52 pages • 1 hour read
Ruth WareThe Death of Mrs. Westaway
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2018A 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
The Unreality of Fate
The Death of Mrs. Westaway explores the relationship between fate and agency. At times, Hal feels as though she is ruled by fate, trapped by the course of events. However, she resolves her problems by asserting her agency and learning that she does not have to submit to any predetermination. A key vehicle for this theme is the tarot cards. Tarot cards have a long history of fortune telling, but Hal discounts any magical powers. Instead, the cards help a person to come to terms with one possible version of their future. Once a person understands this possibility, they have the power to change it. Hal understands that fate is not real in the context of tarot, but she must learn to apply this lesson to the rest of her life. The tarot cards provide a useful framework for Hal to come to reconcile the meaning of the theme.
Hester deliberately wills the house to Hal to force her family’s confrontation with the brutal truth. This plan makes Hester seem like a mastermind, as though she is carefully controlling her children’s lives from beyond the grave. Hester’s machinations resemble a fatalism that forces the characters along a certain path, but she could not have predicted the events’ exact unfolding. For example, Hal’s financial situation, the weather, and chance accidents all play a role in the plot. Hester’s actions only seem like a supernatural force to characters who feel that they are not in control.
The theme finds resolution in Hal’s newfound agency. She confronts Ezra and accuses him of murder. With an awareness of what happened to Maggie, she seems to follow in her mother’s footsteps. However, Hal’s awareness of past events allows her to avoid Maggie’s same mistakes. She dismisses fate by defeating Ezra and regaining control over her own life.
Parenthood and Family
At the beginning of the novel, Hal is entirely alone. She is still struggling to deal with the death of her mother and she fears that she has no family or social safety net to save her from financial collapse. The importance of family is demonstrated through family’s absence. Moreover, rather than losing one mother, she has lost two: Maggie is her biological mother and Maud is the woman who raised her. At the same time, Maud’s presence stays with her, and Hal always considers Maud to be her mother, demonstrating how family transcends biology. To Hal, family is about love and support, something which Maud provided to her but which Maggie was unfairly denied the opportunity to give. Hal defines family on these relational terms, showing that parenthood and family are nuanced, complicated realities requiring reflection.
In contrast to Hal’s two loving mothers, Hester emerges as something of a monster. She traumatizes her children, to the point where they are almost happy at her death. She leaves each of her sons with unique psychological scarring, whether it is Harding’s compulsive quest for validation, Abel’s unrelenting empathy, or Ezra’s murderous narcissism. Hal might define parenthood and family by acts of love, but for the Westaway brothers, parenthood and family carry many negative connotations. These differing definitions only add to the complexity of the theme.
By the end of the novel, Hal finds family. She is visited in the hospital by Abel and Mitzi, who offer their sympathies for the way events unfolded. Hal is welcomed into the Westaway family, inheriting far more than just a house. She also inherits the traumas, the complexities, and the dark history of the Westaway family, learning that family is an incredibly complicated mixture of positive and negative. For example, while she is traumatized by her father’s murder attempt, she also receives love and support from her extended family. Ultimately, she would rather have a complicated family than no family at all.
Hidden Violence
Hidden violence is a theme, a motivation, and a fear for the characters. The theme finds expression through the novel’s continual focus on intertwining past and present; the Westaway’s past is filled with hidden violence, forcing the characters into a brutal confrontation once reality is uncovered. Many of these secrets are buried in the past because they are too difficult to resolve: Hester and Mrs. Warren ignore Ezra’s crimes because they want to protect the boy they so excessively favor; Abel tries to ignore his failed proposal to Edward because he finds the pain of rejection unbearable; Hal keeps her mother’s possessions locked away inside a box because handling them would bring back the grief that she has tried to move beyond. All three of the Westaway brothers who grew up in Trepassen House endured their mother’s abuse, and they try to leave the property as soon as possible. In each instance, the characters hope that these psychic wounds can remain repressed, but this is never possible.
One of the gravest examples of hidden violence is Hester’s treatment of Maggie. When Maggie is pregnant with Ezra’s child, Hester locks her in the cold, cramped attic room. Maggie is imprisoned, starved, and beaten so badly that she worries that she will lose her baby. The attic room is separate from the house and invisible to the outside world, just as the violence against Maggie is hidden away—but not forever. Hester, aware that past violence must surface, uses her will to expose her own hidden violence, thus exposing even more trauma until everything is uncovered. Once one part of the violence is uncovered, more inevitably follows.
Rather than Maud hiding violence, the threat of violence hides her. Maud fears her mother and brother, so she goes into hiding, but even she cannot remain hidden. When she threatens to tell Hal the truth, Ezra finds and kills her. Like the trauma of the past, violence always finds a way out into the open.
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By Ruth Ware
