The Blind Assassin

Iris Chase Griffen has described her sister Laura’s suicide in 1945—a suicide that was framed as an accident when it was reported in the newspaper. After this, the book switches to an extract from Laura’s novel The Blind Assassin, published posthumously in 1947. The passage describes a woman who is looking at the only picture she has left of herself and a man—a man who was presumably her lover, although this isn’t spelled out explicitly. In this lyrical quotation, the woman analyzes the photograph, comparing how she felt at the time it was taken to her current feelings. She tries to access the truth of how the man was feeling when it was taken.

As such, this quotation provides an important reflection on the act of narration, particularly narrating from one’s own personal history. Despite the fact that the woman was actually there when the photograph was taken, there is still much about the scene it depicts that remains a mystery to her. She is uncertain about the man’s feelings—and even about her own, to a degree. Part of this uncertainty is triggered by the difference in her current perspective and how she felt at the time, illustrated by her comments on her own misplaced precociousness (“she hadn’t considered herself too young at the time”). The quotation is also a significant meditation on the mysterious nature of love, which involves a range of conflicting and contradictory emotions.

The novel-within-the-novel, The Blind Assassin, portrays two lovers: an unnamed man and woman. The man has started telling the woman a story in his genre of expertise, science fiction. The story is set on the planet Zycron and the (now destroyed) city of Sakiel-Norn, where inhabitants are divided into two classes: the elite Snilfards and the subjugated Ygnirods. In this passage, the man narrating the story describes the brutal oppression of the Ygnirods, including their attempts at resistance. There are a few important things to note about this passage and what it conveys about the man’s political orientation.

Firstly, the passage emphasizes that although the Ygnirods make themselves seem foolish and complacent, in reality they are deeply unsatisfied with their suffering and routinely try and revolt. This reflects the idea that just because a group of people does not overtly show signs of resistance does not mean that they accept their own subjugation and mistreatment. Secondly, the treatment of the enslaved Ygnirods—and particularly the creative ways in which they bypass the rule prohibiting them from reading—has an important parallel with the history of slavery on Earth, such as the enslavement of African people in the Americas. While Zycron may be an invented, alien planet, it is more similar to Earth than the reader might initially assume.

In the novel-within-the-novel, The Blind Assassin, the man continues to tell the woman his science-fiction story set in the alien city of Sakiel-Norn. He explains that the city is a major trading site that specializes in luxury textiles. Enslaved Ygnirod children produce delicate carpets that need to be woven by small fingers, and this work in turn leads the children to go blind. In this passage, the man explains that carpet-sellers boast about how many children were blinded in making a given carpet, indicating that this is a sign of increased value. Again, this quotation is important for conveying the man’s political views and illuminating the similarities between Sakiel-Norn and human society.

While on Earth it might not be common to directly boast about how many workers were exploited and harmed in making a product, humanity does employ similarly exploitative systems of production. This is particularly relevant because in the main narrative, Iris’s husband, Richard, is a textiles manufacturer who treats his workers poorly and opposes any attempts by the working class to attain more rights or better working conditions. In this way, Sakiel-Norn serves as a kind of parallel—albeit it a somewhat dramatized one—to industry on Earth. Thus, it enables the man to explain his political views (the man is implied to be a communist or at least a communist sympathizer) to the woman by expressing an underlying truth about humanity through an abstracted (and arguably more engaging) fictional story.

In the novel-within-the-novel, The Blind Assassin, the man continues to tell the woman his science-fiction story set in the alien city of Sakiel-Norn. He’s told her about the enslaved Ygnirod children who are blinded in the process of weaving carpets and how, after the children go blind, they’re are sold into brothels—but that some escape and become hired as the titular “blind assassins.” The woman interrupts the man to tell him that the story he is telling is too sad and, in this quotation, the man replies that he chooses to tell the stories he’s skilled at, plus the ones he thinks the woman will believe. This is an intriguing and in some ways contradictory statement. As a science fiction writer, the man is skilled at inventing stories set in faraway, alien worlds—so why would these be the stories that the woman believes?

Given the overall context of the quote, what the man really means by “stories I’m good at” and “ones you’ll believe” is that he deliberately tells sad stories. Not only this, but he constructs these sad stories because he believes they reflect the sadness of the world. This is an important message in a book that generally refuses to deliver happy endings and rather dwells in the tragedy, misery, and meaningless of life. While the woman may be sheltered compared to the man (which is why she asks him to stop telling sad stories), both of them lead lives characterized by oppression, disappointment, and tragedy. Sad stories are thus what they are familiar with, which makes such stories easy for the man to tell and easy for the woman to believe. 

