The Female Persuasion: Chapter 10 Summary & Analysis

Three and a half years after leaving Teach and Reach, Zee Eisenstat is now working as a crisis response counselor. When she first became interested in trauma, she took a course called Assessing the Nature of Emergency, and since then, she has dedicated her life to being there during “acute, terrible” moments in other people’s lives. Zee has found that the worse the crisis is, the better she can focus—she never crumples or balks in the face of trauma or pain.

Zee’s job takes her all over Chicago, as she visits people at their homes in the wake of a crisis or a shock—a suicide, a hostage situation, a bout of psychosis. Zee is “uncommonly skilled” at her job and often hears from the people or families she has helped months after her visits to them. Zee has become influential and valued in the trauma community and has even had her work cited in the International Journal of Traumatology. Zee is a “legitimate expert”—she runs her own trauma team and is doing a certificate program in a new post-traumatic stress management method.

One day, Greer calls, and announces that she has quit her job. She tells Zee that things with Faith ended badly, and that “a lot of shit went down.” Greer cries to Zee, telling her that for a long time she thought she was part of something “real and honest” at Loci, but has been devastated to learn that the organization is flawed and hypocritical. Zee invites Greer to come to Chicago for a little while to stay with her and Noelle, who live in a young part of town with a “significant lesbian population.” Noelle is now the principal of the Learning Octagon school, and the two of them have made a life together that feels safe and fulfilling for them both.

The next day, Greer rings the bell at Zee’s apartment, and Zee lets her in. Zee is prepared to help Greer sort through her situation in the same way that Zee helps her trauma victims. Zee sits Greer down on the couch and pours her a large of cold water—something that always helps her patients connect back to their bodies and remember that there are still tiny things they can do. Zee urges Greer to open up to her, and Greer begins telling her the “long and convoluted story” about the rescue of the Ecuadorian women and the botched mentorship program. 

At the end of the story, however, Greer is still visibly tense and upset, and confesses that there is “something else” she has to tell Zee. She takes a deep breath and tells Zee that she never gave Faith the letter. Zee has trouble understanding or remembering, but Greer explains that she never gave Faith the letter that Zee wrote four years ago, asking for a job at Loci. Zee realizes that Greer was lying when she claimed that there were no positions available at the company, and Zee is taken by surprise as she realizes that Greer is a liar. She thinks of how her patients are always surprised by grief, and now she is also shocked nearly to the point of trauma.

Greer continues apologizing and laments the fact that for all her possessiveness about Loci, the foundation ultimately didn’t do anything close to the important work that Zee is doing now. Zee asks Greer why she betrayed her—after all, Zee was the one who “led [Greer] into everything,” and introduced her to who Faith Frank was. Greer confesses that she was so desperate for someone to see something special in her that she threw Zee under the bus.

Allowing Greer to sit in her own shame, Zee reflects on how she had gotten over her disappointment about not being able to join Loci four long years ago. In the time since, she has built a life for herself that she knows Faith would approve of—she does work that matters and often works one-on-one with disenfranchised or traumatized women.

Zee suddenly feels exhausted by her friendship with Greer and wishes that Greer was not staying on Zee’s sofa bed for the weekend. Greer takes Zee’s hands “like a desperate suitor” and apologizes again, confessing that all along, she has been “one of those women who hates women.” She admits to being a bad friend, a bad feminist, and even calls herself a cunt. Zee realizes that she should probably reassure Greer that she is none of those things and just made a stupid mistake. However, Zee finds that she does not want to comfort Greer or waste her trauma training and de-escalation techniques on her.

Instead, Zee tells Greer that she could have just confessed all those years ago that she wasn’t comfortable with Zee working there. By lying and taking advantage of Zee, Greer has simply dug up Zee’s old traumas about being betrayed by other women. Zee mourns the “unspoken agreement” between her and Greer, which had meant that they would always look out for one another, she and is sad to find that Greer does not—and never really did—have her back.

Zee confesses that she felt jealous of Greer when Faith showed more interest in Greer in the bathroom after the lecture, because Zee had been an activist for years while Greer was at home, “reading books and having sex” with Cory. Zee confesses that early on in college, she wanted to help Greer because she thought that Greer was shy. Now, however, she has realized that Greer is not shy—just sneaky—and perfectly capable of knowing “how to act in the face of power.”

Zee tells Greer that she is perfectly happy with her life and feels confident that she is the “kind of feminist” who does what she is supposed to do to help women proudly even though she doesn’t get a lot of credit for it. Though she wishes she had had the chance to explore what it would be like to be around—and possibly be—the other “kind” of feminist, Zee tells Greer that now, she almost never thinks about Loci, Faith Frank, or how Zee missed a shot at working with Greer. Greer asks Zee to forgive her, but Zee tells Greer that she is going to need some time.