately that being shrill or needy was the fastest way to lose her place among them. She was not only worried about losing her boyfriend’s affection. She was worried about losing her status with his friends. Matthew had made Frankie feel delible.”

While privileged young men like Matthew find the quality of helplessness attractive in young women, they are put off when young women are “shrill or needy.” This is because these behaviors demand action or attention, but the young men prefer giving their attention on their own terms—they do not like being coerced into it. Frankie realizes that she should seem helpless, but in a cute, nonthreatening way. Matthew’s behavior when she risks appearing needy makes her feel “delible”—meaning expendable or forgettable—which is the neglected positive of “indelible.” However, the narrator’s choice to use the subversive neglected positive, even when showing the value Frankie places on maintaining her status, foreshadows Frankie’s eventual choice to prioritize subversion over acceptance.

“Matthew never took off his glasses unless he was kissing her.”

Matthew’s glasses represent the image he presents to the world, and since he keeps them on through most of his interactions with Frankie, he remains guarded with her. The only time he allows himself to be vulnerable is when he kisses her. Matthew’s reluctance to expose his vulnerabilities to Frankie at other times indicate his need for power and control in their relationship.

“Ordinary, pleasant Bess must be prettier, more charming, more experienced, smarter than Frankie—or Porter wouldn’t have cheated. It didn’t matter that Bess hadn’t become Porter’s girlfriend after the incident. It didn’t matter that in her heart Frankie knew she was smart and charming. What mattered was that feeling of being expendable.”

When Porter cheated on Frankie with Bess, Frankie’s internalized misogyny encourages her to find fault with herself rather than blame him for his unfaithfulness and deception. Society encourages her to consider how she falls short and not to hold Porter—a good-looking, white, affluent, well-connected young man—accountable. This demonstrates The Influence of Covert Misogyny on Female Identity.

“The Loyal Order was important because the true agenda of the club […] was that it allowed them—they whose position in the world was so completely central—to experience the thrill of rebellion, a glimmer of unconventionality, and plain old naughtiness without risk. It let them play at being bad.”

Just as Alpha enjoys minor rule infractions—like walking on the grass when a sign says not to—he and the other boys never challenge authority in more significant ways, because they have a stake in maintaining the status quo. Alpha and the other Bassets benefit from a culture in which males are privileged. While they get a thrill from rebelling against authority, on some level, they recognize that they will eventually become that cultural authority, and it promotes their success.

“She was thinking how easy it would be for the same thing to happen to her.”

When Dean breaks up with Star, his circle immediately ostracizes her. Frankie realizes that she would be subject to the same treatment if Matthew broke up with her. She feels expendable, as there are always girls who are ready to line up for a date with Matthew. Additionally, she knows that his loyalties to the other boys in the group will overwhelm any affection he feels for her. Their relationship highlights The Impact of Patriarchal Privilege on Interpersonal Dynamics.

“When I act the way I acted, Matthew doesn’t like me as much as he does when I fall off my bicycle.”

Frankie recognizes that Matthew prefers her when she needs his help rather than when she behaves independently or boldly. When she behaves in ways he finds unattractive, he clearly indicates his displeasure or disapproval. This quote illuminates The Impact of Patriarchal Privilege on Interpersonal Dynamics.

“And because of her sex, because of her age, because (perhaps) of her religion and her feminism, she could sit at their table every day and she would never, never, ever get in.”

Frankie’s femaleness, youth, Jewishness, and political subversiveness marginalize her at Alabaster, which is a conservative patriarchal institution founded and funded by “Old Boys.” As she comes up against these barriers, she recognizes The Inflexibility of Unwritten Social Rules About Female Conduct.

“It feels good to be disobedient, don’t you think?”

For Alpha, minor infractions like walking in the grass on the quad “[feel] good” because the action feels rebellious, though the stakes of this rebellion are so low and it doesn’t threaten to upset any hierarchies. To Frankie, this action feels pointless because there is no goal except the small thrill of doing something one isn’t supposed to do. She wants to enact rebellions that have a point and change the social order. Because Alpha’s disobedience doesn’t threaten his privilege, he thinks it’s fun. Frankie’s disobedience, on the other hand, risks her limited social power, and so it feels less fun.

“If everyone’s off the path […] then isn’t it an illusion? Like they all think they’re nocuous rebels, but really they just spent a lot on the same car all their neighbors spent a lot on?”

Frankie understands Alpha’s point that most people like to appear like nonconformists, but she realizes something he doesn’t: If everyone breaks the same rules, then there’s nothing particularly brave or rebellious about it. She suggests that most people are followers, not leaders, even when it comes to breaking the rules.

“Hey there, psychopath, Some of the dogs are asking me why I’m hassling the administration. A line of stuffed animals is one thing, but when you start messing with the choir teachers, you’re going to end up with enemies. I don’t want to take the flack for this.”

Alpha is uncomfortable with the growing criticism of and disruption caused by Frankie’s pranks. He was happy to take the credit for pranks that were amusing, but he is nervous that pranks that disrupt the running of the school will subject him and the Order to the administration’s ire. He knows that while most of the privileged students will be fine, Alpha’s own financial instability and reliance on scholarship make him vulnerable in a way they are not.

“She was explaining this whole prank to him, the prank he’d actually carried out, and instead of listening to her point, he was correcting her grammar. ‘You’re thinking too much,’ he had said. What? He didn’t want her to think? What was the point of doing any of these pranks if people weren’t going to think about them?”

Frankie is disappointed when Matthew and the other students fail to think about the purpose of the pranks she plans. To her, they are ways to thumb their noses at the school’s patriarchal values, to emphasize the gender disparity in the school’s administration, and call for changes that balance inequities on campus. To other students, however, they are just pranks, suggested by Matthew’s claim that Frankie is “thinking too much.”

“I remember that you made Matthew and everyone—the whole school, even—think I was a genius. That I was the guy I’d like to be. The guy I’m not, really.”

Alpha’s admission that he took credit for the pranks because they helped to cement his privilege and reputation—which are somewhat tenuous—helps to explain why he admires and dislikes Frankie. Her control of the Bassets shows that there’s nothing objectively “male” about leadership, organization, or cleverness. Frankie’s actions threaten to shift the power dynamic that maintains what privilege Alpha does have, making her especially dangerous to him.