In the novel-within-the-novel, The Blind Assassin, the man is continues to narrate his science-fiction story to the woman during their secret meetings. He tells the woman about a girl who is about to be sacrificed inside the Temple in Sakiel-Norn. Before the girl is killed, she will be raped by “the Lord of the Underworld” who is really just a courtesan who dresses up. In this passage, the man explains the reasoning behind this ritual, noting that “Zycronians are afraid of virgins” because they believe that dead virgins will seek revenge on the living. Of course, there are multiple ways in which this belief isn’t exactly logically coherent, and these issues are crucial to the novel’s exploration of doomed love, female desire, violence, and death.

One of the things that is illogical (or at least logically contradictory) about the fear of dead virgins is the way in which it clashes with the depiction of living virgins. Part of the reason why in many cultures (including on Zycron) women’s virginity is treated as a big deal is because virginity is associated with traits such as passivity, purity, and submission. Within patriarchal culture, these traits are considered to constitute the ideal of feminine behavior. In a sense, virginity can be seen as a way of celebrating or fetishizing female powerlessness. However, as the man points out here, the flip side of this is a fear of female virgins and particularly those who die virgins. Women who want to seek revenge for being “betrayed in love” are imbued with a scary, destructive power and an appetite for violence.

In the novel-within-the-novel, The Blind Assassin, the man is still telling the woman his science-fiction story, explaining how a rival tribe who call themselves the People of Joy are planning to attack Sakiel-Norn and kill the King. The King, who is planning to sell a lover he’s grown bored with into slavery, is unaware of this plot. He even sees the campfire of the People of Joy in the distance but he doesn’t realize what it is. At this point, the woman interrupts with the first line quoted here, saying that she feels sorry for the King. This indicates that she is capable of feeling sympathy for people in power (and even those who immorally abuse their power), a quality that distinguishes her from the man.

The man, on the other hand, indicates he believes that the King deserves to die. However, he hides the full nature of his opinion by then discussing “Survival of the fittest,” a concept he is actually parodying even while pretending to be sympathetic to it. The man’s communist beliefs means he believes that “survival of the fittest” is an unjust and immoral way of looking at the world adopted by elites to justify their own disproportionate power. He may believe that kings really have to be “bastard[s],” but unlike the woman who uses this idea to feel sympathy for the King, his conclusion (although it is unstated here) is that kings should therefore not exist.

In the novel-within-the-novel, The Blind Assassin, the man continues telling the woman the story of the planet Zycron—and, in particular, about the blind assassin sent to kill a girl who was about to be sacrificed anyway. In a surprise twist, the bind assassin falls in love with the girl. At this point in the story, the woman interrupts to express her surprise at the romantic turn of events in the story. In this quotation, the man denies this accusation, returning to his usual cynicism in a rather defensive manner.

This quotation is a key example of the man’s mixed feelings regarding romantic love. Although he is ostensibly discussing the science-fiction story, it obvious that the internal conflict on which he is truly focused relates to his feelings about the woman. The man obviously prides himself on his rational, cynical, and harsh outlook on the world. This is evident when he is quick to characterize the blind assassin as selfish and to say that the blind assassin might still kill the girl with whom he fell in love. The man’s comment that “the young habitually mistake lust for love” is evidently an expression of his own anxieties about his relationship with the woman. Are they really in love, or just caught up in feelings of lust? The man seems highly resistant to the prospect of letting himself confuse one for the other.

The passage also serves as an important reminder on the way loving and violent feelings can coexist, a phenomenon which, the novel seems to suggest, is particularly common in men. Just because the blind assassin loves the woman doesn’t mean he won’t kill her—a reminder that, in the mind of the man telling the story, love does not preclude violence. 

In the novel-within-the-novel, The Blind Assassin, the woman has complained that the science-fiction story the man has told her is too brutal, miserable, and depressing. In response, the man tells her another story, this time about two human men named Will and Boyd who—in the midst of fighting the evil Lizard Men of the planet Xenor—find themselves on a mysterious planet called Aa’A populated by Peach Women. All their desires and needs on the planet are instantly fulfilled—whether for food, sex, or shelter. Yet in this passage, Will comes to feel that the paradise of Aa’A is actually Hell, because it’s a “trap” where nothing really changes and no one is allowed to leave.

