owing actions or reiterating actions that have already taken place. Laura's suicide, for instance, is a central issue that is turned to again and again. She drove off the bridge, and throughout the novel, there are references to young women who jumped off this bridge for love. Laura herself jumped into the river with all her clothes on when she was a child, and Iris pulled her to safety, never sure if Laura was trying to kill herself then or if she was just being foolish. The river serves as a unifying image for the town and for the novel as a whole. The town was built around the river, and Iris again and again walks along the river and notes the different structures that front on the water. The bridge is a central point and is also mentioned over and over again, always reminding the reader of how the novel begins and keeping certain questions in the reader's mind until they can be answered in the narrative.
Iris's identity is an issue from the first, for she is defined by others again and again not in terms of her self or her own accomplishments but as Laura's sister or Richard's wife. In the original newspaper obituary for Laura, Iris is referred to as her sister, "Mrs. Richard E. Griffen, wife of the prominent manufacturer" (3). Indeed, it is some way into the book before the reader learns that her name is Iris, for she is always described as sister and wife or as Mrs. Griffen. When her daughter dies, the girl is referred to as the daughter of the industrialist and the niece of novelist Laura Chase, and Iris is only mentioned in passing as Mrs. Iris Griffen (19). When her husband dies, Iris is also mentioned almost as an after thought. Laura and her new-found role as novelist is mentioned before the wife is, and indeed, his sister Winifred is mentioned first as well.
Iris takes a back seat to most of her family and continues to do so even once she has survived them all. She is viewed by the town as a once-rich w...