The Blind Assassin

by

Margaret Atwood

The Blind Assassin: Chapter 11 Summary & Analysis

Summary
Analysis
Iris explains that this is where the story takes “a darker turn,” which will come as no surprise to the reader considering they already know what happened to Laura. Laura herself was not aware of her fate as “the doomed romantic heroine”; she was just an ordinary person with a whole range of experiences and emotions. Looking back on the narrative Iris has written so far, she feels it is too superficial and shallow. At the same time, the truth is that terrible tragedies are often surrounded by “frivolity.” Today, Iris manages to walk to the cemetery using her cane. Someone has cleaned up Laura’s grave and left flowers that are already wilting, which Iris considers “trash.” 
The reader might find it surprising to hear Iris explicitly announce that the story is about to take “a darker turn,” considering it has featured (and alluded to) many tragic events thus far. However, what Iris means by this clearly has something to do with her relationship with Laura. While the sisters have not always got along perfectly, up until this point they have still had a relatively strong bond, with each of them committed to caring for each other. This may be about to change.
Themes
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Quotes
After the cemetery, Iris stops at the doughnut shop and is pleasantly surprised by the friendliness of the young waitress. Resentfully, she thinks about Sabrina’s “ingratitude.” In the bathroom, Iris reads the scribbles on the cubicle walls. Sometimes she chooses to believe that these are the work of Laura, and sometimes she feels tempted to add something herself.
Just as Iris dreamed of Richard and Norval and the chestnut tree, Laura’s ghost also haunts her. Iris sees Laura everywhere, a present part of the living world even though she died many years ago.
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In the fall of 1936, Laura is sent to a new school, and in November she turns 17. At this point, she tells Richard that his money is being wasted on her school fees because she will never need to get a job and thus doesn’t need to be educated. Following this announcement, Winifred recruits Laura to work for a charitable group called the Abigails, which visits people in hospital. All the other members of this group resemble Winifred, and although Laura doesn’t, she still thrives in this new role. Laura is unfazed by excrement and vomit and she’s especially skilled at handling the terminally ill. Winifred considered this suspect and bizarre.
This passage illuminates the ridiculous paradox of what is considered acceptable behavior for upper-class women like Winifred and Laura. While volunteering for charity is perceived to be an important, noble pursuit for genteel women, it is frowned upon to embrace this role with too much zeal—a preposterous concept that reveals how little this charity work is actually concerned with the people it ostensibly seeks to help. Really, it is a vanity project. 
Themes
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Winifred is still going ahead with planning Laura’s début, although she shares none of this information with Laura herself. One day, Winifred invites Iris to lunch at the Arcadian Court so they can plan things together. Winifred expresses her hope that a rich, “stupid” man will marry Laura as soon as possible. She speaks about how Laura is strange and holds odd opinions, such as the idea that only love matters, not marriage, and that this was what Jesus believed, too. Iris finds it hard to picture Laura agreeing to marry a man too foolish to understand who she really is. She mentioned that Laura will inherit money at 21 and that this might be enough for her to live independently. Winifred scoffs at the idea.
One of the most puzzling things about Iris’s character is her apparent lack of opinion on almost all topics. Winifred’s horror at Laura’s views on love and marriage is consistent with what a woman of her position would likely have thought at the time, whereas Laura’s beliefs themselves are inspired by a plausible reading of the Bible. Iris seems to neither agree nor disagree with either of them, suggesting that she has no opinion of her own. 
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Later, Iris tells Laura that Winifred is troubled by her statements about marriage and love. Laura defends herself, maintaining that what she said was simply “the truth.” Iris encourages Laura to think about marriage and be mindful of her future, but Laura replies, “The future doesn’t exist.” At the end of October, Iris tells Richard that she’s pregnant, and he reacts with calm approval. Iris is glad that her pregnancy means she doesn’t have to have sex with him. Winifred, meanwhile, seems alarmed by the possibility of Iris’s status increasing as a result of birthing an heir (particularly if the child turns out to be a boy). When Iris goes to Laura’s room to tell her the news, she finds Laura kneeling in a strange position. On hearing the news, Laura asks if Iris remembers the “kitten,” the stillborn baby that killed Liliana.