In this sense, Will is articulating an old philosophical conundrum: is there such thing as total happiness, or does happiness rely on a contrast with sadness in order exist? Moreover, if happiness cannot exist without sadness, then how could heaven be real? In the context of the novel, the man’s rejection of happiness (which he portrays through his stories) seems to come out of a place of bitterness and disillusionment. Forced to live in hiding due to his political beliefs and only able to see the woman he loves in secret, stolen slices of time due to her marriage, it is little wonder that he is critical of happiness as a concept. At the same time, the cynicism with which he discusses romantic love suggests that he actually believe that a whole life trapped in any one situation (including a romantic union) is actually a “trap,” even if a person is trapped with someone they love.

In the novel-within-the-novel, The Blind Assassin, the last story that the man tells the woman is about the Lizard Men of Xenor, a brutally violent race. After the man leaves Canada to fight in the Spanish Civil War, the woman scours stores to find the version of the story printed in a science-fiction magazine. In the story, the invasion of the Lizard Men has the unintended consequence of uniting the heavily hierarchical city of Sakiel-Norn against a common enemy, as described in this quotation. This is an unexpected and rather over-simplistic turn of events that seems to indicate the man chose to excise his political worldview from the story (perhaps in order to make it easier to sell). 

On one hand, it is sometimes true that in times of crisis, different classes and races end up being forced to work together and previous divisions become less prominent. At the same time, given what the man has narrated about the Ygnirods’ desire to resist their subjugation, it seems unlikely that they would be so willing to forget all the ways in which the Snilfards brutally oppressed them and fight alongside them. Indeed, it seems more likely that the Ygnirods would team up with the Lizard Men in hope of destroying the Snilfards. The fact that the man composes the story in this way in order to get it published indicates that he was so desperate for money that he was forced to compromise his political and artistic integrity. 

Chapter Ten ended with a separation between the man and woman in the novel-within-the-novel, The Blind Assassin. The woman has had a baby with her husband, while the man has left to fight in the Spanish Civil War. At the very end of the chapter, the woman dreams of him, but in the end he disappears. In the beginning of Chapter Eleven, Iris writes that at this point in the narrative of her and Laura’s life (which, for the most part, lines up temporally with the novel-within-the-novel by this point), “things take a darker turn.” In this passage, she talks about how Laura didn’t anticipate this “darker turn” because the framework of tragedy through which people now read her wasn’t apparent at the time.

This is an important reflection on the difference between narrative and ordinary life. People living their real lives do not usually think of themselves as “romantic heroine[s],” not only because they can’t predict their own fate but also because real life is more complicated than a story. In the latter part of the passage, Iris discusses this, showing how Laura was not just a tragic, sympathetic victim. Instead, she was three-dimensional—as much annoying, boring, and happy as tragically sad. It seems as if Iris is saying this in order to correct her own presentation of Laura and ensure that the reader doesn’t get so swept up in the “romantic” narrative that they lose sight of the truth behind it.

Iris has revealed that she is the real author of The Blind Assassin (the novel-within-the-novel) and that the main narrative of Atwood’s novel is another manuscript Iris has written in order to complete and correct the story contained within the book she published under Laura’s name. She has also dedicated and addressed this second book to Sabrina, to give her estranged granddaughter a chance to know the truth about her family history. In the epilogue to The Blind Assassin, the woman looks at the photograph of herself and the man, just as she did in the prologue. (Indeed, some of the sentences in the epilogue are repeated almost word-for-word in the epilogue.) However, the difference is that in the epilogue, the woman mentions the other hand that’s in the picture—the hand whose body has been cut out of frame.

Considering the reader now knows that the woman is based on Iris, it is obvious that this hand belongs to Laura. Yet because both sisters cut the other one out of their own respective copies of their picture with Alex in the main narrative, there is a sense in which it could also be the other way around. This confirms the idea that Iris and Laura’s identities are fluid or reversible. At the same time, this quotation also emphasizes that the sisters are indivisible. Even if they try to cut each other out of each other’s lives, they cannot ever be truly separate—and indeed, even after Laura dies, she remains a haunting, active presence for Iris. Her hand, the hand that helped write the story of Iris’s life, is always there. 

