Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Ambition vs. Morality
Femininity, Sexuality, and Power
Truth and Identity
Family
Summary
Analysis
Evelyn goes out to an LA club wearing a cream-colored dress and diamond earrings. She and Mick would both benefit from this arrangement: she wants to get people’s attention, and Mick wants everyone to know he’s had sex with her. At the club, she asks Mick if he's ever been to Vegas, prompting him to boast that his people can call a private plane and get them there right now. Soon, Evelyn and Mick are on a plane to Las Vegas together. Evelyn sits in Mick’s lap but doesn’t allow him to touch her where he wants to: she needs to tease him enough to want to marry her.
Evelyn dresses casually enough to fit in at a club, but her outfit hints at wedding attire: she hopes she can plant the idea of marriage in Mick’s head without actually having to suggest it. Her strategy relies on Mick’s ego. She knows he’ll want to prove his wealth and readiness for adventure—she just has to keep tempting him with her body.
Themes
At the casino, Evelyn drinks champagne to bring a celebratory air to the evening and catches Mick’s attention when she celebrates a roulette win. When he asks to leave with her, she tells him she can’t trust herself with him. Evelyn knows she can’t be the first one to mention marriage. She starts to get tired around two a.m. and pushes through by reminding herself of the normal life she can have with Celia once this is over. Mick finally tells her he wants to marry her, and after some performative resistance, Evelyn agrees. Forty minutes later, they exchange vows.
Evelyn acts the night out as if it’s a scene in a movie she’s filming, using her skills as an actor to make her feelings for Mick seem genuine. She needs Mick to bring up marriage before she does, because that’ll make him feel like he’s in control of the situation. Even when Mick suggests they wed, Evelyn knows she has to keep tempting him—Mick, like most men Evelyn knows, is more driven by anticipation than satisfaction.
Themes
Because Evelyn doesn’t want to have sex with Mick more than once, she needs to disappoint him the first time. She allows him to see her body for as long as he wants to, removing all mystery, and then lies unmoving beneath him. The part that most disturbs her is the fact that he won’t wear a condom and she’s not on any birth control. Mick doesn’t say anything afterward, and when they wake up, she tells him she doesn’t like to have sex in the morning. He tells her she’s not what he envisioned and says the same thing he told Photomoment about his previous wife: Evelyn deserves a better man. He tells her they should get an annulment. Evelyn starts to cry but stops as soon as Mick leaves the room.
Evelyn’s calm, strategic attitude in the moment shows she’s accustomed to using her body as a tool when it suits her; she can separate sex from love easily. When Mick recycles a phrase that’s already been printed as part of an interview, it’s clear that the elopement was nothing more than a novel experience for him—there were no genuine feelings between him and Evelyn. Evelyn cries not because she’s at all upset, but because she knows it’ll please him to think he was the one with the power in the situation—he’ll think she wanted it more than he did.
Themes
An article in Photomoment reports Evelyn and Mick’s elopement and asks whether one more failed marriage for the both of them is a big deal. Meanwhile, an article in Sub Rosa a week later suggests that, while Mick saw the elopement as just one night of fun, Evelyn desperately wanted to get married to Mick and has been inconsolable since the annulment.
Sub Rosa’s follow-up article shows that tabloids such as these will do anything to conjure up a story, even when the first article about the elopement essentially referred to itself as a non-story.
Themes
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