[Catlady]

Originally Posted by gmw

Sure, but this argues both ways. Just as Clare would be unlikely to back away from Jack, why would she submit to being pushed backwards by Irene? (And if she willingly stepped backwards, as I first thought happened, then Irene didn't have to push her.)

Who commits suicide by falling backwards out a window?

It's fun to discover how much "least likely" varies in different minds. In my mind any person that is pushed or accidentally loses their balance is going to flail out with their arms trying to grab onto something (I also expect them to exclaim something), and Irene was right there to be grabbed (and so should the sides of the windows have been). Why did a fighter like Clare just meekly fall back through the gap provided?

We don't know if she did, as Irene doesn't give us the details of the fall. We only see fragments of how Irene chooses to remember it, and Irene focuses on her hand on Clare's arm. She leaves out most of what happened. So perhaps Clare did flail, did reach out.

I would not be at all surprised to learn that, in the author's eyes/intention, CRussel was correct: Quite possibly Larsen didn't care as much about this scene as (non-academic) readers were always going to.

Well, I care about it because it's very like what I read in my favorite genre--suspense. It's a nice little suspense story about two women in conflict, each a threat to the other--who will prevail? I read dozens of books with this basic theme; that the conflict here is partly about racial identity gives the book greater social importance than one in which the conflict is simply about coveting a man or a lifestyle.

Regarding the author's intention, I would argue that she did not intend the reader to see ambiguity--everything Larsen has told us about the characters and the events points to Irene being the agent of Clare's death. Irene, though, pretends otherwise--and again, this pretense is completely in character for her.

How do you explain these passages:

Irene wasn’t sorry. She was amazed, incredulous almost.

What would the others think? That Clare had fallen? That she had deliberately leaned backward? Certainly one or the other. Not—

But she mustn’t, she warned herself, think of that. ... If only she could be as free of mental as she was of bodily vigour; could only put from her memory the vision of her hand on Clare’s arm!

“It was an accident, a terrible accident,” she muttered fiercely. “It was.”

In the midst of her wonderings and questionings came a thought so terrifying, so horrible, that she had had to grasp hold of the banister to save herself from pitching downwards. A cold perspiration drenched her shaking body. Her breath came short in sharp and painful gasps.

What if Clare was not dead?

First Irene can't even admit the word murder into her head, fiercely allowing only accident or suicide as possibilities--a case of the lady doth protest too much, methinks. And the only reason for Irene to be horrified at the thought of Clare's survival is that Clare would accuse Irene. When she finds out Clare is dead, "Irene struggled against the sob of thankfulness that rose in her throat."