Iris Chase Griffen has described her sister Laura’s suicide in 1945—a suicide that was framed as an accident when it was reported in the newspaper. After this, the book switches to an extract from Laura’s novel The Blind Assassin, published posthumously in 1947. The passage describes a woman who is looking at the only picture she has left of herself and a man—a man who was presumably her lover, although this isn’t spelled out explicitly. In this lyrical quotation, the woman analyzes the photograph, comparing how she felt at the time it was taken to her current feelings. She tries to access the truth of how the man was feeling when it was taken.

As such, this quotation provides an important reflection on the act of narration, particularly narrating from one’s own personal history. Despite the fact that the woman was actually there when the photograph was taken, there is still much about the scene it depicts that remains a mystery to her. She is uncertain about the man’s feelings—and even about her own, to a degree. Part of this uncertainty is triggered by the difference in her current perspective and how she felt at the time, illustrated by her comments on her own misplaced precociousness (“she hadn’t considered herself too young at the time”). The quotation is also a significant meditation on the mysterious nature of love, which involves a range of conflicting and contradictory emotions.

The novel-within-the-novel, The Blind Assassin, portrays two lovers: an unnamed man and woman. The man has started telling the woman a story in his genre of expertise, science fiction. The story is set on the planet Zycron and the (now destroyed) city of Sakiel-Norn, where inhabitants are divided into two classes: the elite Snilfards and the subjugated Ygnirods. In this passage, the man narrating the story describes the brutal oppression of the Ygnirods, including their attempts at resistance. There are a few important things to note about this passage and what it conveys about the man’s political orientation.

Firstly, the passage emphasizes that although the Ygnirods make themselves seem foolish and complacent, in reality they are deeply unsatisfied with their suffering and routinely try and revolt. This reflects the idea that just because a group of people does not overtly show signs of resistance does not mean that they accept their own subjugation and mistreatment. Secondly, the treatment of the enslaved Ygnirods—and particularly the creative ways in which they bypass the rule prohibiting them from reading—has an important parallel with the history of slavery on Earth, such as the enslavement of African people in the Americas. While Zycron may be an invented, alien planet, it is more similar to Earth than the reader might initially assume.

In the novel-within-the-novel, The Blind Assassin, the man continues to tell the woman his science-fiction story set in the alien city of Sakiel-Norn. He explains that the city is a major trading site that specializes in luxury textiles. Enslaved Ygnirod children produce delicate carpets that need to be woven by small fingers, and this work in turn leads the children to go blind. In this passage, the man explains that carpet-sellers boast about how many children were blinded in making a given carpet, indicating that this is a sign of increased value. Again, this quotation is important for conveying the man’s political views and illuminating the similarities between Sakiel-Norn and human society.

While on Earth it might not be common to directly boast about how many workers were exploited and harmed in making a product, humanity does employ similarly exploitative systems of production. This is particularly relevant because in the main narrative, Iris’s husband, Richard, is a textiles manufacturer who treats his workers poorly and opposes any attempts by the working class to attain more rights or better working conditions. In this way, Sakiel-Norn serves as a kind of parallel—albeit it a somewhat dramatized one—to industry on Earth. Thus, it enables the man to explain his political views (the man is implied to be a communist or at least a communist sympathizer) to the woman by expressing an underlying truth about humanity through an abstracted (and arguably more engaging) fictional story.

In the novel-within-the-novel, The Blind Assassin, the man continues to tell the woman his science-fiction story set in the alien city of Sakiel-Norn. He’s told her about the enslaved Ygnirod children who are blinded in the process of weaving carpets and how, after the children go blind, they’re are sold into brothels—but that some escape and become hired as the titular “blind assassins.” The woman interrupts the man to tell him that the story he is telling is too sad and, in this quotation, the man replies that he chooses to tell the stories he’s skilled at, plus the ones he thinks the woman will believe. This is an intriguing and in some ways contradictory statement. As a science fiction writer, the man is skilled at inventing stories set in faraway, alien worlds—so why would these be the stories that the woman believes?

Given the overall context of the quote, what the man really means by “stories I’m good at” and “ones you’ll believe” is that he deliberately tells sad stories. Not only this, but he constructs these sad stories because he believes they reflect the sadness of the world. This is an important message in a book that generally refuses to deliver happy endings and rather dwells in the tragedy, misery, and meaningless of life. While the woman may be sheltered compared to the man (which is why she asks him to stop telling sad stories), both of them lead lives characterized by oppression, disappointment, and tragedy. Sad stories are thus what they are familiar with, which makes such stories easy for the man to tell and easy for the woman to believe. 

