Inheritance

Rice is fascinated by the power (and threat) posed by inheritance as a social custom among the wealthy and particularly among inhabitants of the Deep South. The Mayfairs, above all else, are honor-bound by their traditions, and are obsessed with the proliferation and reproduction of their family line. The significance of these goals is couched in the idea that the family will retain their magical powers, a kind of superiority, only through incestuous rebirth across generational lines, but this useful supernatural plot device in fact allows Rice to explore the dynamics of superiority and self-replication that haunt wealthy white Southern families.

Although the Mayfairs claim to seek modernization (in part through Rowan's vision of Mayfair Medical), they are in fact inexorably attached to the primacy of inheritance. Many of the family's older characters—Evelyn and Julien come to mind—are appalled at the ways in which...