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Dolores Claiborne

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This article is about the novel. For the film, see Dolores Claiborne (film). For the opera, see Dolores Claiborne (opera).
Dolores Claiborne
First edition cover
AuthorStephen King
Audio read byFrances Sternhagen
IllustratorBill Russell
Cover artistRob Wood
LanguageEnglish
GenrePsychological thriller
PublisherViking
Publication date
November 1992
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint (Hardcover and Paperback)
Pages305
ISBN978-0-670-84452-4

Dolores Claiborne (/ˈkleɪbɔːrn/) is a 1992 psychological thriller by Stephen King. The novel is narrated by the titular character, and introduces the fictional community of Little Tall Island, which Stephen King later used as the setting for the original TV mini-series Storm of the Century. It was the best-selling novel of 1992 in the United States.[1]

The novel led to a 1995 movie adaptation starring Kathy Bates that Time named among the top 10 greatest Stephen King film adaptations in 2013.[2] A two-act opera adaptation premiered in San Francisco in 2013. In 2017, the New York City Opera performed the world premiere of a new chamber version of the opera at the 59E59 Theater, directed by Michael Capasso.[3] In 2019, it was produced by the Boston University Opera Institute.[4][5]

Plot summary

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Dolores Claiborne, an opinionated 65-year-old widow living on the tiny Maine community of Little Tall Island, is suspected of murdering her wealthy, elderly employer, Vera Donovan. The novel is presented as a transcript of her statement, told to the local constable and a stenographer. Dolores wants to make clear to the police that she did not kill Vera, whom she had looked after for years, but does confess to orchestrating the death of her husband, Joe St. George, almost thirty years previously. Dolores's confession develops into the story of her life, her troubled marriage, and her relationship with her employer.

Dolores first describes the arrival of Vera and her millionaire husband, who have bought a summer home on Little Tall Island in 1949. Able to cope with Vera's exacting standards, Dolores first takes a job as a maid, then becomes housekeeper at the Donovan home. After Vera's husband dies in a car crash in 1960, she spends increasing time at her island house, eventually moving there permanently. Vera suffers a series of strokes in the 1980s, whereupon Dolores becomes the woman's live-in caretaker and reluctant companion. As Vera slips into dementia, she experiences terrifying hallucinations. When lucid, she subjects Dolores to a series of mind games and power plays.

Dolores reveals that when she began working at the Donovan house, her marriage to Joe was already in difficulties due to his alcoholism, temper, and domestic violence. Their children, Selena, Joe Jr. and Pete, are unaware of the abuse. The marriage problems escalate one night in 1960 when Joe viciously hits Dolores in the back with a piece of stove wood over a perceived slight. In retaliation, Dolores smashes a ceramic jug over his head and threatens him with a hatchet, swearing she will kill him if he ever strikes her again. This confrontation is witnessed by Selena. Joe stops beating Dolores, but Selena does not realize Dolores was acting in self-defense, and Joe uses the incident to gain sympathy from her. A rift grows between mother and daughter.

In 1962, Dolores notices Selena becoming increasingly withdrawn. After some speculation, Dolores finally confronts her daughter as they return home on the island ferry. She explains the truth of the hatchet incident and Selena reluctantly admits that Joe molested her. Dolores vows to protect her. That night, she considers murdering Joe, but instead, she confronts him, promising to have him arrested if he ever touches Selena again.

Dolores resolves to leave Joe, but when she attempts to withdraw her savings to fund their escape, she discovers Joe has stolen everything. In despair, she confides in Vera. An unusually sympathetic Vera casually remarks that men like Joe often die in accidents, leaving their wives everything. As she departs, she implies that she arranged the car crash that killed her husband and advises Dolores that "sometimes, an accident can be an unhappy woman's best friend."