In the novel-within-the-novel, The Blind Assassin, the man is continues to narrate his science-fiction story to the woman during their secret meetings. He tells the woman about a girl who is about to be sacrificed inside the Temple in Sakiel-Norn. Before the girl is killed, she will be raped by “the Lord of the Underworld” who is really just a courtesan who dresses up. In this passage, the man explains the reasoning behind this ritual, noting that “Zycronians are afraid of virgins” because they believe that dead virgins will seek revenge on the living. Of course, there are multiple ways in which this belief isn’t exactly logically coherent, and these issues are crucial to the novel’s exploration of doomed love, female desire, violence, and death.

One of the things that is illogical (or at least logically contradictory) about the fear of dead virgins is the way in which it clashes with the depiction of living virgins. Part of the reason why in many cultures (including on Zycron) women’s virginity is treated as a big deal is because virginity is associated with traits such as passivity, purity, and submission. Within patriarchal culture, these traits are considered to constitute the ideal of feminine behavior. In a sense, virginity can be seen as a way of celebrating or fetishizing female powerlessness. However, as the man points out here, the flip side of this is a fear of female virgins and particularly those who die virgins. Women who want to seek revenge for being “betrayed in love” are imbued with a scary, destructive power and an appetite for violence.

In the novel-within-the-novel, The Blind Assassin, the man is still telling the woman his science-fiction story, explaining how a rival tribe who call themselves the People of Joy are planning to attack Sakiel-Norn and kill the King. The King, who is planning to sell a lover he’s grown bored with into slavery, is unaware of this plot. He even sees the campfire of the People of Joy in the distance but he doesn’t realize what it is. At this point, the woman interrupts with the first line quoted here, saying that she feels sorry for the King. This indicates that she is capable of feeling sympathy for people in power (and even those who immorally abuse their power), a quality that distinguishes her from the man.

The man, on the other hand, indicates he believes that the King deserves to die. However, he hides the full nature of his opinion by then discussing “Survival of the fittest,” a concept he is actually parodying even while pretending to be sympathetic to it. The man’s communist beliefs means he believes that “survival of the fittest” is an unjust and immoral way of looking at the world adopted by elites to justify their own disproportionate power. He may believe that kings really have to be “bastard[s],” but unlike the woman who uses this idea to feel sympathy for the King, his conclusion (although it is unstated here) is that kings should therefore not exist.

In the novel-within-the-novel, The Blind Assassin, the man continues telling the woman the story of the planet Zycron—and, in particular, about the blind assassin sent to kill a girl who was about to be sacrificed anyway. In a surprise twist, the bind assassin falls in love with the girl. At this point in the story, the woman interrupts to express her surprise at the romantic turn of events in the story. In this quotation, the man denies this accusation, returning to his usual cynicism in a rather defensive manner.

This quotation is a key example of the man’s mixed feelings regarding romantic love. Although he is ostensibly discussing the science-fiction story, it obvious that the internal conflict on which he is truly focused relates to his feelings about the woman. The man obviously prides himself on his rational, cynical, and harsh outlook on the world. This is evident when he is quick to characterize the blind assassin as selfish and to say that the blind assassin might still kill the girl with whom he fell in love. The man’s comment that “the young habitually mistake lust for love” is evidently an expression of his own anxieties about his relationship with the woman. Are they really in love, or just caught up in feelings of lust? The man seems highly resistant to the prospect of letting himself confuse one for the other.

The passage also serves as an important reminder on the way loving and violent feelings can coexist, a phenomenon which, the novel seems to suggest, is particularly common in men. Just because the blind assassin loves the woman doesn’t mean he won’t kill her—a reminder that, in the mind of the man telling the story, love does not preclude violence. 

In the novel-within-the-novel, The Blind Assassin, the woman has complained that the science-fiction story the man has told her is too brutal, miserable, and depressing. In response, the man tells her another story, this time about two human men named Will and Boyd who—in the midst of fighting the evil Lizard Men of the planet Xenor—find themselves on a mysterious planet called Aa’A populated by Peach Women. All their desires and needs on the planet are instantly fulfilled—whether for food, sex, or shelter. Yet in this passage, Will comes to feel that the paradise of Aa’A is actually Hell, because it’s a “trap” where nothing really changes and no one is allowed to leave.

