Ophie's Ghosts

Ophie’s stay at Daffodil Manor further illustrates the novel’s examination of Work as a Pathway to Agency and Exploitation. Ever since coming to work for the Carutherses, Ophie has understood how important her job is to her and her mother’s future. Without her father, she and Mama must provide for themselves. They are not only a working woman and girl in the 1920s, but there are also few vocational and economic opportunities for Black women in the Jim Crow era, and if they lose their jobs, they will no longer have a place to live and will struggle to find more work. Ophie’s attempts to behave appropriately at Daffodil Manor originate from her desire to help her mother, and this motivation overrides her instinctive distaste for the abusive Mrs. Caruthers and the harmful dynamics of life at the manor. Ophie’s internal monologue in Chapter 23 reveals how heavily her working circumstances weigh on her psyche, as she wonders,

[H]ow did one go about mending a broken dream? It hadn’t just been the idea of their own place that had spurred Mama—it had also been the promise of a better life […] Now, with the loss of their savings, those dreams felt as far away as ever. It would be months before they could simply save up enough to even think about moving out of the manor (281).

The desperate tone of Ophie’s thoughts in this passage reflects several complicated truths. Despite the abuses that both mother and daughter endure at Daffodil Manor, the place offers them some semblance of stability, but at the same time, it also traps them in a static realm where they hold no power. Now, in the wake of Aunt Rose’s death, they are even more beholden to the Carutherses than they were when they first started working for them since they must rely on the family for both wages and housing. Despite Ophie’s longing to deliver her mother from these circumstances, Ophie feels that she has little ability to help in a meaningful way.

As a result, she grows even more determined to exercise some form of agency by solving the mystery of Clara’s murder. However, this plan carries a steep price, and over time, she begins to fear Clara’s true power and realizes the truth of “what Aunt Rose had always said”: the fact that “ghosts d[o]n’t always have a choice about what they want[]—or how they [go] about getting it” (278). As Clara strives to gain more direct power over the world of the living, Ophie’s detective work quickly evolves into a broader protective effort; if she can help Clara move on, she can keep the unquiet ghost from hurting others. In this way, she gains a more nuanced understanding of the world and seeks to use her unique talents to improve the circumstances of others, living and dead alike.

Thus, when Ophie discovers the truth and solves the mystery, she frees a multitude of people around her, and the long-term effects of her sleuthing gradually lead her to a transformative outcome. After she reveals what really happened to Clara, a series of changes take place. Clara’s ghost goes free, Mrs. Caruthers passes away, and Henry is finally safe from Mrs. Caruthers’s clutches. Similarly, Richard finally learns the truth of his late lover’s death, and even Ophie and Mama are able to move on from Daffodil Manor with the ghosts’ blessings. These narrative revelations show how Ophie’s bravery has helped others and herself. She refuses to give up on Clara because she cares about her, and because she follows the promptings of her own innate sense of compassion, Ophie excavates and broadcasts Clara’s real story, exposing Mrs. Caruthers’s deeds and ultimately facilitating her mother’s attempts to start a new life. In short, her fight for justice brings about positive changes from every angle.

The closing images of Ophie and Mama’s new house in the Hill District offer a hopeful ending, as Ophie and Mama don’t simply flee their exploitative circumstances; they finally find a way to claim their own home. As the narrator asserts in the final interlude chapter, “Everyone deserved peace in their own house, even a girl who could talk to the dead” (324). The new house is therefore symbolic of autonomy and freedom. Once Ophie and Mama have their own place, they can build independent lives together. Not all their troubles are over, but they “realize over and over again that there [i]s nothing they c[a]n’t do as long as they d[o] it together with honesty and love” (325). The mother and daughter have made amends for their fraught past by sharing their lives together in new ways, as is demonstrated when Mama asks Ophie about what she witnessed on the day Daddy died. Mama is now willing to talk about ghosts, about her late husband, and about Ophie’s gift, and she also understands the importance of confronting the past in order to move beyond it. In the end, the house is symbolic of the bright future that Ophie and Mama are building together.