Part of the reason why Laura is cast out from society is that she refuses to orientate her life around the things that are supposed to be meaningful to women, i.e., marriage and children. She has quite progressive views about marriage that anticipate many of the arguments made by the second-wave feminist movement. Meanwhile, her view of reproduction seems to be colored by the trauma of Liliana’s death, which—at least from a contemporary perspective—seems quite understandable. However, it totally alienates her from those around her.
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Quotes
In the present day, Iris dreams that Reenie is scolding her. In her unconscious she is “on trial.” She wonders if she is blameworthy for not having been able to read Laura’s mind and detect what was going on with her. By February 1938, Iris is seven months’ pregnant. Walking downstairs from a nap, she finds Winifred and Richard sitting in the living room together, looking somber. Richard tells Iris to sit beside him, and he and Winifred explained that they sent Laura to the hospital after she accused Richard of trying to kill Iris and threatened to hurt herself. Richard assures Iris that the clinic where Laura is being held, BellaVista, is of the highest standard.
Institutionalizing women who defied expectations for how they were supposed to behave was a common practice in the 19th and 20th centuries among bourgeois and upper-class families. The reasons cited for these institutionalizations were diverse and often horrifyingly mundane—things like mental illness, unconventional political views, or even normal displays of sexuality could get a woman institutionalized against her will.
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Iris says that she needs to see Laura, and then she starts to cry. At this point, Winifred reveals that Laura also claimed to be pregnant, though she hadn’t said who she thought the baby’s father was. Winifred explains that the specialist believes Laura is “insanely jealous” of Iris and wants to be her. A few months later, in April, Aimee is born. Iris was unconscious for the birth, which is conventional at the time. When Winifred and Richard come in to see Aimee, Winifred comments on her dark hair, saying they’d expected her to be blonde. Iris apologizes for the fact that Aimee is a girl when Richard had wanted a boy. Presently, Iris wonders if there was some part of her that was glad Laura wasn’t there to create any disturbance.
The expert’s claim that Laura is hysterically jealous of Iris seems highly implausible. If anything, Laura seems horrified by Iris’s life and wants as little to do with at as possible. However, telling Iris that Laura is jealous of her appeals to what Iris wants to believe due to her and Laura’s lifelong sibling rivalry. Indeed, she admits here that there is even part of her that is relieved that Laura is not around for Aimee’s arrival into the world. 
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In the present day, Iris watches the news: a young woman set fire to herself in protest against an unspecified injustice. She worries that Sabrina could potentially get caught up in extremist ways of thinking over in India. Iris reflects on how Aimee must have been affected by Laura’s suicide, which happened when Aimee was eight, and Richard’s, which happened two years later. To make matters worse, Aimee then had to endure the custody battle that ensued between Iris and Winifred. Given all this, it is perhaps unsurprising that Aimee turned to substance abuse and sexual promiscuity. Iris notes that Aimee never revealed the identity of Sabrina’s father.
Atwood’s novel is a family saga stretching over multiple generations, yet it is intriguing that the younger generations (particularly Aimee and Sabrina) are not featured in the narrative nearly as prominently as the older ones. Of course, it is true that Iris ends up estranged from both her daughter and granddaughter—yet considering Adelia features prominently despite dying before Iris was born, this can’t be the only explanation.
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While Aimee is still alive, Iris never gives up hope that one day she and Aimee will reconcile—but Aimee rejected both Iris and Winifred. She’s evicted, arrested, and imprisoned—though she’s wealthy enough to not have to work. The last time Iris sees Aimee, she finds Sabrina outside Aimee’s dilapidated house and introduces herself as Sabrina’s grandmother. It’s obvious that Sabrina had no idea she even had a grandmother. Aimee’s neighbors are the ones to find her dead at the bottom of the stairs, although no one ever finds out if she killed herself by accident or on purpose. Presently, Iris regrets not running away with Sabrina the day she saw Aimee for the last time, before Winifred had a chance to get her. 
Again, Atwood leaves it somewhat ambiguous as to whether Iris can be blamed for the estrangement between herself, Aimee, and Sabrina. While it is obvious that there were some factors beyond Iris’s control causing this alienation, it’s up to the reader to interpret whether or not she’s entirely blameless. The narrative fails to provide quite enough information to reach a solid conclusion, a fact that—considering Iris is the narrator—could be interpreted as deliberate. 
