“A Dark-Adapted Eye” by Barbara Vine (Ruth Rendell post 2): Rendell sees people as a problem that can be solved, but Vine finds people an enigma

This is the first novel that Ruth Rendell published under her Barbara Vine pseudonym. Rendell has said (see prior post) that Vine is her more feminine personality, which is evident, for example, in her narrator’s much greater attention to how characters are dressed.

The first-person narrator immediately informs the reader that the older of her two aunts, Vera, has been hanged for murder: the mystery is whom she had killed and why she did it.

Barbara Vine’s narrator is careless with her clues and perplexed by her characters. Two-thirds through the novel, she inadvertently reveals who Vera had killed. And the narrator never does learn who was telling the truth, Vera or her victim, about which of them was Jamie’s mother.

On page 162 of this 264 page mystery novel, the narrator inadvertently reveals who Vera killed, when she says: “What has become of Eden’s wedding photographs? I suppose Tony has them still or more likely, has long ago thrown them away. He has never remarried…” Eden is Vera’s younger sister. If her husband, Tony, never remarries, then Eden is probably the one who was killed. (And that is what is eventually revealed.)

At the end of the novel, several whole pages are devoted to the narrator’s puzzlement about who was really Jamie’s mother, Vera or Eden. The narrator discusses the evidence for each possibility, but can’t be sure which of her aunts was telling the truth.

Thus, for the Ruth Rendell personality, clues are to be carefully screened and people are a mystery that can be solved. But for the Barbara Vine personality, clues are not as carefully screened and “People are a mystery, an enigma” (1, p. 233).

I would speculate that the author’s Ruth Rendell personality dominated her character personalities, who were obliged to tell Chief Inspector Wexford anything he wanted to know. But when Barbara Vine’s narrator asked the characters who was the real mother, they told her it was their business, and she respected their privacy.

Of course, judging by Rendell’s first Inspector Wexford novel (see previous post), people were an enigma to her, too, but she was less aware of it.

1. Barbara Vine (Ruth Rendell). A Dark-Adapted Eye. New York, Bantam Books, 1986.