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Sue Hodge
Jennifer Dodd was a former teacher at St. George’s who used to be Barbara’s best friend. After several years of close companionship (including a joint vacation to Paris), Jennifer broke off contact with Barbara, saying only that she felt Barbara was “too intense.” A few weeks after Jennifer ended their friendship, Barbara spotted Jennifer on the London tube (subway system) with her new boyfriend, an encounter that ended with Barbara fleeing the train to weep privately. As Barbara navigates her burgeoning friendship with Sheba, she often compares this new bond to her broken one with Jennifer, ominously vowing that this time she will not make the same “mistakes.”
Jennifer Dodd Quotes in What Was She Thinking?: Notes on a Scandal
The What Was She Thinking?: Notes on a Scandal quotes below are all either spoken by Jennifer Dodd or refer to Jennifer Dodd. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 6 Quotes
It is a great challenge for me not to place inordinate emphasis on this sort of occasion. Any break in my routine—any small variation in the sequence of work and grocery shopping and telly and so on—tends to take on a disproportionate significance. I’m a child in that respect: able to live, psychically speaking, on a crumb of anticipation for weeks at a time, but always in danger of crushing the waited-for event with the freight of my excessive hope.
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But then, I always wonder, what must it be to have a beautiful body? A body that you don’t want to escape? Several years ago, when Jennifer and I went to Paris together for a weekend break, we saw a woman dancing on the bar at a little bistro in Montmartre. She was very pretty and very, very young. All the men in the place were dribbling slightly. It was a silly thing really, but just for a moment, as I watched them watch her, I remember feeling that I would give anything—be stupid, be poor, be fatally ill—to have a little of her sort of power.
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Jennifer Dodd Character Timeline in What Was She Thinking?: Notes on a Scandal
The timeline below shows where the character Jennifer Dodd appears in What Was She Thinking?: Notes on a Scandal. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1
...teachers whisper that Sheba is stuck up, but Barbara appreciates Sheba’s distance. Ruefully, Barbara recalls Jennifer Dodd, a former teacher who “used to be” her best friend at St. George’s. In...
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Chapter 2
...with Sheba reminds Barbara of the fact that after a year of being close with Jennifer Dodd, Jennifer decided to cut off all contact. Barbara thinks it was because Jennifer had...
(full context)
Chapter 6
Unlike Barbara, who cleaned obsessively before the last time Jennifer came to her apartment, Sheba and Richard are messily relaxed about their home. Though Barbara...
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Chapter 10
...frustrated with Barbara for her “negativity.” But Barbara prefers this directness to past friends’ complacency. Jennifer, for example, never complained—until she decided to dump Barbara entirely. In hindsight, Barbara sees Jennifer’s...
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