The Maidens

“It was unseasonably warm that Monday evening. Even though it was early October, the Indian summer prevailed, like an obstinate party guest, refusing to heed the hints from the dying leaves on the trees that it might be time to go.”

Throughout the novel, descriptions of the weather echo themes, motifs, and characters—a technique called “pathetic fallacy.” In this instance, the “unseasonably warm” October day reflects Mariana’s unhealthy attachment to her romanticized memories of Sebastian. Summer stubbornly holds on despite its season having passed. Signaling characters’ moods and narrative themes through weather is also a characteristic feature of Gothic novels. In this sense, it demonstrates intertextuality: Michaelides situates his novel in a particular genre by using that genre’s techniques.

“She believed in the group, in these eight individuals sitting in a circle—she believed in the circle, and its power to heal. In her more fanciful moments, Mariana could be quite mystical about the power of circles: the circle in the sun, the moon, or the earth; the planets spinning through the heavens; the circle in a wheel; the dome of a church—or a wedding ring. Plato said the soul was a circle—which made sense to Mariana. Life was a circle too, wasn’t it?—from birth to death.” 

According to Plato, the circle is the most perfect geometrical form. His theory holds that perfection cannot exist in the physical world but only in the philosophic realm of thought. Thus, by invoking Plato and the idea of a perfect form, the passage draws the reader’s attention to the distance between ideal and reality. Mariana herself does not seem to acknowledge this distance since she locates the circle not only in the soul, heavens, and life cycle but also in the physical realm of objects (“the dome of a church,” “a wedding ring”) (14).

“Once you kill another human being, there’s no going back.

I see that now. I see I have become altogether a different person.

It’s a bit like being reborn, I suppose. But no ordinary birth—it’s a metamorphosis. What emerges from the ashes is not a phoenix, but an uglier creature: deformed, incapable of flight, a predator using its claws to cut and rip.”

Chapters from a murderer’s perspective, narrated in the first person, interrupt the otherwise third-person limited narrative of The Maidens. Later, readers learn that these chapters form a letter from Sebastian to Zoe. This passage is the first in which the readers meet the killer. It is not until the end of the novel that they learn this killer is not, at least directly, the Cambridge killer. The letters thus provide a form of misdirection, as readers try to match the author of the letters with one of the characters whom Mariana interacts with. The letter writer’s description of himself as “deformed”—metamorphosed rather than reborn—speaks to the disruption of a healthy cycle of nature.

“Mariana was forever searching her memory these days—looking for the past, trying to see it clearly; trying to understand and contextualize the journey they had been on together. She would try to remember little things they did, re-create forgotten conversations in her mind, imagine what Sebastian might have said or done at each moment. But she was unsure how much of what she recalled was real; the more remembering she did, the more it seemed Sebastian was turning into myth. He was all spirit now—all story.” 

Mariana’s unreliability as a narrator begins to emerge early in the novel. Here, she reveals herself to be trapped in her memories—steeped in the past and her own mythologizing of that past and unwilling to create a new, forward-focused life. If, as the novel suggests, life and death are a circle continually starting, reaching fulfillment, and restarting, then she is disrupting that natural process by continually looking backwards. Her admission that she cannot be sure what “was real” and that her preoccupation with the past is “turning [Sebastian] into myth” alerts the readers that her perceptions cannot be trusted (30). Since her perspective dominates the primary narrative, readers linger in uncertainty, unable to rely on the vision of events that Mariana offers.

“She fondly imagined her mother’s arrival in Athens—armed with trunks and suitcases full of books instead of clothes. And in her absence, the lonely girl would turn to her mother’s books for solace and companionship. During the long summer afternoons, Mariana grew to love the feel of a book in her hands, the smell of paper, the sensation of turning a page. She would sit on the rusty swing in the shade, bite into a crisp green apple, or an overripe peach, and lose herself in a story.” 

In this passage, the author establishes Mariana as a reader and dreamer so isolated in her youth that her most common companions were books. This image of Mariana provides a biographical basis for the novel’s many and frequent literary and mythological references. It demonstrates that stories and myths have shaped Mariana’s reality since childhood, simultaneously incorporating an element of the dark academia aesthetic (the romanticized bookworm) and characterizing Mariana as more comfortable in imaginary worlds than her lived one.

