While in Dolores Claiborne King does not dabble in direct social criticism and mainstream attacks on male power in society, he nevertheless deals succinctly with issues of feminism, child and spouse abuse, marital relations, and the crushing social restrictions of women in the early part of the century. His approach in this novel is as a storyteller who reveals his social agenda incidentally. Though not as explicit as in Gerald's Game, in its implicit social criticism, Dolores Claiborne has been compared to the Bachman books, in which the horrors depicted in them are psychosocial horrors rather than supernatural ones. Dolores's life, while having taken an ironic turn, has all the gothic fascination of a neighbor's family crises.

Dolores, a strong woman and a survivor of an abusive, alcoholic marriage, is found by the postman at the bottom of the stairs leaning over Vera Donovan's dying body...