Ophie's Ghosts

Daffodil Manor is symbolic of white supremacy. Owned by the wealthy, white Caruthers family, the house represents the novel’s overarching sociopolitical system. The house itself is imposing and austere. From the moment Ophie arrives at her new workplace, she is overcome by an “overwhelming sense of dread” because she has “never seen a house like that before, and the way it loom[s] ma[kes] her feel small and insignificant” (35-36). The sprawling house is filled with empty, unused rooms, and its sheer size is a display of the Carutherses’ social status, conveying a sense of their excessive wealth. The Carutherses’ manor is therefore a way for them to display their social power.

Daffodil Manor is also filled with the ghosts of people who either lived or worked there. The ghosts cannot move on because of what they have suffered in the house. Throughout Ophie’s time working as Mrs. Caruthers’s caretaker, she interacts with these ghosts, desperate to understand more about who they were and why they haven’t moved on. She is particularly intrigued by Clara, a young woman who passed for white, fell in love with Richard Caruthers, and met her death at Mrs. Caruthers’s hand.