Dolores begins plotting Joe's death, but she does not find an opportunity to execute her plan until the following summer. Vera becomes obsessed with a total solar eclipse that will be visible from the island, believing that the event will convince her estranged children to visit her. She plans a massive viewing party on the island ferry. Seeing the distraction as an opportunity, Dolores sends Selena to camp, and Joe Jr. and Pete are sent to visit family on the mainland. Dolores marks the location of a dried-up well in a patch of brambles on the edge of her property. When it becomes clear her children will not be joining her for the eclipse, Vera becomes despondent and lashes out at her hired help, calming only after Dolores confronts her over the unjust firing of one of the maids.

On the day of the eclipse, Dolores buys Joe a bottle of scotch and makes him a sandwich, lowering his guard, and they share their first moment of affection in many years. As the eclipse begins, Dolores has a vision of a young girl in the path of the eclipse who is being sexually abused by her father at that same moment. Reminded of what she has set out to do, she deliberately enrages Joe by claiming she has recovered the money he had stolen, provoking him into attacking her. She flees into the brambles, leading Joe to the well and tricking him into stepping on the rotted boards that cover it. The planks break and Joe falls into the well, severely injured.

Joe calls out for help for some time before eventually losing consciousness. Dolores returns to the house and falls asleep. She has a nightmare, then checks the well. She arrives to discover that Joe has regained consciousness and has nearly managed to climb out. He grabs at Dolores and attempts to pull her in with him. She hits him in the face with a rock, and he falls back into the well, dead.

Dolores reports Joe missing, and his body is found after several days of searching. His death is ruled an accident despite the suspicions of the local coroner. Dolores is free of Joe, but her actions have damaged her relationship with Selena, who has her own suspicions. Rumors begin to circulate that she has gotten away with murder.

The narrative finally arrives at the circumstances of Vera's death, the event which has led Dolores to tell her story. She confesses that Vera, during one of her hallucinations, managed to leave her wheelchair and fell down a flight of stairs. As she falls, Dolores has a terrifying vision of Joe's ghost. Still alive and lucid in spite of her injuries, Vera begs Dolores to help end her suffering. Dolores fetches a rolling pin, meaning to dispatch her, but Vera dies before she can use it. The incriminating scene is discovered by the local mailman, who suspects Dolores of killing the old woman and forces her to call the police.

That night, Dolores is harassed by members of the community who believe she has already escaped punishment for murder in the past. The next day, she receives a phone call from Vera's lawyer, who informs a shocked Dolores that she has inherited Vera's entire fortune—nearly $30 million. Dolores initially refuses the money, believing it should go to Vera's estranged children, but learns that the children were killed in a car crash in 1961, and that Vera has spent the last thirty years of her life pretending to herself that they were still alive. Knowing the inheritance will be seen as a motive and worsen the case against her, Dolores realizes that the only way to clear her name is to confess everything. Feeling at peace with herself at long last, she ends her statement.

Several newspaper articles provide an epilogue to the story, revealing that Dolores was cleared of any blame in Vera's death and has anonymously donated Vera's fortune to the New England Home for Little Wanderers. The final article implies that Dolores and Selena have reconciled and that Selena will be coming home for the first time in twenty years.

Style

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Atypically for a King novel, Dolores Clairborne has no chapters, double-spacing between paragraphs, or other section breaks; thus, the text is a single continuous narrative, which reads like the transcription of a spoken monologue. It is written entirely in the first person, in a local dialect.[6]

Themes

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Unlike many other works by King, little focus is given here to the supernatural.[7] Although supernatural occurrences are implied, the only such events that clearly occur in the book are two telepathic visions of a nameless young girl sexually victimized by her father, which, along with the solar eclipse backdrop, form a link to King's novel Gerald's Game.[8]

