The Innocent, by Evelyn Piper
Dec. 12th, 2019 02:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scioscribeThe Innocent is a short suspense novel, first published in 1949. It's one of the ancestors in the domestic suspense family tree, and in some ways, it's conventional: a woman marries a man and then begins to uncover dark secrets. But the rhythms and concerns are all appealingly different from most of its descendants, and its social attitudes are surprisingly progressive for its time.
The novel focuses on Marjorie, who has recently married the stunningly good-looking Charles Carter. Margie and Charles were lovers when they were younger, but then Charles left her for Claire, her icier and more fashionable friend; he didn't let his marriage to Claire get in the way of him going on sleeping with Margie, though. Margie got pregnant, Claire died (apparently of heart failure brought on by fear or shock), and Charles and Margie got married just in time to give them plausible deniability about when their baby was conceived... as long as no one really looks into the math. Margie's friends are a little dubious about the marriage. Charles is, as one character says, a little boy rattling around in a man's body. Margie is less his wife and more his doting mother, and he resents it when her attention is pulled away from him to tend to their sickly, fragile baby.
Then Margie gets a surprise phone call from the sister of the Carters' former maid. The sister wants to ask permission for Edna, the former maid, to come by and pick up her uniforms, which she'd left in a closet in the Carters' apartment. She's looking for "Mrs. Carter," but she means Claire. When Margie eventually manages to clarify the situation, the sister passes the word on--and Edna screams and runs out into the night. Um. And then it gets weirder! Margie goes to dig out the uniforms herself to prepare them for the sister stopping by, and with them, she finds a set of notes left behind by Claire. Claire died when she was mostly bedridden, recovering from an accident, and she'd apparently made a habit of reading murder mysteries and writing about how she loves them but tends to find the motives implausible. What would it take, Claire wonders, to really get someone to murder someone else?
She decides that a fun way to pass the time would be to emotionally manipulate Edna until Edna is on the brink of murder. Edna is black, and very devoted to activism; her husband, however, has every problem under the sun (this isn't the surprisingly progressive part). Claire decides to see if she can gradually push Edna to the point where Edna is ready to murder him.
Not where you thought this was going, right? Domestic suspense is often an unfortunately white genre, and while The Innocent is focused on Marjorie, it's surprisingly attentive to--and sensitively analytical of--the way Edna is treated by the white women who claim to be emotionally invested in her. There's a scene where Marjorie, determined to intervene on Edna's behalf, winds up backpedaling horrifically when the effort seems to threaten to cost her some part of her privileged position:
But Marjorie was looking into the face of the policeman, Kirby. It seemed to her that she had never seen a policeman before, that they had always been blank symbols of law and order, blank symbols of protection for her, for her kind. Now she saw the large reddened ears, the alert nostrils with the thin, wisping smoke, the thick red lips and faded blue eyes. She saw Kirby's beefy hands pendant, and imagined them on her shoulder, clamped there, directing her, pushing, pressing, ordering. She knew that she wanted to get away, to run from the no longer blank face, no longer protective symbol, and she knew at the same time that she must not run. She forced herself to shake her head at the policeman, a small, deprecating shake accompanied by an almost indiscernible grimace. What she was doing, shrugging, shaking her shoulder, grimacing, was to make them allies, to put herself back where she had always been, where everybody she knew had always been, on the side of law and order. On Kirby's side.
The need for the gesture frightened her badly.
This moment, in which Marjorie sells out Edna and Edna gradually recognizes that her only ally in this situation has disappeared, is both brutal and well-done. It would be well- and subtly-done now; it's pretty remarkable that it was written at all in 1949.
Piper is also good at a particular kind of domestic awfulness--Charles's grasping weakness, the way in which he endlessly demands every ounce of Marjorie's attention, the sheer immaturity of him, is well-portrayed and very creepy. It's also one of the only novels I can think of where a doctor who (albeit with extreme ambivalence) provided the drugs for an abortion has a heroic, responsible role in the novel's proceedings. The overall arc of the novel may be fairly predictable, but the details of it aren't, and often in really interesting, agonizing ways.
