Mrs. March

Mrs. March, the wife of celebrated novelist George March, lives a meticulously curated life on Manhattan's Upper East Side, maintaining formal dinner rituals and agonizing over every social appearance. Beneath this careful surface, she is deeply insecure, shaped by a cold, critical mother and a lifetime of feeling inadequate.

Her fragile composure shatters when Patricia, the manager of her favorite patisserie, casually asks whether George's new novel is the first time he has based a character on Mrs. March. The novel's protagonist, Johanna, is a pathetic, unwanted prostitute from the French city of Nantes. Horrified, Mrs. March flees the shop and admits to herself that she has barely read the book. She sneaks into George's study and reads passages describing Johanna as a plain, fur-coated figure whose clients pay her out of pity. The acknowledgments page reads: "lastly and most importantly, to my wife, a constant source of inspiration" (17). In a fury, she destroys the copy and replaces it with another from a box on the floor. While in the study, she also discovers a newspaper clipping about Sylvia Gibbler, a young woman missing from a town in Maine, tucked inside one of George's notebooks. She dismisses it as research.

That evening she probes George about his novel. He deflects, saying the book may be his most successful yet and that he researched everything thoroughly. His nonchalance briefly calms her.

The novel weaves in Mrs. March's troubled past to establish her psychology. As a child, she and her sister Lisa were locked in their rooms during their parents' dinner parties. Her mother was cold and punitive. She dumped her first college boyfriend after becoming infatuated with George, then a professor at her university. George's daughter from his first marriage, Paula, is a confident, pretty girl whose closeness with her father fills Mrs. March with jealousy. Mrs. March had her own son, Jonathan, partly to prove she could raise a better child.

At a publication party for George's book, Mrs. March is intimidated by Gabriella Lynne, a glamorous book jacket designer, and impulsively steals Gabriella's silver cigarette case. George's agent, Zelda, and his editor, Edgar, give toasts. Carrying a platter of strawberries, Mrs. March overhears a voice ask, "Do you think she knows? About Johanna?" (54), followed by laughter. She drops the platter and retreats to the bathroom, where she spots a cockroach and barricades the door with pillows. That night she confronts George, who insists Johanna is a composite of many women and that Mrs. March would be "among them" (61). He refuses to elaborate, calls her tired, and sleeps in his study.

Childhood memories surface with increasing frequency. Mrs. March recalls creating an imaginary friend named Kiki based on a Vermeer portrait she resembled, and growing so possessively attached to Alma, the family's live-in maid from Mexico, that she began biting Alma and leaving teeth marks on her skin. A psychologist diagnosed the child with a lack of parental attention and excessive imagination. Mrs. March's mother fired Alma rather than continue therapy.

The novel's second major thread intensifies when a television report announces that Sylvia Gibbler's body has been found in the backwoods of Gentry, Maine. The photograph matches the clipping from George's notebook, and Gentry is the same town where Edgar owns a hunting cabin that George frequents. Mrs. March recalls that George was on a trip around the time Sylvia disappeared. Her suspicion that he may be connected to the murder takes root.

Alone in the apartment while George is away on another trip, Mrs. March watches coverage of Sylvia's rape and murder. An anonymous caller phones and asks for "Johanna." She sees a blood-drenched woman in a window across the courtyard who appears to have her own face. When George returns, claiming the trip was fruitless, he mentions that police questioned everyone in the area. Mrs. March finds a stained shirt in his suitcase and notices the Sylvia clipping has disappeared from his notebook.

A blizzard traps the family indoors for days. George prepares a Christmas Eve chicken, and Mrs. March watches his hands probe the cavity with disturbed fascination. She finds a dead pigeon in the bathtub, but when George checks, the bird is gone. On the last night of confinement, he reflects on finding inspiration in horrible things and asks if that makes him a bad person.

Mrs. March's behavior grows increasingly erratic. Jonathan is suspended from school for an incident involving a classmate, and Mrs. March imagines George has corrupted their son into "a legacy of monsters" (157). She follows a woman who looks exactly like her into a stranger's brownstone. She watches a televised interview in which George says he grew to detest Johanna. She visits a psychic who warns she is in danger, and afterward hides a butcher knife under her pillow.

She secretly flies to Maine to investigate, searching Edgar's cabin with stolen keys and finding nothing incriminating. Posing as a New York Times reporter, she visits the home of Sylvia's grandmother, where Sylvia's friend Amy Bryant is staying. In Sylvia's bedroom, Mrs. March discovers a shelf of George's signed books. Amy explains that Sylvia was a devoted fan who never managed to meet George in person. Mrs. March gives her name as "Johanna" before leaving.

Back in New York, Mrs. March shadows George around Manhattan and, when alone, transforms herself into Sylvia using a black velvet headband, perfume, and a brown wig. She discovers disturbing crayon drawings in Jonathan's closet depicting birds pecking at naked, bleeding women. She confronts Sheila Miller, the mother of Jonathan's friend Alec, and declares the boys can no longer be friends. Martha, the Marches' housekeeper, gives her notice, telling Mrs. March she should "get some help" (261).

After a dentist visit leaves her severely disoriented from a reaction between herbal sedatives and anesthesia, she hallucinates George strangling Sylvia in the living room. She wakes in bed. George confesses he has been having an affair with Jennifer, a young intern at his agent's office, and that his hunting trips were sometimes covers for seeing Jennifer. Mrs. March's murder theory collapses, but she accuses him of killing Sylvia anyway. George, frightened, says they were never happy and deserve new beginnings, but not with each other. She shoves him and claws his face. Multiple versions of herself appear in the corner of the bedroom and silently point at George, then cover their eyes. Mrs. March follows suit.

She wakes the next morning sore and confused. George is gone. Assuming he left after their argument, she gets her hair done and prepares for his birthday party that evening. She pulls back the bedsheets and finds George's body, dead for less than 24 hours. She remembers stabbing him with the butcher knife hidden under her pillow. She has blisters on her palm from the handle. The waiters arrive and file past her into the kitchen. Mrs. March sits at the foot of the bed beside the concealed corpse as the doorbell rings. The novel's final line reveals her first name: "What have you done, she asked herself. Agatha March, what have you done?" (285).