“As she neared the college, her surroundings grew more and more beautiful with each step: there were spires and turrets above her head, and beech trees lining the streets, shedding golden leaves that collected in piles along the pavement. Long rows of black bicycles were chained against the wrought-iron railings. Above the railings, boxes of geraniums enlivened the red brick college walls with splashes of pink and white.” 

This passage exemplifies the lush, cinematic descriptions that saturate the novel. Mariana’s perspective dominates, as readers see through her eyes what is above and around her. Her vision idealizes the campus, with its “golden leaves,” “wrought-iron railings,” and flowers that “enlivened red brick walls” (42). 

“The temple was dedicated to Demeter, goddess of the harvest—goddess of life—and to her daughter, Persephone—goddess of death. The two goddesses were often worshipped together, two sides of the same coin—mother and daughter, life and death.” 

Here, the narrator draws attention to the cyclicality of the Demeter and Persephone myth. As mother and daughter, they exemplify the interdependence of opposites, including life and death. Each defines the other. On another level, referencing this myth highlights that humans create mythologies to explain the unexplainable. The Demeter and Persephone myth explained why seasons exist, but characters throughout the novel create their own micro-mythologies to make sense of their experiences and excuse their behaviors.

“Nearly fourteen months had passed since then, since Sebastian’s death. But in many ways, Mariana was still there, still trapped on the beach in Naxos, and she would be forever.”

Several times in the novel, the narrator portrays Mariana as stuck—frozen in time and removed from the cycle of life and death that keeps the world and humanity moving forward. Disrupting or otherwise rejecting this cycle emerged in Sebastian’s first chapter as a fundamentally destructive, deformed act. In this sense, Mariana’s inability to move forward is a self-destructive act, since it prevents her from being “reborn,” like the phoenix, into a new life of her making.

“St Christopher’s was among the oldest and the prettiest of the Cambridge colleges. It was made up of several courtyards and gardens leading down to the river, and built in a combination of architectural styles—Gothic, neoclassical, Renaissance—as the college had been rebuilt and expanded over the centuries. It was a haphazard, organic growth—and, Mariana thought, all the lovelier for it.” 

The college within Cambridge that Mariana studied in (and in which Zoe is a student) is a pastiche of architectural styles. This passage provides an example of how Michaelides uses descriptions of weather and place to echo the novel’s thematic concerns on multiple levels. The time periods referenced are all popular elements of the dark academia aesthetic. In addition, the “organic growth” that culminates in a blend of styles suggests that the college exists within a natural cycle of continual death and rebirth: The stable entity is the university itself, which survives and continues because it continues to reinvent itself according to the standards of the time, e.g., “Gothic, neoclassical, Renaissance” (51).

“In the centre of the lawn stood a discoloured statue of Eros clutching a bow and arrow. Centuries of rain and rust had aged him considerably, turning him from a cherub into a small, old green man.” 

The Eros statue in this passage stands in the courtyard outside Zoe’s room on campus. Ancient Graeco-Roman mythology depicts Eros alternately as a man whose power borders on monstrous (as in the myth of Eros and Psyche) or as a small child doing his mother’s bidding (as in the Hellenistic epic Jason and the Golden Fleece). The presence of the statue serves as a kind of foreshadowing, echoing elements of Zoe’s transformation through her relationship with Sebastian. Zoe does Sebastian’s bidding, implementing his plan to murder Mariana and becoming monstrous in the process.

“The arched windows were latticed, with diamond-shaped panes of glass set in lead; the small panes broke up Zoe’s image, fracturing it into a jigsaw of diamond shapes—and, for a second, Mariana assembled another image from the jigsaw: not a twenty-year-old woman but a girl of six, silly and sweet, red-faced, with pig-tails.” 

Here, Mariana’s fixation on the past impacts her ability to interpret events and perceive danger. Rather than seeing Zoe as she has become—as she is in the present time—Mariana imagines her as the little girl she once was. Living in the past thus prevents Mariana from recognizing that Zoe is the murderer and that Mariana herself is in danger.

