The Silent Companions

Content Warning: The source material and this guide discuss violence toward women (including implications of rape and incest), child loss, miscarriage, violent death from murder and execution, the mistreatment of someone with a disability, animal abuse, substance use, mental illness, and racism against a Romani person.

Like much Gothic literature, The Silent Companions uses the trappings of the supernatural to expose a more everyday horror: the status of women in patriarchal societies. The novel is especially interested in women’s domestic role, showing how marriage, the home, and motherhood can become sources of deep anguish. At the same time, the absence of these staples of female existence are little better, as women who do not or cannot conform to societal expectations experience equal (if not greater) marginalization.

As a pregnant widow, Elsie straddles these two categories of women, and her storyline exposes the trauma of both. Following her husband’s death, Elsie is taken to The Bridge, and the mansion’s unsettling, unwelcoming appearance, with its rotting gardens and sawdust-covered floors, evokes the inhabitants’ imprisonment and solitude. Elsie’s forced stay in this isolated location exemplifies the cultural imprisonment of women, who frequently had little influence over their own lives and were subject to the decisions of male guardians or spouses.