Loss and Longing

Throughout the novel, the author explores the ways in which loss impacts the individual’s psyche via Delphine’s portions of the narrative plot line. Although Delphine is a strong and independent woman, she has felt the effects of her mother’s absence in her life since she was a little girl. Losing her mother at “the age of three or four months old” causes Delphine to live with a constant maternal longing (17). When she returns back to Argus with Cyprian, this longing becomes even more acute when she reenters the house Roy allegedly once shared with Minnie. In Chapter 4, “The Cellar,” while attempting to clean the stink with Cyprian, Delphine realizes she cannot burn the house because of “the sad blubbering stories she heard in the house” (54). Although the narrator asserts that Delphine has not suffered “to any greater degree than other people...