Dolores Claiborne

“But by then her and me was used to each other. It’s hard to explain to a man […] We was used to each other in the way I s’pose two old bats can get used to hangin upside-down next to each other in the same cave, even though they’re a long way from what you’d call the best of friends.”

In assessing her relationship with Vera, Dolores uses the analogy of bats hanging next to each other in a cave to contextualize the domestic space and experiences they shared every day for years—a life lived together. Thus, while Dolores and Vera didn’t always get along or like each other, they were connected by the shared understanding of the roles and place they occupied in life.

“She had three ways of bein a bitch. I’ve known women who had more, but three’s good for a senile old lady mostly stuck in a wheelchair or in bed. Three’s damn good for a woman like that.”

Dolores characterizes Vera as a “bitch,” or an angry woman who acts outside of the usual societal expectations for women. Yet, Dolores’s description also includes a sense of respect for Vera. By noting that despite Vera’s senility and physical limitations she still exhibited attributes of strength and rebellion against patriarchal norms, Dolores offers a characterization of Vera as both domineering and independent.

“In those days I still believed the love of a man for a woman and a woman for a man was stronger than the love of drinkin and hell-raisin—that love would eventually rise to the top like cream in a bottle of milk. I learned better over the next ten years. The world’s a sorry schoolroom sometimes, ain’t it?”

Dolores uses a simile of cream rising to the top of a bottle of milk to explore her youthful understanding of love, which she believes points to her naivete. By describing her changing understanding of her relationship, the text foreshadows the breakdown of her marriage with Joe and the pain and disappointment that defined her marital life.

“She was lonely, you see, and that I didn’t understand—I never understood why she threw over her whole life to come out to the island in the first place.”

As she describes the loneliness of Vera, Dolores reckons with her own similar isolation, despite the differences in their circumstances and resources. She admits that she fails to understand Vera’s motivation in living on Little Tall Island despite her wealth, privilege, and social life—all things Dolores lacks. Vera feels isolated trapped in her life, while Vera chose it despite having other options. By acknowledging her lack of understand rather than passing judgement, Dolores—and by extension the reader—allows space for Vera’s interiority and whole personhood, leaving Vera’s behavior open to interpretation.

“So here we are at Joe. I been dreadin this part, and I guess there’s no use lyin about it. I already told you I killed him, so that’s over with, but the hard part is still all ahead: how […] and why […] and when it had to be.”

While Dolores admits to the murder of her husband, she qualifies her retelling of the event here, promising to provide her listeners not only with a recounting of the killing, but also the motivation and timing. In short, Dolores wants her interrogators to not only know the truth, but understand it.

“You know the only thing that come to me while I was out there on the steps today, freezing my tookus off and tryin to remember about the love part? He had a nice forehead.”

Throughout the novel, Dolores returns to the image of Joe’s forehead, which first attracted her to him—a detail she uses to characterizes her youthful perspective as naïve and uncomplicated. This quotation also highlights Stephen King’s use of colloquialism and dialect in Dolores’s narration that gives her a unique voice, adding to the richness of her character.

“He was a coward at heart, you see, although I never said the word out loud to him—not then and not ever. Doing that’s about the most dangerous thing a person can do, I think, because a coward is more afraid of being discovered than he is of anything else, even dying.”

Dolores’s characterization of Joe as a “coward” positions him as the novel’s antagonist. According to his wife, Joe created conflict and hid his own fears by lashing out at and trying to control others, primarily his wife and daughter. Dolores never confronted him with his cowardice as she feared his reprisal.

“But the worst thing was that she didn’t talk much anymore. Not just to me; considerin the terms we were on, I coulda understood that. She pretty much quit talkin to everybody, though.”

Noticing changes in Selena, Dolores details her altered character. Described initially as talkative and fun-loving, Selena’s uncharacteristic silence signals to Dolores that something important has changed for Selena.

“‘He looked so sad,’ she said. ‘there was blood running between his fingers and tears in his eyes and he just looked so sad. I hated you more for that look than for the blood and tears, Mommy, and I made up my mind to make it up to him.’”

Selena reveals her compassionate nature and complicated relationship to both of her parents. She feels tenderness toward her father despite his abuse of her. She feels resentful toward her mother despite her mother’s protection of her. Selena’s perspective on the fight between Dolores and Joe, points to Joe’s eventual manipulation of her generosity and care.

“She said she didn’t want to do it, and he said that was just too bad, but it was too late to stop. He told her she’d teased him until he was half-crazy, and said that kind of teasin’s why most rapes happen, and good women (meanin bad tempered hatchet-wavin bitches like me, I guess) knew it.”

Dolores’s retelling of her conversation with Selena gives insight into Joe’s villainy and highlights his manipulation of his daughter. By reframing Selena as the one who led him on, Joe employs a problematic and common tactic of abusers—particularly rapists—who insist that their behavior is the fault of the people they abuse.

“Lyin there in the dark and calm again at last, the answer seemed simple enough. I had to take the kids and move to the mainland, and I had to do it soon.”

Joe’s abuse of Selena catalyzes Dolores’s decision to leave and eventually murder him. Selena confession of her father’s abuse provides the fulcrum that pushes the formerly static Dolores into action.

