The Only One Left

In the novel, inquisitive young people—Kit, Jessie, and Carter—realize that the history they have always seen as ancient is actually fairly recent. Their investigation inspires empathy about local legend Lenora Hope: Kit has never before connected the well-known playground rhyme about the Hope murders with an actual human being. Now, she considers the idea that a woman’s life amounts to just the events of one night in 1929. The date has always seemed extremely distant, but now Kit realizes that the murders happened only 54 years ago; some members of her community heard about the killings when they happened, were employed on the property at the time, or were even involved in the investigation. When Mr. Gurlain informs her that Lenora is to be her new patient, Kit is even surprised to learn that Lenora Hope is still alive. 

One of the novel’s most striking juxtapositions is the same one that led a jury to acquit Lizzie Borden (see Background)—Kit struggles to reconcile the frail figure in an antique wheelchair with her preconceived image of a murder. It is hard to imagine that the approximately 70-year-old woman in her care could have ever stabbed two people to death and fatally hanged a third in the same night; the thought of a teenage girl committing those crimes on her own is equally incongruous. Still, Kit fears her patient—a foreboding that adds to the novel’s building of tension. Kit can’t help but worry that her violent impulses could emerge again after decades of dormancy. Kit often wonders what Lenora might do to her. She fixates on Lenora’s declaration that she “cant” (62) hurt Kit—word choice that doesn’t clarify whether Lenora wants to. Lenora’s silence is also unsettling: Lenora cannot speak, her facial expressions are difficult to read, and she does not always tap out or write answers to questions.

The differences between Kit and Lenora’s social and economic positions are stark, introducing the theme of Class Status, Resources, and Privilege. Kit has a tenuous hold on employment after her suspension. In contrast, Lenora Hope is the most affluent patient that Kit has ever cared for. Kit has been raised in a household dominated by her father’s bitterness and resentment toward those with financial means. Patrick has instilled in his daughter a dividing line between those who toil and those who do not. His distaste is not rooted in a self-righteous distain for the wasteful or exploitation that often accompanies the amassing of considerable wealth, but instead in the belief that he is owed such a lifestyle. Kit does not share her father’s animosity, but she is impressed by the grandeur of the house, and acutely aware of the difference between her lifestyle and Lenora’s. Kit has no idea that Patrick’s resentment centers on the Hope family in particular. One of the novel’s interesting counterfactuals is imagining Kit mentioning to him that her newest assignment was at Hope’s End. Had she done so, her father may have discouraged her from accepting the position, thus preventing her from ever discovering the truth his involvement in the Hope tragedy.

The novel is deeply interested in How Chauvinism and Paternalism Dictates Women’s Fates. Male characters often choose to avoid discomfort or inconvenience, even when prioritizing their own happiness is detrimental those they claim to love. Kit internalizes her father’s anger and roughness as the treatment she deserves; while she laments that he doesn’t believe in her innocence about her mother’s death, Kit does not protest the excruciating wall of silence Patrick puts up between them. Feeling under suspicion in her own home, Kit can only escape via the frightening prospect of working at Hope’s End—a decision that echoes the drastic steps undertaken the Interlude typist to escape the Hope family earlier. Though she is wary of the frosty and formal Mrs. Baker, Kit respects her employer’s frankness. Mrs. Baker’s calm statement that young women accused of terrible acts are given the benefit of the doubt at Hope’s End offers Kit the acceptance of a woman-controlled space and the opportunity not to be perceived as automatically guilty—a reprieve from Kit’s patriarchal household.