Gerald's Game

Gerald Burlingame is Jessie’s husband, and his brief actions in the opening chapters render him a first-act antagonist, yet even after his sudden death, his presence as an inert corpse in the room is far from passive, for King capitalizes on the macabre realities of decay and even desecration to capitalize upon the more horrific qualities that such a scenario offers. While he lives, however, his character progresses through a quick escalation from mild-mannered lawyer to potential sexual assailant, and thus, both his active and passive presence in the novel provide menacing elements that intensify the primary conflict of Jessie’s imprisonment.

Gerald’s ultimate purpose in the novel is to represent Jessie’s pattern of allowing men to control her life. Before the opening of the novel, Jessie made a living as a teacher, but she had to stop teaching for tax purposes, and now, she is still struggling to find something that can give her a broader sense of purpose. Gerald is the one that insisted she quit teaching, which implies that he maintains a considerable degree of control over the structure of their household and their marriage. References to his being part of a fraternity, being bullied as a child, and making misogynistic jokes to coworkers all imply that he grew up with a lack of self-esteem, which then turned into a strong desire to dominate others, specifically women. This need for control is also expressed in the titular “game” which implies that Gerald can only become aroused when Jessie is restrained.

Though Gerald begins the novel as an antagonist, Jessie does acknowledge that he was not always a bad person, noting sweet or kind things that Gerald did while alive. However, such admissions are also common in abusive relationships, given the “cycle of abuse” that abusive people often use to intersperse kind moments with cruel ones in a deliberate attempt to keep their targets off-balance. It is important to note that after Gerald’s death, Jessie progressively cares less about Gerald’s life, and he becomes more of a physical ornament in the setting of the novel. As Prince continues to eat Gerald’s corpse, Gerald himself can be reinterpreted as a representation of the life that he and Jessie lived before the lake house incident, and thus, each bite symbolizes the removal of another restriction in Jessie’s mind.

Tom Mahout is Jessie’s father, and he succeeds Gerald as the second antagonist of the novel. During Jessie’s childhood, Tom was close with Jessie, and Jessie notes that she was a “daddy’s girl.” Tom’s marriage to Jessie’s mother, Sally, deteriorated while Jessie was still a child, and Jessie’s parents fought more frequently and intensely. On the day of the eclipse, Tom arranged to spend the day alone with Jessie, which allowed him the opportunity to sexually assault her while she was distracted by the eclipse itself. Jessie later realizes that he likely planned the assault, based on his choice of wardrobe, his instruction that she wear a too-small sundress, and his request for her to sit on his lap. Tom is undoubtedly a predator, and his assault on Jessie is a primary conflict for most of the novel even though his presence only manifests in Jessie’s thoughts, visions, and flashbacks.

The conflicting elements of Tom’s character are most apparent in his refusal to look at Jessie when he expresses shame for the assault. Jessie acknowledges that this detail conflicts with her child-self’s determination to hold a more positive view of her father, and for many years, she internally assumes the blame for the assault in order to avoid cognitive dissonance and protect her naïve perception of Tom as a loving father. However, the ways in which Tom manipulates both Jessie and Sally suggest that he is a disturbed individual, and King’s narrative therefore implies that Tom is fully aware of the ramifications of his actions. His insistence that he and Jessie keep the assault a secret, though framed as if it were Jessie’s idea, reveals that his primary concern is for his own well-being and reputation despite the long-lasting consequences that such a decision has for Jessie.

Critically, when Jessie first encounters Joubert, her partially unbalanced psyche leads her to assume that he is actually her undead father, Tom, and that he has come to assault her yet again. This assumption, paired with Jessie’s reaction to Gerald’s spit on her stomach, show how Tom’s actions have had a potentially permanent effect on Jessie’s perception of men, and Tom serves as a prototype for the various abusive men that Jessie endures throughout her life, for Tom is the first man to show her a violent, sexual side of himself.

Goodwife Burlingame, or Goody, is one of the voices in Jessie’s head. Though Jessie often associates Goody with various female figures in her life, most of Goody’s attitude and traditional views are derived from Sally Mahout, Jessie’s mother. The voice of Goody serves as a foil to Ruth Neary in Jessie’s mind, representing the side of femininity that is actively complicit within a patriarchal, or male-dominant, society. Goody’s perspective is usually that Jessie is at fault for what men do to her, and this pattern aligns with traditional, feminine expectations of subservience and humility.

Goody is both helpful and disparaging at different times, and overall, she represents the dominant feminine influences in Jessie’s life prior to meeting Ruth Neary, whose more assertive, abrasive personality counters Goody’s influences. Goody is a personification of the stereotypical feminine figure whose social conditioning compels her to submit to the dominant masculine figures in her life, and Jessie notes that this dynamic tends to occur even when submission is clearly the wrong option. However, the novel implies that Goody and the influence she brings to Jessie’s mind are as critical to Jessie’s personality as Ruth’s sense of defiance proves to be to Jessie’s eventual escape.

Ruth Neary is both a real person and a voice within Jessie’s head, but she exists primarily as a voice for the duration of the novel. In flashbacks to her college years, Jessie addresses the real Ruth’s actions and thoughts, but for the purpose of the novel, Ruth’s imagined voice is most relevant to Jessie’s journey. Ruth’s voice is a foil to Goody’s, with Goody presenting traditional and repressive ideas of femininity, while Ruth’s voice presents a new, defiant femininity that rejects ideas of subservience. Although Jessie is not always receptive to Ruth’s brusque attitude, Ruth’s voice is the driving force behind Jessie’s attempts to escape the handcuffs. For example, even before Gerald’s death, it is Ruth’s voice that speaks through Jessie’s mouth to insult Gerald and demand that he release her.

As the novel progresses, Ruth’s voice is periodically seen as an impediment to Jessie’s escape, for Ruth tends to bring up topics of trauma during crucial moments that require dexterity and concentration, like Jessie’s attempts to grab the glass or the face cream. This connection between defiance and uncomfortable introspection matches the process by which one can overcome social conditioning, for simply behaving in a confident or assertive manner is not enough to solve all of Jessie’s problems with toxic male authority. Ultimately, the purpose of Ruth’s voice is to force Jessie to confront her past abuse in order to develop an honest perspective on both herself and on the various men in her life. Jessie finally confronts her past fully in the letter she writes to the real Ruth Neary, an act that fulfills Ruth’s authoritative role as a voice in Jessie head. Ruth therefore represents the modern pull away from patriarchal social conditioning and toward a strong, independent version of femininity, which Jessie is then able to express in her interactions with Brandon.