Happy Wife

Throughout the novel, Nora refers to herself as an “interloper” among the Winter Park social circle (6, 15, 118, 175, 186, 226), invoking The Power of Cliques. The term emphasizes Nora’s working-class status and socioeconomic vulnerability among the wealthy elites of Winter Park.

The word appears as a recurring motif in moments of discovery within Nora’s relationship. In the novel’s opening chapters, she throws a party for her husband Will to prove to his friends and their wives that she is a permanent fixture in Will’s life, and not just the “strange interloper” they believe she is (6). When Nora begins to question her relationship with Will after his disappearance, the word appears again, as Nora worries, “[M]aybe I am the interloper everyone keeps saying I am: how can I not know these things about the man I am married to?” (118). When Will’s body is found, Nora is gratified to find that the women who once considered her an “interloping gold digger” are now sending her condolence flowers (175). In each of these episodes, the recurring word “interloper” signals an important change in Nora’s relationship to her husband and Winter Park.

In the novel’s final chapters, the term interloper appears again as Nora finally accepts that her marriage was valid and that she can leave Winter Park because she wants to, not because she is driven out.