Blanche Glover’s friendship brooch

Blanche Glover’s friendship brooch is a jet ornament depicting two clasped hands, given to her by Christabel LaMotte. In Blanche’s will, its return becomes more than the disposal of a trinket: the object preserves a bond that cannot be reduced to property, while its movement back toward Christabel gives that bond a final, tangible form.

Description and Provenance

Blanche identifies the brooch as the only item of jewellery she owns that has personal significance. She distinguishes it from her other trinkets, which she is willing to leave to Jane, and specifies that the jet brooch of two hands clasped in Friendship was given to her by Miss LaMotte. Its material and design join the personal to the symbolic: jet, shaped into joined hands, makes companionship something that can be held and passed between them.

The Bequest and Its Meaning

In her will, Blanche asks that Christabel take the brooch back. The request reverses the original gift, but does not simply cancel it. Blanche’s disposition of her belongings acknowledges that the brooch came from Christabel and treats its return as an intimate act, distinct from the ordinary distribution of possessions. The will thus records their connection through a specific object at the moment Blanche is arranging what will remain after her.

Shared Possessions and Separation

The brooch belongs to a larger pattern of shared domestic and artistic life. Blanche’s will says that the house and its furnishings were bought with their savings and that the furnishings belonged more to Christabel, whom she regarded as the richer partner. She also directs that Christabel’s paintings remain with her, identifying them as the best of Blanche’s work and hoping they may recall happy times. Against these substantial ties, the brooch is small and personal: a gift that carries the language of friendship within a household, and whose return makes the distance between shared life and separation visible.

Narrative Significance

The brooch’s clasped hands make friendship legible as an image, while the will gives that image a history of exchange: Christabel gave the object, and Blanche asks her to receive it again. Its significance rests not on market value but on provenance and relationship. Like other things passed between people in the novel, it carries memory through material form; unlike a document intended for scholarly study, it records their bond through a private gift and a final request.