Author Guy has drawn her characters broadly [in Ruby]: Calvin Cathy is a strict, hard-working head of household who feels the loss of his wife deeply and is somewhat terrified by the task of raising two daughters alone. Daphne is an arrogant, domineering person who seeks to exercise absolute control over the elements of her environment, including and especially over the people to whom she is exposed. Disinclined to accommodate other people's needs and desires, she is strikingly authoritarian and power-oriented. Ruby, being unsure of herself and of her identity, is passive, submissive and dependent—a perfect foil for the superiority syndrome out of which Daphne operates.

Instead of the two young women engaging in a relationship of equality, mutual support and exchange, Daphne manipulates Ruby and enjoys their relationship wholly on her own terms. There is little evidence that Daphne cares for Ruby. Indeed, Daphne seems to...