Christine Penmark’s death

Christine Penmark’s death is the culmination of her recognition that Rhoda’s apparent innocence cannot undo the crimes Christine knows she has committed. Unable to reconcile her love for her daughter with the knowledge of what Rhoda has done—and fearing the damage still to come—Christine kills herself, leaving Rhoda alive and others to confront the unexplained consequences.

Final Decision and Death

Sitting beside Rhoda, Christine watches the child’s calm breathing and sees how innocent she appears. For a moment, she doubts her own knowledge, imagining that Rhoda’s terrible instincts and actions might exist only in her mind. She sternly rejects that retreat: “I’m imagining nothing. It is all true.” Her wavering recognition makes the decision that follows more than a sudden response to an appearance; she has to hold herself to what she knows even as the child before her seems to contradict it.

Christine turns to Kenneth’s photograph, touched by memories of their life together. She fears Rhoda will destroy him as she has destroyed Christine, and that Rhoda will become a public spectacle like Christine’s biological mother, whose final words and suffering were read by millions. Christine insists to the photograph that this will not happen, then touches it and says, “If you knew, I’m sure you’d forgive me in time.” Before killing herself, she kisses Rhoda on the brow, unlocks her desk drawer, and takes out the pistol. She examines it idly, as though its purpose has become unfamiliar, then stands before her bedroom mirror and shoots herself in the head.

Discovery and Aftermath

Monica Breedlove has already grown worried because Christine does not answer repeated telephone calls. When Monica and the others enter the apartment, they first approach Christine’s bedroom, where a light is still burning, and then back away, turning on lights throughout the apartment. In Rhoda’s bedroom, Mrs. Forsythe finds the child alive and recognizes the urgency of getting help. She directs Johnnie Kunkel to take Rhoda to the hospital immediately, then decides to go with him. Rhoda survives and is later released from the hospital.

After Christine’s funeral, Kenneth sits in Monica’s living room and asks why Christine did it. Rhoda is staying with Mrs. Forsythe while arrangements for her future remain unsettled; Mrs. Forsythe has offered to keep her temporarily or indefinitely if Kenneth agrees. Kenneth expects his mother and sisters to arrive the next day and thinks Rhoda will probably go with them, but he remains fixed on the question of Christine’s reason. He believes she never acted without one and asks whether Christine told Monica anything that might explain her suicide. Monica says she does not know: she has retraced what Christine did, spoken with Reginald Tasker and Octavia Fern, and found that neither of them has an explanation either. Christine’s death therefore closes her own crisis without giving those left behind the reason Kenneth seeks.

Certainty and the Unanswered Motive

The ending separates certainty about what Christine does from certainty about why she does it. In her final private reckoning, she insists that her knowledge of Rhoda’s deeds is real; after her death, Kenneth and Monica can establish no explanation, even by retracing her actions and consulting Reginald Tasker and Octavia Fern. That shift—from a mind fiercely holding to its own judgment to survivors unable to recover its grounds—leaves Christine’s death conclusive as an act but unresolved as a motive. The gap is not filled by the rescue of Rhoda or by the arrangements for her future: those events continue the story, while the reason Kenneth seeks remains inaccessible.

Privacy, Spectacle, and the Unfinished Future

Christine’s final act is private, but the future she tries to shape is bound up with public exposure. She fears Rhoda will be destroyed and made into a spectacle as Christine’s own mother was, her final suffering consumed by readers over breakfast. The contrast between that imagined publicity and the solitary bedroom scene gives Christine’s death a double edge: she acts in secret while attempting to prevent another family catastrophe from becoming public spectacle. Yet the secrecy cannot settle what follows. Rhoda survives, and her care passes into the hands of others while Kenneth searches for a reason that neither Monica nor the people she consults can provide. Christine’s death ends her own part in that future, but does not control how the survivors will understand it.

The Mirror and the Final Image

The bedroom mirror gives Christine’s last action a stark visual framing: after insisting to herself that her knowledge is real, she stands before her own reflected image and turns the pistol on herself. The scene does not disclose a new explanation for her choice, but it closes on the collision between inward certainty and irreversible action. The survivors can question her motives afterward; the mirror preserves no answer.