Christine Penmark’s suicide

Christine Penmark’s suicide is the decisive death of the novel’s final sequence: after forcing herself to accept that Rhoda’s deeds are real, Christine takes her own life rather than allow the child to destroy Kenneth or suffer a public fate like her mother’s. The act is deliberate, yet its motive remains unspoken to the people who survive her. The aftermath turns that silence into the event’s lasting burden: Rhoda is rescued, but Kenneth and Monica cannot establish why Christine acted.

The final decision

Christine’s last scene begins beside Rhoda. She watches the child’s calm breathing and sees how innocent she looks, briefly doubting whether the dark instincts and deeds she has attributed to her daughter are real. She then rejects that doubt: “I’m imagining nothing. It is all true.” The movement from momentary denial to stern recognition makes her suicide follow an acknowledged reality, rather than a belief she has simply failed to question.

She next turns to Kenneth’s photograph, where love and longing bring back their shared past. Speaking to him, she says Rhoda will not destroy him as she has destroyed Christine, and that Rhoda will not die publicly as Christine’s mother did, with millions reading of her final words, thoughts, and gestures of pain over their morning coffee. Christine’s words connect her decision to two feared consequences: the damage she believes Rhoda may do to Kenneth, and the public exposure of a death like her mother’s. She touches the photograph, turns away in regret, and says softly that Kenneth would forgive her in time if he knew. The farewell expresses both her attachment to him and her expectation that he will not understand her choice at once.

The act and its immediate aftermath

Christine kisses Rhoda once on the brow, unlocks her desk drawer, and takes out the pistol. She inspects it idly, as though its purpose has escaped her, before standing in front of the bedroom mirror and shooting herself in the head. The sequence places tenderness immediately beside lethal action: the kiss is her final contact with her daughter, and the pistol, retrieved from a locked drawer, makes the death a conscious act rather than an accident. The mirror is the setting for the final gesture, but the narration does not explain what Christine sees or thinks there.

The discovery comes through the unanswered door. Monica Breedlove has already expressed worry after repeatedly trying to telephone Christine. Mrs. Forsythe reports that she rang the bell, pounded on the door, and called Christine’s name without receiving a response. Monica then leaves the card table to find out what is wrong, and Emory Breedlove accompanies her rather than let her drive into town alone so late. The repeated attempts to reach Christine establish the immediate alarm, but the visitors do not know what has happened inside.

Inside the apartment, the group goes first to Christine’s bedroom, where a light is still burning, and then backs away and turns on lights throughout the apartment. Mrs. Forsythe finds Rhoda alive in the child’s bedroom and recognizes that help must come quickly. She orders Johnnie Kunkel to take Rhoda to the hospital at speed, saying she thinks there is still time to save her, and then decides to accompany them. Christine’s death and Rhoda’s endangered survival are thus discovered together, but the account gives no further detail here about what placed Rhoda in danger. Mrs. Forsythe’s urgency shifts the scene from discovery to rescue before the adults can understand the full situation.

An unexplained death

After Christine’s funeral, Kenneth asks Monica why his wife did it and whether she had said anything that might explain her decision. Monica answers that she does not know. She has retraced Christine’s actions and spoken with Reginald Tasker and Octavia Fern; neither of them has an explanation either. Kenneth insists that Christine did not act without a reason, but certainty that a reason existed does not supply its contents. The gap between his conviction and Monica’s inability to identify the cause keeps Christine’s final choice from becoming a fully explained confession.

Kenneth also asks whether Christine was insane. Monica emphatically denies it, and Emory says Christine was worried sick. Their responses offer different descriptions of her state, not a definitive account of what drove her to suicide. Monica recalls that when she was with Christine at the hotel, she urged her to cable Kenneth to come home. Christine refused and said the matter did not concern him. Monica had thought Christine seemed better in the last few days and blames herself for leaving her alone. Her recollection supplies a concrete instance of Christine withholding something from Kenneth and of Monica misreading her apparent improvement, but it does not identify precisely what Christine had discovered or why she chose death.

Survival and narrative consequence

Rhoda is out of the hospital by the time of the post-funeral conversation and is staying with Mrs. Forsythe while arrangements for her future are considered. Mrs. Forsythe has offered to keep her for the emergency or indefinitely if Kenneth agrees; Kenneth expects Rhoda may instead go with his mother and sisters, who are due the next day. The practical question of who will care for Rhoda follows directly from Christine’s absence, while the competing possibilities leave her immediate future unsettled.

When Mrs. Forsythe brings Rhoda into the room, the girl goes straight to Kenneth and embraces him. She then pulls away, dances across the carpet, and offers him “a basket of kisses.” The charming gesture recalls the innocent appearance that troubled Christine in her final moments, but the scene does not disclose Rhoda’s understanding of her mother’s death. It closes the event’s immediate aftermath on a sharp contrast: Kenneth is pressing his hands to his head and asking why Christine died, while Rhoda returns to a playful performance of affection. Christine’s suicide answers her own fear through an irreversible act, but leaves the people around her with the question she chose not to answer aloud.