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Originally Posted by WT Sharpe
If I were going to push someone out a window, I wouldn't do it at such a public gathering.
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Assuming you cold-bloodedly planned it ahead of time, and didn't act in the heat of the moment.
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Originally Posted by gmw
That reaction led to my conclusion when I first read it: Irene believes she was responsible, but it was really just an unfortunate accident - Clare stepped back as Irene got close. This has an absolute minimum requirement for actions that we are not told about (no pushing or shoving or turning around, just a backward step). My only problem with this is that I would have expected Clare to give voice to her fright as she fell out the window. (If the "gasp of horror" is Clare's then it fits an accident quite well, but I still would have expected more.) All the subsequent behaviour we see from Irene is just as consistent with Irene believing herself responsible (sincerely or not, that's a separate argument) as it is with her actually being responsible.
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This makes Irene at least morally responsible; Irene making sudden physical contact with Clare makes Clare fall. We do know that Irene did have her hand on Clare's arm, so even if you want to claim there was no push, you can't deny that Irene's action caused Clare to go through the window.
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It's only later in our discussion that I have given any sort of serious consideration to suicide - I still don't like it much, but it's a solution that can be made to exactly fit the text of the last scene (even if it doesn't fit my understanding of Clare's character).
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Let me shift the discussion slightly. What do the three possibilities--accident, suicide, murder--mean to the story?
My thoughts are these. Accident is an extremely unsatisfactory ending--it means no real change or growth for any of the characters; it means the author got tired of writing the story and decided to wrap it up, deus ex machina. Suicide means that Clare either suddenly sees the folly of her life of passing and gives up, or decides death will be a grand gesture of defiance; possible, surely, but abrupt and not in keeping with character.
Murder, though--that is a satisfactory conclusion to Irene's growing anger and dissatisfaction, a way for Irene to punish Clare for being what Irene is not, for being a threat to Irene's well-being. All along we've seen Irene struggle to maintain her status quo by removing Clare from her life, and then, suddenly, she does. It's the logical, suitable ending of the story of these two women. This, as much as anything in the wording of the final scenes, is why I believe Irene killed Clare. It simply fits.