The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses sexist attitudes and the objectification of women. 

“And yet I would like to suggest that you view each of the Loyal Order’s projects with the gruntlement that should attend the creative civil disobedience of students who are politically aware and artistically expressive.”

In choosing to call the Order’s pranks “projects,” Frankie emphasizes their importance as acts of social criticism and the purposeful ways in which she planned them to disrupt inequities at Alabaster. By requesting the board members’ and headmaster’s “gruntlement,” she employs the neglected positive of “disgruntlement,” a word choice that symbolizes her dissatisfaction with unjust authority and the arbitrary nature of many social beliefs and practices. Finally, her reference to civil disobedience alludes to the behavior of cultural revolutionaries who tend to change society for the better, or at least aim to. It emphasizes the thought, organization, and intellect behind the Order’s “projects”—they were not just childish pranks designed to be amusing. These choices also help to characterize Frankie, providing clues to the way she thinks and helping readers to understand how she changes.

“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.