Despite the grim premise and the repeated assertion that their father's acts ruined each woman's life, the novel's theme is positive. Stephen's many marriages and his deliberate acts to isolate them meant the sisters grew up apart. In the case of Elizabeth and Mary, they knew one another but each was full of envy of the other. Yet when the women meet as adults, their individual, cautious revelations and honest reactions to each other gradually overcome their suspicion. The four have vastly different incomes, lifestyles, and sexual or marital status, the signals by which the outside world most often judges and classifies women. But their bond of blood and shared experiences ultimately leads to mutual love.
Stephen's mechanisms of control: secrecy, rage, isolation, power plays backed with money, are defeated once their objects start talking.....
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