Characters

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  • Dolores Claiborne – The novel's narrator and protagonist, she is a 65-year-old housekeeper. Caustic but not embittered by a lifetime of hard work and suffering, she is forced to confront her past sins to clear her name of a murder she did not commit. Despite expressing disparaging sentiments against President Kennedy throughout the novel, she is disclosed to be a registered Democrat near the novel's end.
  • Vera Donovan – Dolores's employer and a demanding, high-handed woman (in Dolores's phrasing, "a high-riding bitch"), she has a fanatical devotion to her complicated household procedures and will fire her hired help for the smallest of mistakes.
  • Joe St. George – Dolores's husband, she marries him directly out of high school. Inconsistently employed, racist, and both verbally and physically abusive to his family.
  • Selena St. George – Dolores's and Joe's daughter, and extremely bright and friendly as a girl, she is an honor student by the time she is in high school. As an adult, Selena moves to New York and becomes a well-known journalist, but struggles with alcoholism and becomes distant from her mother.
  • Joe St. George Jr. – Dolores and Joe's older son, he is harassed and belittled by his father for his intelligence, sensitivity, and lack of physical prowess, and by the time of Joe's death, his son actively despises him. When his father dies, he surprisingly takes it the hardest of the three children, struggling with guilt over his hatred for his father. As an adult, he becomes a state senator in Maine and has a close relationship with his mother.
  • Pete St. George – Dolores's youngest son, nine years old when his father dies, he is referred to as "little Pete" or "Petey" by his mother, he idolizes his father and begins to imitate him, getting into fights at school and using racial slurs he is too young to understand. As an adult, he enlists in the army and is killed in Saigon, Vietnam shortly before the end of the war.
  • Michael Donovan – Vera's husband, he is a millionaire airplane manufacturer. He is killed in a car crash outside Baltimore on the way back from his mistress's apartment, after Vera tampered with his brakes.
  • Donald and Helga Donovan – Vera's children, they are last seen by Dolores in 1961, when Donald is 16 and Helga is 14, after an argument in which Vera refuses to let Helga get a driver's license. Dolores speculates that they were aware or suspicious of their mother's role in their father's death and may even have been blackmailing her. Vera spends years telling Dolores they are estranged and creates elaborate lies of their current careers and families, but after her death, it emerges that they had died several months after Dolores last saw them, having veered off the road in a car driven by Helga.
  • Ted Kenopensky – Vera's handyman and occasional lover, Dolores refers to him as "the Hunky". Dolores believes he conspired with Vera to kill her husband. He is killed in a car crash shortly after Vera's health begins to fail.
  • Mr. Pease – A banker, he unwillingly helps Dolores discover what Joe has done with the money he has stolen from her children's college funds. In doing so, he shares confidential information with her against regulations, and after Joe's death, he does not come forward to share his knowledge of Dolores's motives for murder, which Dolores believes is out of fear of his own culpability.
  • Dr. John McAuliffe – The county medical examiner, he examines Joe's body. A small, fastidious Scotsman, he suspects Dolores of killing her husband and harshly interrogates her prior to the official inquest, nearly cornering her with discrepancies in her story. He is eventually forced to enter a verdict of accidental death, which he does unwillingly.
  • Garrett Thibodeau – The town constable, he investigates Joe's death. Friendly, empathetic, and not too bright, he cannot help himself from derailing McAuliffe's interrogation of Dolores. As a result, she is not charged with Joe's death.
  • Sammy Marchant – The island's dimwitted mailman, he discovers Dolores standing over Vera's dead body. He immediately suspects her of murder and is responsible for the rumors that begin to spread, eventually convincing Dolores to make her confession to the police.
  • Andy Bissette, Nancy Bannister, and Frank Proulx – The police chief, stenographer, and officer, respectively, they are in the room listening to Dolores's confession. None of their dialogue is included in the novel, which is presented as a transcript of Dolores's statement, but Dolores frequently addresses them.

