Monahan has a Ph.D. in English and operates an editing service, The Inkwell Works. In the following essay, Monahan examines various ways in which Mary Swan explores the concept of identity in the case of identical twins.

Mary Swan's story “The Deep” explores the concept of identity by tracing the complicated psychological development of identical twin sisters, whose sexual maturation ends their exclusive childhood relationship and contributes to their double suicide. The natural process of differentiation is stalled in the case of Esther and Ruth by their inability to relinquish their initial relationship to each other in the face of attachment to a sexual partner. Partly they are unable because of their distorted relationship to their mother, their alleged role in her death, and the way their births supposedly destroyed the world of the family that existed before them. Feeling guilty for having been born and...