“She soon discovered how painfully authentic and familiar his voice sounded—she had the strange, out-of-body sensation this was her voice, not Tennyson’s; that he was articulating her inexpressible feelings for her.” 

Over the course of the novel, Mariana’s disconnect with reality grows increasingly apparent. Hints are scattered throughout, gradually eroding the reader’s trust in her point of view. In this passage, as Mariana reads Tennyson’s In Memoriam, she loses herself in his words and voice to such an extent that she grows unable to differentiate herself from him. That this kind of experience may be familiar to avid readers makes it difficult to determine whether Mariana experiencing Tennyson in this way is healthy or maladapted, heightening the reader’s uncertainty and building suspense.

“It was a beautiful morning. All along the river, sunlight shimmered through the willow trees, making the leaves glow a luminous green above Mariana’s head. And under her feet, wild cyclamen grew along the path in patches, like tiny pink butterflies. It was hard to reconcile such beauty with her reason for being there, or with her thoughts, which revolved around murder and death.” 

Here, a moment of clarity disrupts the fevered dream quality that often characterizes descriptions of place in the novel. Readers experience the woodland through Mariana’s physical experience of it: what is below her feet and above her head. In this instance, Mariana is very much rooted in the present moment. She is experiencing the scene’s beauty, but the investigation she is conducting tempers that experience. Such moments of clarity make it difficult to determine how in touch with reality Mariana is.

“His invisibility made him into something more than human, something supernatural: a creature born from myth, a phantom.

Except Mariana knew he wasn’t a phantom, or a monster. He was just a man, and he didn’t merit being mythologised; he didn’t deserve it.

He deserved only—if she could summon it in her heart—pity and fear. The very qualities, according to Aristotle, that constituted catharsis in tragedy.” 

Here, Mariana reflects on the tension permeating campus as the murderer remains on the loose. On the one hand, she demonstrates a temptation to romanticize even the horrific by turning it into a story. On the other, Mariana seems to want to remain connected to reality, as she reminds herself that the murderer is “just a man” (190). Yet the permeable boundary between fantasy and reality remains active in Mariana: The text she invokes to make sense of her experience is a philosophy of poetry: Aristotle’s Poetics. His theory of tragedy suggests that humans pity in others what they fear for themselves, and that tragedy provides a vicarious experience of this. Mariana is keeping herself apart from the tragedy, unaware that she is its central figure.

“It was strange, she thought, how moments of extreme clarity often had the same texture as drunkenness.”

In this passage, Mariana has left Fosca’s rooms “unsteady on her feet” (235), having consumed wine and champagne and discovered the same passage underlined in his book of Euripides’s plays as appeared on the postcard found among the murder victim’s possessions. She refers to her discovery as a moment of “extreme clarity” that shares “the same texture as drunkenness,” but the conflation she makes is illogical. In fact, Mariana is drunk, and she has not achieved clarity but rather confirmation of her (mistaken) preexisting belief that Fosca is the murderer. Her judgment has become increasingly unreliable.

“Why is he trying to blind us? What doesn’t he want us to see? What is he trying to distract us from? Answer that, Mariana—and you’ll catch him.” 

Here, Theo, a colleague of Mariana’s, offers his insights into the murder case. His suggestion derives from the staged nature of the murders and serves as ironic foreshadowing. Though his theory about misdirection proves correct, it also becomes clear that Mariana herself has been using her romanticized memories to hide from the truth about her relationships with Sebastian and Zoe. For Mariana to catch the murderer, she must first face that truth. 

“‘We often talk about that in group therapy, you know—even when people are no longer with us, they can remain a powerful presence.’

As she said this, she glanced at one of the empty chairs—and saw Sebastian sitting there, looking at her with amusement.

She banished him, and went on.” 

In this passage, Mariana is conducting a group therapy session with the reluctant Maidens, but it is clear that she is projecting her own traumas onto them and that her grasp on reality is fragile. The amused look she attributes to Sebastian is enigmatic, as the situation does not call for humor. In this sense, it serves as another clue that Mariana is hiding something from herself, and that her perspective on events cannot be trusted. 

