Dolores Claiborne

In his foreword, King describes Little Tall Island as a real place and notes the connections between Dolores Claiborne and Gerald’s Game, both of which came out the same year. By providing a clear link between the two stories, King suggests that these stories parallel one another as both women encounter abuse, experience terror, and “emerge from the darkness” (xvii). The eclipse, which connects the two female protagonists, also functions as a symbol of their fraught lives and ways that women can shape their destinies despite the awful realities of spousal and sexual abuse.

King uses Dolores’s first-person narration and distinctive dialect and cadence to create a specificity of character informed by the setting that provides the foundation for the story. Dolores’s story, framed as a confession provided to the police, begins with her discussion of her work for and relationship with Vera Donovan. Dolores describes herself as a product of her environment and experiences, telling her interrogators “I’m just an old woman with a foul temper and a fouler mouth, but that’s what happens more often than not, when you’ve had a foul life” (24). Dolores’s nonplussed depiction of herself highlights her bitterness toward life, which is further contextualized by the details of the environment. Little Tall Island, set off from the mainland of Maine, is populated by primarily working-class people who rely on wealthy tourists for their incomes. Dolores’s work as a housekeeper for Vera highlights the economic disparities that exist on the island and the physical labor that has hardened Dolores over the years.

The context of Dolores’s police interview immediately introduces the novel’s thematic engagement with Violence against Women by highlighting the societal power structures that privilege the needs of men over the agency of women. Dolores reveals her attitude toward men in this opening section, suggesting that men need women to clean up their messes and take care of their physical needs. She tells Andy, for instance, “you grew up same as any other man, with some woman to warsh your clothes and wipe your nose and turn you around when you got y’self pointed in the wrong direction” (21). For Dolores, men may have all the power in the community and in their families, but the real work that makes society run occurs behind the scenes and is done by women.

Dolores’s description of Vera as a “bitch” is tonally nuanced, implying both critique and respect—Vera might be mean but she also rebels against the societal expectations for women. While Vera is a hard woman to work for and the two women’s relationship is defined by a power disparity—employee and employer rather than a friendship between social equals—Dolores respects Vera and feels sympathy for the older woman, admitting that “all her bitchiness was sad at the bottom” (80).