“If the man of the house decided to draw out all his kids’ college money, he must have had a damned good reason, and even if he didn’t, it didn’t matter, because he was the man of the house, and in charge. His wife was just the little woman, and all she was in charge of was baseboards, toilet-bowls, and chicken dinners on Sunday afternoons.”

Dolores’s description of her talk with the bank manager exemplifies the ubiquitous misogyny and gender inequity in her world. She notes that in the 1960s, women are viewed as domestic labor, under the control of men, and limited in their ability to make financial decisions.

“Husbands die every day, Dolores. Why, one is probably dying now, while we’re sitting here talking. They die and leave their wives their money.”

Vera’s statement reveals her perspective on marriage and foreshadows Dolores’s eventual murder of Joe. For Vera, men control economic power, so the only thing standing between women and power is men. When a husband dies, Vera suggests, women gain financial control.

“An accident is sometimes an unhappy woman’s best friend.”

Vera subtly suggests that Dolores should kill her husband but make it look like an accident. By referring to murder as an “accident,” Vera provides Dolores with an illusion. Killing here is redefined as something accidental, which fails to acknowledge the cost Dolores will pay for her actions.

“Sometimes you have to be a high-riding bitch to survive […] Sometimes being a bitch is all a woman has to hold onto.”

Vera continues to illuminate the gender inequality her world, which highlights her drive to behave independently, taking control of her own life. Vera’s self-awareness about how others—including Dolores—perceive her allows Dolores to understand and feel a deeper kinship and solidarity with her.

“He’d go on until they were broke or spoiled, if I let him, and in the end he’d die n leave us with nothin but bills and a hole to bury him in.”

Here, Dolores sets up the main conflict of the plot. She believes that Joe will not only destroy his family, but also bankrupt them. The knowledge that her husband could molest their daughter, belittle their eldest son, and refashion their youngest boy in his own image causes Dolores to fear for her children and herself, setting up an untenable situation that will necessitate an active decision on her part.

“And then, all at once, it was like she looked around at me […] I think she saw me. And when she did, I understood why she was so unhappy: her father’d been at her somehow, and she was tryin to cover it up.”

Dolores becomes hyperaware of the signs of abuse in others. Identifying these signs in Jessie and recognizing that her experiences must mirror Selena’s provides Dolores with the final push she needs to kill Joe.

“Money on top […] booze underneath.”

Dolores describes her final argument with Joe as a financial disagreement made worse by Joe’s drinking. She later explains that many arguments are not what they seem and that while a conversation might reference a particular event, often people are really discussing something much deeper.

“I didn’t cry, not really, but I felt one tear go rollin down my cheek. I sometimes think that’s the reason I was able to go on livin on Little Tall for the next thirty years—that one single tear.”

Historically, women’s tears—particularly those of white women—when viewed through a male lens represent vulnerability, innocence, and a need for protection. Having established a sharp understanding of the power dynamics in her world between men and women, Dolores believes her single tear—not the substance of her testimony—was enough to convince the police not to bring murder charges against her for the deaths of Vera and her husband.

“I’m tired of pissing down my legs and forgetting who came to see me half an hour after they’re gone. I want to be done. Will you help me?”

At the end of her life, Vera begs Dolores to assist in her suicide. By providing Dolores with details of her suffering—both mental and physical—Vera uses pathos, an emotional rhetorical appeal meant to arouse Dolores’s pity and sympathy.

“It was home to me, though, and it was home to Selena. I think my good girl went on livin here long after she’d shaken the dust of Little Tall Island off her feet; I think she lived here in her memories […] in her heart […] in her dreams. Her nightmares.”

Dolores uses metaphor to describe Selena’s relationship to her childhood home. Even though Selena didn’t physically reside in Little Tall Island for the rest of her life, she mentally inhabited her past. For Dolores, Selena remained trapped in the experiences of her childhood and failed to escape her mental and physical abuse, despite Dolores’s murder of Joe.

“She told me all sorts of things with her mouth over the years […] but I realized that ever since the summer of 1962, her eyes’d been tellin me just one thing, over n over again: they were dead. Ayuh […] but not completely dead. Not as long as there was one scrawny, plain-faced housekeeper on an island off the coast of Maine who still believed they were alive.”

Dolores experiences an epiphany, realizing that Vera continued to present her children as living long after their deaths so that their memories and lives remained vital to someone besides Vera. This statement also functions as a denouement, or an explanation of key elements of the novel’s plot. By understanding that Vera had lost her children years previously, Dolores is now able to piece together the mystery of Vera’s odd behaviors and life choices.

“But listen to me, all three of you, n hear this if you don’t hear nothing else: everything I did, I did for love […] the love a natural mother feels for her children. That’s the strongest love there is in the world, and it’s the deadliest. There’s no bitch on earth like a mother frightened for her kids.”

In context, Dolores’s commentary on a mother’s love points to the novel’s theme of Violence against Women, implying that a woman needs to be both strong and deadly to stand against the abuse of men threatening herself and her children. Explaining her motivations and her character to her interrogators, Dolores believes her love for her children led her to become a hard woman who was able to murder her husband.