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 knows she needs to keep Harry busy with work and Connor if she wants him to return to his normal life. Though he cares about being a good father to Connor, whenever he’s not with her, he resumes drinking and doesn’t leave his bed. Evelyn reads hundreds of scripts to find one that Harry would want to produce. Finally, Max sends her one called All for Us, a gritty, hopeful story about a single mother which Evelyn can see herself playing in and knows Harry will like. To persuade him, she tells him she could finally get her Oscar with this movie. She loves shooting All for Us not because of the Oscar but because it gets Harry out of bed.
The family environment that Evelyn and Connor provide and the responsibility of fatherhood are grounding for Harry. Still, they can’t take the place of his love for John, which emphasizes both the extent of his grief and his need for an intimate partner. Meanwhile, though Celia has left Evelyn’s life, Max is now an integral part of it, which hints that he might start to replace Celia’s role as Evelyn’s partner.
Themes
Four months after All for Us comes out, Evelyn and Harry go to the Oscars together, though because Max has made so many comments about wanting Evelyn as his date, she feels like she’s attending with him, too. When Evelyn wins Best Actress, she can barely believe it. She ends her speech by addressing an anonymous person, saying “I just hope she knows how important she is to me.” Max wins Best Director and Harry wins Best Picture for the same film.
Max’s attraction to Evelyn hasn’t faded since he first met her, and he’s not too shy to make it obvious. Evelyn has described her attendance at several different Academy Awards, so when she wins this time, it’s a long-awaited and much-deserved moment. When Harry and Max win, too, it seems as though a new era of success is beginning for Evelyn after a period of heartbreak.
Themes