In this sense, Will is articulating an old philosophical conundrum: is there such thing as total happiness, or does happiness rely on a contrast with sadness in order exist? Moreover, if happiness cannot exist without sadness, then how could heaven be real? In the context of the novel, the man’s rejection of happiness (which he portrays through his stories) seems to come out of a place of bitterness and disillusionment. Forced to live in hiding due to his political beliefs and only able to see the woman he loves in secret, stolen slices of time due to her marriage, it is little wonder that he is critical of happiness as a concept. At the same time, the cynicism with which he discusses romantic love suggests that he actually believe that a whole life trapped in any one situation (including a romantic union) is actually a “trap,” even if a person is trapped with someone they love.

In the novel-within-the-novel, The Blind Assassin, the last story that the man tells the woman is about the Lizard Men of Xenor, a brutally violent race. After the man leaves Canada to fight in the Spanish Civil War, the woman scours stores to find the version of the story printed in a science-fiction magazine. In the story, the invasion of the Lizard Men has the unintended consequence of uniting the heavily hierarchical city of Sakiel-Norn against a common enemy, as described in this quotation. This is an unexpected and rather over-simplistic turn of events that seems to indicate the man chose to excise his political worldview from the story (perhaps in order to make it easier to sell). 

On one hand, it is sometimes true that in times of crisis, different classes and races end up being forced to work together and previous divisions become less prominent. At the same time, given what the man has narrated about the Ygnirods’ desire to resist their subjugation, it seems unlikely that they would be so willing to forget all the ways in which the Snilfards brutally oppressed them and fight alongside them. Indeed, it seems more likely that the Ygnirods would team up with the Lizard Men in hope of destroying the Snilfards. The fact that the man composes the story in this way in order to get it published indicates that he was so desperate for money that he was forced to compromise his political and artistic integrity. 

Chapter Ten ended with a separation between the man and woman in the novel-within-the-novel, The Blind Assassin. The woman has had a baby with her husband, while the man has left to fight in the Spanish Civil War. At the very end of the chapter, the woman dreams of him, but in the end he disappears. In the beginning of Chapter Eleven, Iris writes that at this point in the narrative of her and Laura’s life (which, for the most part, lines up temporally with the novel-within-the-novel by this point), “things take a darker turn.” In this passage, she talks about how Laura didn’t anticipate this “darker turn” because the framework of tragedy through which people now read her wasn’t apparent at the time.

This is an important reflection on the difference between narrative and ordinary life. People living their real lives do not usually think of themselves as “romantic heroine[s],” not only because they can’t predict their own fate but also because real life is more complicated than a story. In the latter part of the passage, Iris discusses this, showing how Laura was not just a tragic, sympathetic victim. Instead, she was three-dimensional—as much annoying, boring, and happy as tragically sad. It seems as if Iris is saying this in order to correct her own presentation of Laura and ensure that the reader doesn’t get so swept up in the “romantic” narrative that they lose sight of the truth behind it.

Iris has revealed that she is the real author of The Blind Assassin (the novel-within-the-novel) and that the main narrative of Atwood’s novel is another manuscript Iris has written in order to complete and correct the story contained within the book she published under Laura’s name. She has also dedicated and addressed this second book to Sabrina, to give her estranged granddaughter a chance to know the truth about her family history. In the epilogue to The Blind Assassin, the woman looks at the photograph of herself and the man, just as she did in the prologue. (Indeed, some of the sentences in the epilogue are repeated almost word-for-word in the epilogue.) However, the difference is that in the epilogue, the woman mentions the other hand that’s in the picture—the hand whose body has been cut out of frame.

Considering the reader now knows that the woman is based on Iris, it is obvious that this hand belongs to Laura. Yet because both sisters cut the other one out of their own respective copies of their picture with Alex in the main narrative, there is a sense in which it could also be the other way around. This confirms the idea that Iris and Laura’s identities are fluid or reversible. At the same time, this quotation also emphasizes that the sisters are indivisible. Even if they try to cut each other out of each other’s lives, they cannot ever be truly separate—and indeed, even after Laura dies, she remains a haunting, active presence for Iris. Her hand, the hand that helped write the story of Iris’s life, is always there.