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When Iris finds Aimee in her kitchen, she’s clearly drunk and high and is smoking a cigarette. Aimee doesn’t want to listen to Iris; she says she knows the family has been lying to her to avoid giving her her inheritance. She claims that Iris and Richard aren’t her real parents, citing Laura’s book as evidence. When Iris asks her to elaborate, Aimee explains that it’s obvious Laura is the woman in The Blind Assassin. She’d been in love with the man and had gotten pregnant, and when Iris’s own baby died, Iris raised Laura’s baby (Aimee) as her own in order to avoid scandal. Although this story is wrong, Iris can see why it appeals to Aimee.
Aimee’s beliefs about her parentage raise the question of her paternity. The reader knows that Iris met with Alex at least once after she was married to Richard, and the fact that Aimee believes the woman (who’s actually based on Iris) and the man (who’s based on Alex) are her real parents perhaps suggest that Alex could be her real father. At the same time, it is clear that Aimee’s thinking has been distorted by trauma and substance abuse, making it impossible for Iris to communicate with her properly.
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Iris admits that she was a flawed parent, though she adds that there were extenuating circumstances that Aimee doesn’t understand. Aimee accuses Iris of killing Laura, and a full-blown fight ensues. Frightened, Iris runs away, although presently she wonders if she should have stayed and tried to comfort Aimee rather than fleeing. Three weeks later, Aimee is dead. Following her death, Iris feels more grief over Aimee’s lost potential and over her own failures as a mother than she does over the person Aimee actually was when she died.
The fact that Iris fled from Aimee rather than staying to comfort her indicates that, although Iris was technically Aimee’s parent, there were ways in which she still acted like a child around her. Part of the role of a parent is to set aside their own vulnerabilities in order to care for their children. Of course, this dynamic can be intensely complicated by drug abuse.
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Iris is 60 when Winifred assumes custody of Sabrina. Sometimes Iris drives to Toronto and idles outside of Sabrina’s fancy private primary school, watching her. Later, she spies on Winifred and Sabrina Christmas shopping at the department store. She watches as they pass a group of carol singers and Sabrina is absorbed by “Good King Wenceslas,” a song she must instinctively understand because it’s about hunger. Iris is overcome with a desperate desire to grab Sabrina and run away with her, and she imagined Winifred’s powerless scream if she were to do it. Iris daydreams about a version of the Rapunzel fairytale wherein Winifred and all her friends bestow gifts on Sabrina, only for Iris to appear out of the blue and announce that she, too, has a gift.
Again, Iris’s habit of spying on Winifred and Sabrina and her daydreams about inhabiting a version of the Rapunzel fairytale all indicate that Iris is cannot help but approach this issue in a childlike manner. Perhaps as the result of being disempowered throughout her life, Iris cannot assert control like an adult. Indeed, during the era in which Iris was married to Richard, husbands often intentionally kept their wives in an infantilized position in order to control them.
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Decades prior, weeks pass after Laura’s hospitalization. Richard forbids Iris from writing to her, saying it would hinder Laura’s recovery. Iris is tormented by the idea of Laura alone and “tortured” in BellaVista. Meanwhile, Richard gives more and more political speeches, and Iris decides to pretend to be weak and unwell for as long as possible. Iris can’t decide whether to believe Winifred’s account of Laura’s apparent mental instability. Iris is terrified of the prospect that Laura might be telling the truth and she torments herself with thoughts of what would happen to the baby if this were the case. If Laura really is pregnant, Iris thinks that the only possible father is Alex Thomas
This is one of the moments in the novel when Iris appears least sympathetic. It is hard to understand why she is tempted to believe the words of Winifred—an evidently cruel woman who hates Laura and doesn’t care about her wellbeing—over those of Laura herself. Given Richard’s abuse toward Iris and the novel’s implication that he may have an inappropriate interest in Laura, it seems entirely possible that he is trying to cover something up by claiming that Laura is mentally ill. Meanwhile, Iris’s belief that Alex would have to be the father of Laura’s baby hearkens back to Aimee’s insistence that the man in The Blind Assassin (who’s based on Alex) is her real father, deepening the parallel between these two narratives.
Themes
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By the time summer comes, Winifred begins encouraging Iris to spend outside tending to her rock garden. Yet Iris knows that this garden isn’t really hers in the same way that Aimee isn’t really hers. Iris considers sneaking off to go and visit Laura in secret, but she’s hesitant about the prospect of leaving Aimee behind with the nursemaid. Then, one day, Richard informs Iris that a man claiming to be Laura’s lawyer and a trustee of her trust fund showed up at BellaVista and demanded they release her. Bewildered, the staff had let her go, and now Laura is missing. Richard asks if Iris had any idea where Laura is, but Iris insists that she doesn’t.  
