Mrs. Slade's Frailty of Identity

For the majority of the story the reader is positioned directly behind Mrs. Slade. Her perspective is easily the most dominant, and her thoughts the most pronounced. This dominance seems to translate into a sort of strength of will and character that reflects positively on Mrs. Slade. Her wit and intellect are displayed in the conversation that she almost single-handedly maintains with her companion Mrs. Ansley. All this constructs a weak facade that struggles to hide the true nature of her character and the life that she has lived. The reality is that Alida Slade is a immensely lonely and unfulfilled woman. 

Mrs. Slade does not shy away from the grimness of her current situation. She is fully cognizant of her idleness as a result of the passing of her husband, and the irritating perfection of her daughter that leaves her with nothing and no one to attend to. However, I would argue that her idleness after the death of her husband is not full extent of her despair, it is merely a symptom of a much larger crisis of identity that can be traced before she ever laid eyes on her husband. The manner in which she describes her relationship with her late husband is the first indicator of her weak sense of self. In the passage where she describes her life with her husband, she labels herself as, "the wife of the famous corporation lawyer", thereby linking their two identities together for lack of confidence in her own. The absence of love or sentimentality for her husband as a person, rather than a position or symbol, in her description of her marriage suggest that their relationship was more means for Slade to distinguish herself as a person. Again we see this weakness of identity in her vicious defense of her engagement with her husband. The fact that the two were engaged was, for her, not enough to ensure the solidity of their relationship, instead she felt she needed to meddle and fake a love letter to Grace from her fiance. At first glance, this seems to be an angry warning solely meant to humiliate her "friend", but Slade briefly alludes to a more malicious goal. Earlier in their conversation, Mrs. Slade refers to a story that Mrs. Ansley had once told her about an Aunt that sent her sister out at night to gather a specific flower for her collection, and consequently the sister dies from the titular fever. After bringing this up, Mrs. Slade eerily remarks, "But she really sent her their because they were in love with the same man." The parallels betweens the that story and their own, giveaway Mrs. Slades honest intent when she sent Mrs. Ansley out in the cold night on the premise of meeting with her fiance. She was aware of Ansley's frail health and wanted to exploit her love for her husband to inflict more than mere humiliation. She wanted pure, physical harm to be done. This rather story-book evil behavior, again, reflects the flimsy nature of her identity. She lets her character be a reflection of her envy for Ansley, rather than something that she has independently defined.

By recognizing Mrs. Slade's frailty of character, one will also recognize that her issue after the death of her husband is an existential crisis that is manifesting itself as boredom. This is why she refuses to let go the drama between her and Ansley decades prior. She is still fighting to preserve this decaying identity that she has built up all her life, and despite all her efforts, it crumbles between her beautifully cared-for hands.