Reception

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The book has been praised for its characterization of the main protagonist[9], although some reviewers are ambivalent about King's use of dialect.[10][11]The Guardian refers to it as: "one of King’s most extraordinarily heartfelt books."[12] Publishers Weekly says: "King, even without the trappings of horror and suspense, is a magnificent storyteller whose greatest strength has always been characterization."[13]

Adaptations

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The novel was adapted into a 1995 film directed by Taylor Hackford. It starred Kathy Bates as Dolores, with Jennifer Jason Leigh as her daughter Selena, and Judy Parfitt as Vera Donovan.[14] David Joss Buckley adapted the novel for the stage.[15] It was produced in Germany and France and nominated for Globe De Crystal by Paris Premiere, 2007.[16] Dolores Claiborne, the operatic adaptation of the novel composed by Tobias Picker to a libretto by J. D. McClatchy, premiered at San Francisco Opera on September 18, 2013, with Patricia Racette in the title role.[17] The play has also been made into a couple of Finnish plays both called Doloreksen tunnustus: in 2009 presented by Tukkateatteri,[18] and in 2012 presented by Ad Astra Teatteri.[19][20]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Albert Rolls, Stephen King: A Biography, p. 109 (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2009). ISBN 978-0-313-34572-2
  2. ^ Susman, Gary (October 18, 2013). "The Big Chills: 10 Greatest Stephen King Movies". Time. Retrieved October 31, 2015.
  3. ^ "New York City Opera Presents Dolores Claiborne this Month", BroadwayWorld, September 28, 2017
  4. ^ "Tobias Picker & Janacek Headline Boston University Opera Institute Spring 2019 Operas". Opera Wire. February 21, 2019. Retrieved November 24, 2020.
  5. ^ "CFA Tackles Tobias Picker Opera Based on a Stephen King Novel". Boston University. Retrieved November 24, 2020.
  6. ^ Tabler, Elizabeth (May 1, 2020). "REVIEW: Dolores Claiborne by Stephen King". Grimdark Magazine. Retrieved March 9, 2025.
  7. ^ Gina Wisker, Horror Fiction: An Introduction, p. 20 (The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc., 2005). ISBN 0-8264-1561-X
  8. ^ Heidi Strengell, Dissecting Stephen King: From the Gothic to Literary Naturalism, p. 48 (The University of Wisconsin Press, 2005). ISBN 0-299-20970-9
  9. ^ DOLORES CLAIBORNE | Kirkus Reviews.
  10. ^ Hendrix, Grady (November 13, 2013). "The Great Stephen King Reread: Dolores Claiborne". Reactor. Retrieved March 9, 2025.
  11. ^ Tabler, Elizabeth (May 1, 2020). "REVIEW: Dolores Claiborne by Stephen King". Grimdark Magazine. Retrieved March 9, 2025.
  12. ^ Smythe, James (February 5, 2015). "Rereading Stephen King, chapter 31: Dolores Claiborne". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved March 9, 2025.
  13. ^ "Dolores Claiborne by Stephen King". www.publishersweekly.com. March 3, 2025. Retrieved March 3, 2025.
  14. ^ Laura Grindstaff, "Memory, Haunting, and Revenge in Dolores Claiborne" in Martha McCaughey, Neal King (editors), Reel Knockouts: Violent Women in the Movies (University of Texas Press, 2001). ISBN 0-292-75250-4
  15. ^ "Stephen King'in romanı tiyatro sahnesinde". edebiyathaber.net. December 18, 2012. Retrieved November 19, 2015.
  16. ^ "Les Globes de Cristal sur Paris Première". Le zapping du PAF. Retrieved November 19, 2015.
  17. ^ Woolfe, Zachary (September 19, 2013). "From the Page to the Stage, a Confession Receives an Operatic Turn". The New York Times. Retrieved May 27, 2014.
  18. ^ "Doloreksen tunnustus" (in Finnish). Tukkateatteri. Retrieved July 22, 2024.
  19. ^ "Historia" (in Finnish). Ad Astra Teatteri. Retrieved July 22, 2024.
  20. ^ Westman, Maija-Liisa (October 15, 2012). "Rakkauden monisärmäiset kasvot". Keskisuomalainen (in Finnish). Retrieved July 22, 2024.
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