Content notes: Infanticide, racism, commitment for mental health reasons, emotional manipulation.
The novel focuses on Marjorie, who has recently married the stunningly good-looking Charles Carter. Margie and Charles were lovers when they were younger, but then Charles left her for Claire, her icier and more fashionable friend; he didn't let his marriage to Claire get in the way of him going on sleeping with Margie, though. Margie got pregnant, Claire died (apparently of heart failure brought on by fear or shock), and Charles and Margie got married just in time to give them plausible deniability about when their baby was conceived... as long as no one really looks into the math. Margie's friends are a little dubious about the marriage. Charles is, as one character says, a little boy rattling around in a man's body. Margie is less his wife and more his doting mother, and he resents it when her attention is pulled away from him to tend to their sickly, fragile baby.
Then Margie gets a surprise phone call from the sister of the Carters' former maid. The sister wants to ask permission for Edna, the former maid, to come by and pick up her uniforms, which she'd left in a closet in the Carters' apartment. She's looking for "Mrs. Carter," but she means Claire. When Margie eventually manages to clarify the situation, the sister passes the word on--and Edna screams and runs out into the night. Um. And then it gets weirder! Margie goes to dig out the uniforms herself to prepare them for the sister stopping by, and with them, she finds a set of notes left behind by Claire. Claire died when she was mostly bedridden, recovering from an accident, and she'd apparently made a habit of reading murder mysteries and writing about how she loves them but tends to find the motives implausible. What would it take, Claire wonders, to really get someone to murder someone else?
She decides that a fun way to pass the time would be to emotionally manipulate Edna until Edna is on the brink of murder. Edna is black, and very devoted to activism; her husband, however, has every problem under the sun (this isn't the surprisingly progressive part). Claire decides to see if she can gradually push Edna to the point where Edna is ready to murder him.
Not where you thought this was going, right? Domestic suspense is often an unfortunately white genre, and while The Innocent is focused on Marjorie, it's surprisingly attentive to--and sensitively analytical of--the way Edna is treated by the white women who claim to be emotionally invested in her. There's a scene where Marjorie, determined to intervene on Edna's behalf, winds up backpedaling horrifically when the effort seems to threaten to cost her some part of her privileged position:
But Marjorie was looking into the face of the policeman, Kirby. It seemed to her that she had never seen a policeman before, that they had always been blank symbols of law and order, blank symbols of protection for her, for her kind. Now she saw the large reddened ears, the alert nostrils with the thin, wisping smoke, the thick red lips and faded blue eyes. She saw Kirby's beefy hands pendant, and imagined them on her shoulder, clamped there, directing her, pushing, pressing, ordering. She knew that she wanted to get away, to run from the no longer blank face, no longer protective symbol, and she knew at the same time that she must not run. She forced herself to shake her head at the policeman, a small, deprecating shake accompanied by an almost indiscernible grimace. What she was doing, shrugging, shaking her shoulder, grimacing, was to make them allies, to put herself back where she had always been, where everybody she knew had always been, on the side of law and order. On Kirby's side.
The need for the gesture frightened her badly.
This moment, in which Marjorie sells out Edna and Edna gradually recognizes that her only ally in this situation has disappeared, is both brutal and well-done. It would be well- and subtly-done now; it's pretty remarkable that it was written at all in 1949.
Piper is also good at a particular kind of domestic awfulness--Charles's grasping weakness, the way in which he endlessly demands every ounce of Marjorie's attention, the sheer immaturity of him, is well-portrayed and very creepy. It's also one of the only novels I can think of where a doctor who (albeit with extreme ambivalence) provided the drugs for an abortion has a heroic, responsible role in the novel's proceedings. The overall arc of the novel may be fairly predictable, but the details of it aren't, and often in really interesting, agonizing ways.
Content notes: Infanticide, racism, commitment for mental health reasons, emotional manipulation.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-12-18 02:00 am (UTC)