One of the ways in which women like Iris were trapped in unhappy, abusive marriage was through their children. Once a woman had children with a man, he would be able to threaten her with losing custody of them if she tried to leave him. At the time, divorce was so stigmatized that simply wanting a divorce was often interpreted as a sign that a woman was an unfit mother.
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As soon as Iris can, she set off to Port Ticonderoga to see Reenie, lying to Richard that Reenie is gravely ill. They agreed to meet at Betty’s Luncheonette, and when Iris sees Reenie, she finds that she does, in fact, look unwell. At this point, Myra is probably three or four. In hushed tones, Reenie admits that she helped arrange for the “lawyer” to rescue Laura from BellaVista, explaining that the man is a distant cousin of Liliana’s. Laura managed to sneak a letter out to Reenie via the BellaVista cook; she’d written to Iris, too, but Iris never received anything.
Early in the novel, Reenie is presented as a somewhat conservative, rule-abiding character who would never dream of doing something that would invite scandal. However, in this part of the novel, she heroically proves to be more loyal to Laura and committed to justice than to following rules for the sake of them.
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Reenie tells Iris that she can’t repeat the things that happened to Laura because there are children present, and she refuses to reveal where Laura is now, as Laura thought it best if Iris didn’t know. Reenie adds that Laura didn’t seem insane, although she was very thin and spoke much less about God than she used to. Iris thanks Reenie for everything, and Reenie adds that Laura left a message for Iris before she was taken to BellaVista. Iris shows Reenie a photo of Aimee, and Reenie comments on how dark she is. When they said goodbye, Reenie didn’t kiss Iris, though Iris fantasizes about throwing her arms around Reenie.
This is the second time that someone has mentioned Aimee’s dark hair and complexion. When Winifred commented on this, she conveyed distaste at the fact that Aimee failed to live up to the WASP appearance that she imagined for her niece. At the same time, the fact that Reenie also comments on it suggests that there may be more to the story than that. Earlier in the novel, Reenie commented on Alex’s dark complexion, too, which perhaps lends validity to Aimee’s belief that the man in The Blind Assassin (who’s based on Alex) is her real father.
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In the present, Iris spends the day lying in bed and watching daytime TV. She thinks about the way in which these kind of shows expose people’s secrets to the whole world, and she wonders if it’s better to be crushed under the weight of your own secrets or have them forced out of you. There is a bad smell in Iris’s kitchen, and she wonders if some food has fallen down somewhere and is now rotting.
Conventional wisdom dictates that holding in secrets is bad for a person, yet Iris’s point about daytime TV is a useful reminder that exposing them for all to see can be harmful, too. The novel remains ambiguous as to whether there’s a happy medium between keeping and revealing secrets.
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In the past, after seeing Reenie in Port Ticonderoga, Iris is left puzzled by the idea that Laura left a message for her before being institutionalized. Suddenly, she remembers finding Laura in Benjamin’s study at the age of about 10 or 11, cutting out the passages of the Bible she didn’t like. Iris was terrified that Laura would get in trouble, but Laura pointed out that no one in the family really looked inside the Bible—and it turned out she was right.
Even as a child, Laura was hyperaware of the inconsistencies and hypocrisies of the world around her. She was raised in an ostensibly religious environment (albeit with an atheist for a father), yet realized quickly that people didn’t actually take religion that seriously—and certainly not as seriously as she herself did.
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Iris suddenly realizes that Laura probably left the message in Iris’s wedding album, where Richard and Winifred were certain not to accidentally find it. In the album, Laura had hand-tinted two photographs: in the first, Laura had been painted yellow while the Winifred and Richard were green. In the second, Richard’s face was such a dark grey that it covered his features, while his hands were red and covered with flames. Meanwhile, Laura had painted Iris’s face white such that it also became featureless. She’d also painted the surroundings of the bride and groom completely black. 
The bizarre and enigmatic “message” that Laura leaves for Iris inside her wedding album suggests that Laura may indeed be having some kind of mental health breakdown after all. At the same time, perhaps Laura was relying on Iris being able to understand the message thanks to the special intuition that can be shared between sisters.
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