“Renascence,” the Millay poem to which Vincent refers, is about a woman’s life, suffering, death, and rebirth, and it seems to reflect some of Vincent’s mother’s anxieties and desires for her own life. Vincent’s mother’s admiration for St. Vincent Millay stems from the poet’s success in drastically changing her life’s circumstances, which Vincent takes to mean that her mother is unsatisfied with the domesticity and predictability of her own life. This adds another layer of complexity to Vincent’s grief over her mother’s death: at this point it’s been stated that Vincent’s mother died by drowning, but would she have drowned herself intentionally? Was she so unhappy with marriage and childrearing that she took her own life? If this is the case, Vincent might feel somehow responsible for her mother’s death, as it was Vincent’s very existence that imposed so many limitations on her formerly free-spirited, transient mother.