63 pages • 2 hours read
Lucy FoleyThe Midnight Feast
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Class Tensions in a Small Town
The Midnight Feast is set in the small fictional town of Tome in the real county of Dorset on the southern coast of England. The plot centers tensions and conflicts between the wealthy, landed gentry who live in the large manor house—the Meadows family—and the working-class locals. Lucy Foley explores these class tensions through Bella’s anxieties around her teenage friendship with Francesca, and the internal push and pull she experiences between the approval of Francesca and her desire to connect with Jake. In Foley’s dual timelines, the locals’ vocal complaints about The Meadows family, The Manor, and its guests weave this tension as connective tissue between the past and the present.
As a teenager, Foley undergirds Bella’s coming-of-age arc and eventual loss of innocence with her internal conflict—both drawn to and repulsed by Francesca and wealth and glamour. Friendship with Francesca opens certain doors for Bella; she is given an expensive swimsuit, access to luxurious surroundings, and a glimpse of how the other half lives. However, Francesca sees herself as superior to Bella because of her wealth, treating Bella less like a person and more like an object—something Hugo Meadows makes explicit, telling Bella: “[Y]ou know how other people like collecting things? Like football cards? Birds that collect shiny things for their nests? Lil sis likes collecting people” (91). Francesca demeans Bella’s middle-class name, lack of worldliness, and choice of romantic crush. Eventually, Bella realizes that Francesca sees her as a “gullible little idiot” and gravitates Jake, with whom she has a genuine connection. However, since Bella’s development is still in progress, she can’t entirely free herself from Francesca’s orbit. She feels embarrassed about Jake’s clothing when she brings him to Francesca’s for the barbecue; she worries he looks like “a farm boy dressed for a posh night out” (299). The tension between Francesca and Bella when they are teenagers is a microcosm of the class conflict found throughout the text.
In 2025, when Francesca opens The Manor Hotel, Foley reflects this conflict in the larger community. Francesca uses her wealth and connections to get planning permission to privatize the formerly public access to the ancient woods in the town. In revolt, the townspeople use what the narrative calls the “weapons of the weak”: throwing stones, lighting bonfires, and banning Manor guests from local businesses. The landlady at the pub spells out to Bella why the Manor guests are unwelcome at her establishment: Francesca is trying to shut down local businesses and remove them from their historic land. Foley also reflects this divide culturally, particularly making use of accents. For example, Michelle has had elocution lessons to help her lose her local (working-class) accent so that the upper-class guests won’t see her as “tacky,” highlighting the inherent bias of the wealthy against the working class and the assimilation required to gain access to opportunities. Delilah accuses Eddie of trying to “become one of them [the wealthy]” (54) by working at the hotel—another example of local resentment and disdain.
The cover-up of Cora’s murder as emblematic of the entitlement of the wealthy and the power imbalance that allows them to utilize their resources to self-protect at the expense of the under resourced. When Francesca kills Cora, her grandfather uses his wealth to cover it up. He pays off Bella and Jake, threatens their families, and sends Cora’s family 10,000 pounds. Jake and Bella feel helpless to find justice for Cora in the face of the Meadows’ wealth and threats.
Vigilante Justice in a Local Community
Foley builds her entire narrative toward the eventual triumph of characters without resources of wealth and traditional power who work together to enact justice for themselves and their community. They feel as if the traditional criminal justice system has failed them and they have no other recourse but to take matters into their own hands. The model of vigilante justice as portrayed in the novel has medieval roots. Foley evokes this imagery and history, adding texture and specificity to her narrative. When Bella sees the stonework panels of “twelve hooded figures standing in a circle” (171) and a man holding a feather with “a look of terror on his face,” the vicar explains what they represent:
They [are] a way of reminding local people to behave themselves. Centuries ago, these were wild, out-of-the-way parts: no police to keep the peace. So a different kind of authority grew in their place. To protect their community, to satisfy grievances. To deliver justice (171).
