63 pages • 2 hours read
Laura LippmanLady in the Lake
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2019A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Interconnectedness Versus Anonymity in City Life
The interconnectedness of the characters in Lady in the Lake, which prompts the many collisions between them, dictate and propel the novel’s plot. In 1965, Baltimore was a city of 1.5 million people. Yet, as depicted by Laura Lippman, the city functions more like a small town. The structure of the novel emphasizes the interconnectedness of humanity in cities by creating the sense that every person is, at once, anonymous and always under observation. This reality complicates and undermines the characters’ efforts to hide or misrepresent their many secrets.
Part of the sense of connection in the novel derives from the characters’ interwoven pasts. Their connections could be as subtle as a sighting or as intimate as a shared history, but regardless, connections are consistently emerging. The novel opens with Cleo noticing Maddie long before Maddie knew Cleo existed. Though this moment had little effect on Maddie, Cleo is struck by the poise and attractiveness of Milton Schwartz’s wife. Cleo knew Milton as well, recalling him as a cruel college student whose family lived in and operated a grocery store in the neighborhood. Shortly after, Maddie’s character arc is triggered by the random reappearance of high school acquaintance Wally Weiss, now calling himself Wallace Wright. Later, Maddie, who dated Tessie Fine’s father when they were young, finds Tessie’s body. These threads tying the characters together build a complex web, one that complicates otherwise innocuous encounters.
Caught in this web of connection, the characters struggle with their respective wishes to be either visible or invisible, rarely finding an advantageous balance. Maddie is accustomed to the intimacy of the social circle that she shared with Milton and with her family; as prominent members of Baltimore’s Jewish community they enjoyed a certain measure of visibility. What Maddie does not expect is that there are few actions she can take that will remain unnoticed, as evident when Ferdie tells her he knows that she went to see Cleo’s family. Most of the minor characters in Maddie’s orbit are also either members of the press or members of law enforcement. Apart from knowing one another in the context of their employment related duties, they have all gleaned information about each other’s private lives. The opinions they have developed as a result often dictate how they interact with one another, determining whether they act with kindness or ruthlessness.
Perspective’s Role in Shaping Reality
The structure of Lady in the Lake provides the reader the opportunity to see most of the characters in the novel from their own perspective and from the perspective of at least one other person. The inconsistencies between how the novel’s characters conceive of themselves and how they are perceived by others emphasizes the theme of Perspective’s Role in Shaping Reality. Throughout the novel, characters delude themselves and misinterpret the behaviors and motives of others, even deliberately and remorselessly lying if it serves their purpose.
Maddie is among the greatest culprits of allowing her perspective to twist the facts, and she frequently deceives—or strives to deceive—both others and herself. The delusion that appears to cause her the most subconscious distress is her belief that she seduced Allan Durst Sr.; she never recognizes their relationship, which took place when she was only 17, as the abusive, coercive arrangement that it was, one meant to feed his ego. At 37, she does not conceive of the relationship any differently than she did at 17, with the exception that she wishes she had confronted Mrs. Durst and regrets consenting to an abortion. At the end of the 1940s, the medical understanding of women’s health and fertility was ample enough to suggest to Maddie that she could not know for certain that Milton is Seth’s father; nonetheless, she continues to cling to the belief that her sexual encounter with Allan Durst Sr. enabled her pregnancy with Seth yet somehow eliminated the possibility that he might be Seth’s father.
This theme manifests as well in the novel’s exploration of media. The media frequently shapes the characters’ understanding of their world, driving fears about the safety of certain neighborhoods and their assumptions about other characters. The media, however, suffers from the same biases and prejudices that the people themselves do. Cleo, for example, notes with some bitterness how the local newspapers fixate on the disappearance of Tessie Fine while largely ignoring her own disappearance. Maddie’s specific moral failings, in turn, make her the perfect model for someone who could excel in this field; her assertion of her biased perspective as objective truth ultimately apparently does little to undermine her success as a professional in journalism.
The use of many minor characters, each with a single first-person chapter, adds to the emphasis on perspective throughout the novel. Someone is always watching, and what they see will have consequences. The patrolman who drives Maddie home after finding Tessie’s body, for example, returns to Maddie’s house later to see fellow police officer Ferdie Platt emerging. Later, this patrolman spreads a rumor about their involvement that paints Maddie’s involvement at the paper as a deliberate plant to keep Shell Gordon appraised of the investigation. This state of being constantly under observation works with the theme of Interconnectedness Versus Anonymity in City Life, intensifying a sense of how dramatically reality varies depending on the viewer’s eyes.
The Intersectionality of Midcentury Prejudices
With its myriad and diverse first-person characters, as well as its two female protagonists, Lady in the Lake is deeply interested in how social categories interact to shape social expectations and demands. These expectations and demands, notably, are situated in midcentury Baltimore, a specific social context with which Lippman, a former reporter for the Sun, is personally familiar. Throughout the novel, race, gender, and sexual orientation, as well as socioeconomic class, work together to influence how characters view each other and how society at large views each character.
Instances of prejudice are common, with the characters often adapting to survive. Wally Weiss, a member of the Jewish community of Baltimore, changes his name to “Wallace Wright” in an effort to avoid potential antisemitic biases in his public life. Ferdie Platt and Violet Whyte, both Black police officers, are well aware that they must navigate racism in order to advance their careers. Among the women in particular, though, prejudices about gender often complicate other prejudices.
Cleo and Maddie, through their contrasting experiences, provide constant insight into how social categories can interact to have unique effects on how an individual moves through the world. Cleo and Maddie are separated by age, marital status, socioeconomic position, racial identities, and cultural affiliations, all of which shape their experiences. By her mid-twenties, Cleo is a poor Black woman who is unmarried and has two sons who are half-brothers. She hears the frequent refrain from her father that she will never find a legitimate romantic partner because no man is interested in raising another’s child. In turn, Cleo’s disappearance elicits minimal media coverage, and her apparent death is met with victim blaming. In comparison, Maddie is a decade older, a white Jewish woman with a single son by her wealthy and well-established husband. When Maddie leaves Milton Schwartz, the consensus among those in their tight-knit Jewish community is that he must have transgressed in such a manner that caused an affront to her dignity. The rumor is that he was discovered having an affair. Where Cleo receives little empathy, Maddie receives the benefit of the doubt. While society assigns Cleo little value, multiple characters strive to warn Maddie away from what they perceive to be dangerous areas and actors.
The two women’s divergent social experiences shape their perceptions of their problems and their goals when they decide to resolve those problems. Maddie is deeply dissatisfied in her marriage, eager to gain financial independence by whatever means necessary. She does not want motherhood to fulfill every aspect of her life. To address her challenges, she leaves her husband and seeks independence and self-determination. She explores her sexuality, and she pursues employment. In contrast, while Maddie feels constrained by her marriage, Cleo feels trapped by her lack of a man. At the start of the novel, Cleo has already embarked on her quest to find the man of her dreams; with this perfect man, Cleo hopes she and her sons will be able to live a stable, happy life as a family. For Cleo, pre-divorce Maddie ironically represents the standard that Cleo aspires to meet.
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