The Only One Left

Names are important in the novel, often carrying important meaning and symbolism. Virginia’s name shares a root with the word “virgin”—a woman who is sexually untouched, and thus the ideal of the repressive and sexist society of the 1920s. In the novel, Virginia’s sexual relationship with Ricky hinges on complete ignorance of the biology of sex and pregnancy, the events of the night of the murders rest on Lenora learning about Virginia’s pregnancy, and the present-day plot depends partly on the identity of the child. The confusion about Virginia’s lover’s identity rests on the slippage of nicknames. She knew the man as “Ricky,” which seems to point to the groundskeeper Ricardo, but is actually a diminutive for the name Patrick. This wordplay-based red herring, or false clue, is a standard feature of the mystery genre. Finally, the portentous name Hope’s End loudly foreshadows the eventual demise of the family, its secrets, and the crumbling house itself. The mansion’s name doesn’t really make sense—it’s unlikely the successful and ambitious Winston would give his estate such a gloomy title, even if it is a play on his last name. This unlikely foreshadowing through the manor’s name is an exaggerated gesture toward the novel’s Gothic roots, where such bombastic estate names are common.

Although some of The Uses of Secrets in the novel are benign, offering opportunities for bonding and kinship, the ending dramatizes the destructive power of unbroken silence. Although Patrick confesses to Kit his role in the death of Kathleen, his self-sacrificial decision to join Lenora Hope on Hope’s End’s grand staircase and die in the collapsing house means that he is effectively taking his secret to the grave—no one else can attest to his admission. His symbolic demise is a microcosm of the way secrets function in the novel as a whole; the more hidden the truth, the more poisonous and damaging its effects on the survivors of the Hope murders. Secrecy also breeds unwelcome public scrutiny—the kind of prurient interest that comes with preconceived assumptions of guilt, as exhibited by Detective Vick, and gleeful schadenfreude, as indulged in by Berniece Mayhew. In contrast, the novel ends with the revelation that Virginia published the autobiography Still Life. By telling her story on her own terms, first as a typewritten private memoir for Mary—the Interludes interspersed in the narrative—and then as a work for public consumption, Virginia Hope not only gets to explain all of the revelations discovered by Kit throughout The Only One Left, but also reclaims her story and the agency to tell it.

The novel’s antagonists share some key traits: They cannot accept responsibility for their crimes and instead offer shifting and sometimes contradictory justifications for their actions. Berniece Mayhew’s account of her extortion is full of delight at getting one over on the Hope family—she feels no remorse for her actions. The contrast between Kit and Patrick’s responses to Kathleen’s death offer another instructive example. Kit rues the small role she played in her mother’s death, feeling intense guilt over her negligent decision to allow her mother, ravaged by her intense pain, to self-administer fentanyl. In contrast, Patrick never acknowledges the pain that he has caused everyone. Even when he sees Virginia for the first time in 54 years, his first act is to deflect, blaming everyone else but himself. Finally, the difference between how the two Hope sisters view their relationship shows Lenora’s distinct brand of venom. Virginia’s memoir indicates that she cannot understand why her sister has been so cruel to her all of their lives—but this animosity burdens Virginia and makes her search her behavior for any wrongdoing. In contrast, Lenora’s cold account of what happened on the night of the murders is full of self-serving justifications. First, Lenora claims that the life she created for Virginia is better than Virginia’s being institutionalized following their parents’ murders and her subsequent suicide attempt. But Lenora quickly undercuts her pretended compassion by claiming that her sister had a literal hand in their parents’ deaths, and so deserves the retribution Lenora has meted out.

The true dysfunction of the Hope family comes from Winston’s obsession with Class Status, Resources, and Privilege. Winston, who was already insecure in his social standing as a member of the nouveau riche, was bitter at only getting a chance to marry into old money via the pregnant Evangeline, whose sexual impropriety would have made her a social pariah within her own social circle. In response, Winston filled the house with crude comments about illegitimate children in the family—nastiness aimed at Lenora, who knew of her illegitimacy. Absorbing this abuse was damaging. While Lenora internalized Winston’s worship of social status and relished her standing as a member of the socioeconomic elite, she must also have felt shame and self-loathing at knowing that her birth father had been her maternal grandparents’ servant.

Added to this toxicity were Winston’s controlling tendencies, another example of How Chauvinism and Paternalism Dictates Women’s Fates. Despite the fact that she came from a higher social echelon, once she married Winston, Evangeline did not have the power to counter his decisions. Pitting his biological and adopted daughters against each other was a way for Winston to play out his resentments. Lenora relished winning the games their father forced them to compete in and insisted on punishing her sister for losing. Though Winston Hope seemed to prefer Lenora’s competitive, vindictive temperament over Virginia’s kindness and gentleness, Lenora’s fixation on winning came partly from the knowledge that only Virginia was biologically related to the father Lenora admired. Ironically, Virginia had none of Winston’s qualities, while Lenora embodied the rapacious spirit that fueled Winston’s business successes. Lenora longed to be their father’s only child. Deeply attached to the house, mired in the toxic culture that her father had created, knowing the rules he set and the hypocrisy with which he defied them, Lenora curdled into the novel’s villain.