“As she made her way down the street, she felt anger at first, then a surprising twinge of sadness—then regret. Not at having hurt him, but at having rejected him, having closed the door to this other narrative that might have been.”

Mariana repeatedly rejects Fred’s overtures. His character is one of several red herrings the narrative establishes. He describes losing his mother, an experience the letter-writer shares, and his eagerness makes him seem suspect in Mariana’s eyes. Yet her feelings here present as inappropriate to the circumstances: She is more concerned with the imaginary story in which she could star than with the feelings of Fred as a person.

“A thin layer of mist was rising up from the river, and swirled around Zoe as she punted. She was so beautiful standing there, her hair blowing in the breeze, that faraway look in her eyes. She resembled the Lady of Shalott on her doomed, final journey along the river.”

Here, Mariana is projecting, collapsing the boundaries between herself and the other (fictional or real). As the reader will soon learn, Zoe intends to take Mariana on her final ride down the river. Mariana, then, is playing the role of Lady of Shalott, and given her later confession, Mariana knows this on some level. The veil that has shrouded her vision comes close to ending her life.

“The sun suddenly went behind a cloud, and time seemed to slow to a crawl. Mariana could hear the first drops of rain, tapping at the stone windowsill in the folly, and an owl screeching somewhere in the distance. And in this timeless space, Mariana realised something: she already knew what Zoe was going to say, and perhaps, on some level, she had always known.

Then the sun came out again—time caught up with itself with an abrupt jolt. And Mariana repeated the question.” 

Mariana has followed Zoe into the woodland against her intention to return with Zoe to London and against Clarissa’s urgent advice. As Mariana asks who wrote the letter to Zoe if not Fosca, and as the romantic fantasy is about to explode as a self-destroying fiction, time stops for Mariana. Thematically, she is about to experience the death of her old life and beliefs. Narratively, the conceit of time stopping highlights the importance of the revelation.

“‘You framed him, Mariana. Sebastian said all I had to do was make you think I was afraid of Fosca. You did the rest. That was the funniest part of this whole performance: watching you play detective.’ She smiled. ‘You’re not the detective…You’re the victim.’” 

In this passage, Zoe reveals herself to be both the chess master and, like Mariana, the pawn. Sebastian has played them both, one against the other. Zoe has become the conduit through which his plan to kill his wife proceeds even after his own death, while Mariana has been manipulated into framing Fosca for murder. As the pieces fall into place for Mariana, they also do so for the reader, who understands the true source of Zoe’s behavior over the course of the novel. 

“Mariana stared into Zoe’s eyes, as all the pieces came together in her mind, and she finally faced the terrible truth she had wanted to avoid seeing. There was a word for this moment in Greek tragedy: anagnorisis—recognition—the moment the hero finally sees the truth and understands his fate—and how it’s always been there, the whole time, in front of him. Mariana used to wonder what that moment felt like. Now she knew.” 

Earlier in the novel, Theo suggested to Mariana that she could solve the murder when she figured out what the murderer was hiding. In actuality, Theo was only half correct: In order for Mariana to determine what the murderer was hiding, she also had to face what she was hiding from herself. In ancient Greek tragedies, anagnorisis leads to a reversal of fortune; tragic heroes discover a truth about themselves at the moment that they lose (or are at risk of losing) what is most important to them. Mariana has to lose the protective fantasy that she has constructed around herself in order to find out who she is and begin the healing and rebirth processes.

“She felt alert, somehow—perhaps awake was a better word: everything seemed clearer, as if a fog had been lifted; colors were sharper, the edges of things more defined. The world no longer felt muted and grey and far away—behind a veil.

It felt alive again, and vivid, and full of colour, wet with autumn rain; and vibrating with the eternal hum of endless birth and death.”

After Zoe is taken away, Mariana stands with Inspector Sangha attempting to process everything that has happened. She is distressed at the revelations. At the same time, she has achieved a kind of relief, even catharsis, because she is “awake” in the present moment (350). She does not imagine figures from her past or project herself onto a literary character. Her ability to feel pain from what has just happened indicates participation in a healthy cycle. The weather echoes this, being both appropriate to the season (“autumn rain”) and in process rather than frozen outside of time