In the present day of the novel, a group of women calling themselves The Birds continues this tradition of communal vigilante justice. When they are “summoned” by someone in the community, they take action against The Manor. In the lead up to taking action, The Birds carry out symbolic gestures—a dead cockerel on Francesca’s door, a wicker statue of a crow on fire—to remind the perpetrators that their crimes are known and remembered. They perform ritual acts, such as the sacrifice of Ivor the bull, that underscore the novel’s thematic interest in Magic as a Natural Force, and they take calculated practical action—spiking the cider at the solstice celebration, and locking Hugo and Oscar in the wine store—to bring about the justice denied them by a justice system that fails to protect or consider them. Their actions, along with those of Jake and Bella, eventually lead to their desired outcome: The hotel burns down and is closed. Foley blurs the lines between the themes of vigilante justice and magic as a natural force in the novel’s climax, in which all the remaining members of the Meadows family directly or indirectly bring about their own deaths.
Vigilante justice is the only means the Tome community feels it has to defend themselves against wealth and power, and they use it to their desired ends. Despite the positive outcome, the results are also deadly and dangerous—not without risk to those attempting to enact it. Jake and Bella pursue their own forms of vigilante justice 15 years after Cora’s murder. Jake anonymously reaches out to Bella and Owen, bringing them to the hotel without knowing what the consequences will be. Bella feels motivated by the birth of her daughter to finally air the secrets of her past and extract a confession from Francesca. While Bella’s actions expose Francesca’s crime and provide justice for Cora, they also nearly culminate in her death when Francesca locks her in the library and sets The Manor on fire.
Magic as a Natural Force
In The Midnight Feast, Foley presents magic and nature as aligned—a force that many of the characters seek to harness and direct in different ways. The Tome locals view the woods and their birds, the crows, as the source of their folk magic’s power. Francesca, by contrast, appropriates the magical legends of the woods and “woo-woo” properties of natural elements, such as crystals and herbs, for personal profit. However, her interest is more “selective” (128). While Francesca’s shallow form of supernatural beliefs is portrayed as without any true power to change the world, the text is ambiguous about whether the folk magic works, leaving events open to multiple interpretations.
The text indicates that local folk magic is passed down through oral tradition and written records, such as The Legends of Tome, sold in local shops. Villagers like Eddie are raised on stories about the woods, their power, and their dangers. Even as an adult, Eddie has a superstitious reverence for these stories, reflected in his concern when Delilah seeks to tempt fate by spending time in the woods and taking the black feather—The Birds’ calling card—from Lord Meadows’s dead body. Other villagers evince a more sincere belief. For instance, the tree surgeon Owen contracts to cut down trees in the woods and clear a site for his Treehouse development refuses to complete the task, citing bad luck.
In both of the narrative timelines, Francesca views magic as a tool she can wield to serve her own whims and desires—a perspective predicated on disbelief. As a teenager, Francesca views folk magic as a game—something to amuse her and frighten her friends. As an adult, Francesca largely uses “natural” magic as a marketing ploy, using “pagan chic” décor at The Manor and planning a solstice celebration for the guests. As Owen states, “[T]here’s a refreshing common sense about the way she approaches [magic]. Selective, you could say. Useful in as much as it can benefit her” (128). This hubristic approach to magic reinforces the elements of satire Foley weaves into Francesca’s characterization. For example, when Francesca provides all of her guests with healing crystals for their noted healing properties, Ruby notes, “How can there be so many problems in the world when there are so many wealthy women with crystals?” (181)
The Midnight Feast blurs the line between truth and legend with regard to folk magic—for every supernatural occurrence, Foley alludes to a non-magical explanation and vice versa. When Francesca visits Julie, the Reiki healer, Foley implies Julie is a member of the Birds by noting her small tattoo, similar to the ones Michelle and the landlady have. In this scene, Foley positions Reiki as representative of the versions of Eastern medicine commodified by the Western, white, and wealthy to cultivate an ethos of enlightenment and spirituality—often, Foley indicates, for profit. However, in Francesca’s session, Julie pivots to a form of folk magic, cracking an egg into a stone bowl and having Francesca tell her what she sees in it. As a result of these readings, Julie tells Francesca that “an enemy draws near” (154). Foley structures the novel to leave it open as to whether Julie’s methods are tactics to unsettle and scare Francesca or whether her divination is legitimate. When Francesca sees a bird’s face in the egg yolk, Foley leaves two explanations equally possible—the folk magic and warning are real or Francesca is overinterpreting what she sees in her anxious state. Foley leaves the truth for the reader to decide.
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By Lucy Foley
