What Happens To Esme At The End Of The Vanishing Act Of Esme Lennox?

Question

Don't mind spoilers! Finished 'The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox' and I'm still torn up about her final fate. Did she find peace, or was her end tragic? Maggie O'Farrell's conclusion wrecked me.

kolademotirola · Answer

Sorry for the huge spoiler alert about the end of Esme’s book (I read it so quickly it almost feels mean to describe the ending for people who haven’t read it yet). Suffice it to say that I was given a lot of closure for this hidden past of Esme’s and it was heart breaking and also somehow giving her quiet agency. I recently finished reading The Invisible Heir. In this book the main character discovers that his true parentage was hidden from him in order to protect him from a political blood feud that could kill him. The tension in the book revolves around whether he will claim his inheritance or remain safely in the dark and hidden from a world of danger.

Parker · Answer

It’s left ambiguous and yet it feels symbolic and fitting to Esme Lennox’s story. After decades of being wrongfully detained in institutions she is released into the modern world. After all that time she is able to leave. However in a similar fashion to her departure from her family’s home all those years ago she vanishes. While the reader is left to imagine the scene where Esme Lennox walks into the sea of the closing pages it feels like she has left in order to reclaim her agency and her freedom in the only way she can. Whether that freedom is found in the act or whether she is lost to it is left to the reader’s imagination and it feels like both.

The fragmentation and repression of Esme’s life is mirrored in the narrative of the novel and it is left abruptly unresolved for Iris and the reader of the novel. This is a brutal but honest insight into the way ‘difficult’ women are discarded by society. The novel’s power is in refusing to offer the reader any comfort or closure and I was left with a lump in my throat upon finishing the book. I had no idea whether Esme had finally found peace or was continuing to fight against the currents of her life.

Oliver · Answer

This is the gutting ending of ‘The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox’ by Elizabeth O’Farrell. After reuniting with her sister Iris in the last chapter of the book Esme just walks off. We don’t know if she has died or whether she has somehow managed to escape from her past. The final scene with Esme is at sea, and it’s ambiguous. The ambiguity of this scene is mirrored in the rest of the book in the unsatisfactory answers that Iris searches for throughout. But despite this, the ending is also somehow wonderful. Esme’s whole life has been dictated by others, and her decision to just walk off is the first act of rebellion that she has ever been able to make. I felt mad at the systemic failures that had caused her so much pain, but also somehow hopeful. Maybe for once Esme had been able to make a choice.

Caleb · Answer

I loved how Esme’s ending devastated me in the best way possible. After years of having her voice stifle (first by her family and then by the constraints of the asylum) it was heart-wrenching yet fabulous that she got to leave in the way that she wanted to. Being near the water meant so much to her given her recollection of freedom and youth in India as a child. The end is open to interpretation but many see it as being left by the staff at the old people’s home to go have a drown themselves. It seems very likely to be that. But to me, it just looked and felt like so much freedom had finally been bestowed upon Esme after 60 years or so.

It’s been 60 years or so since Esme’s had her self, her imagination, and her sense of self eradicated by her family. The old Esme is the re claimed self of the young wild and imaginative girl, worn and tired but unbroken. We get no explanations as to why Esme disappears just as we feel that we have gained an understanding of her and so her disappearance is denied to all of those around her. This is skillful writing. We the reader get to feel the full force of the victim regaining control of her story and this final chapter has been re read by me three times and every time I have come up with more and more questions.

3nie3.croucamp · Answer

A rusty, rainy roof is not a dramatic setting for a potential death. This could happen on a grimy, dirty roof of some dismal institution, same place that she was imprisoned all those years ago. Cauldstone claimed her in the end, in one way or another. These are not dramatic injustices, they are sordid and often ignored, happening in dingy, crumbling buildings. The image of her death is that of something very pure and fragile being consumed by the dirty, sordid, often pointless reality of the world we live in. Not a heroic death by any means, this is a very pathetic, and therefore even more angrying, waste of life.

Yessica Y. Oliva · Answer

This ending is SO haunting. I was prepared for an ending one way or another but it wasn’t to be. It is deliberately ambiguous. We are left not knowing for sure whether Esme has fallen to her death from the roof of Cauldstone Hospital or jumped in mid-sentence as Iris drives up to take her away to start her new life. It is a brutal, heart-wrenching ending to a life of being erased and controlled. Her story was to be her greatest revenge – her way of finally telling her full story to the world. But in the end the system of men that controlled her for so long wins again. We are left imagining her white nightdress fluttering in the sky. It is a truly masterful ending – a devastating end to a devastating story that refuses to be tied up with a neat bow.

Even days after finishing the book I am left pondering the precise details of the final scene.

Ely Guadarrama · Answer

When she finally dies, Esme’s demise serves as the impetus for Iris’s transformation. Throughout the novel, Iris has been a somewhat passive character who is greatly affected by the male characters in her life – her brother and her lover. However, her attempts to come to terms with Esme’s disappearance and her subsequent death will force her out of her proverbial bubble. There will be much for Iris to deal with as she tries to come to terms with the events surrounding Esme’s mysterious disappearance and subsequent death. Unfortunately, much of that will bring her great pain and in some ways make her. The tragic end of one woman could bring about the somewhat painful beginning of another. And, yes, life does go on.

LizzyRenn · Answer

I also think the key to understanding the ending of this book is to realize that Kitty locked Esme up to take her life, as well as her child. In the hospital, Esme finally understands the truth of what happened all those years ago. When she goes to the roof, she is not just some dotty old woman. She is a woman whose life was completely stolen by the person she loved best in the world. And I think that even if Iris had arrived to rescue her in time, it would have been too late for Esme to start to rebuild her life at the age of 70. All her relationships had been based on a lie. The roof is the climax of that long betrayl, and her fall/jump from the roof is her final plummet to the ground from the last sliver of hope she had left after discovering the truth about her sister.

Elba Pacheco · Answer

Iris is driven away from Cauldstone by her great-niece after a long and difficult lifetime of being locked up in Cauldstone Manors. In the car, there is a sense of release and hope. Esme asks to go back in for her sketchbook and they return to the house. Up on the roof of Cauldstone Manor, Esme Lennox either jumps to her death or falls. The novel ends with the sentence literally cut short: ‘The white of her gown…’. The ambiguity of Esme’s ‘vanishing’ from the world is left to the reader but it is clear that her ‘vanishing’ was always going to happen in a world that had been erasing her humanity for decades. Her life and her death are never fully explored or given proper witness. In the end, her ‘vanishing’ is less about a physical event and more about the way in which our society has always managed to erase people like Esme Lennox.

Doris Graciela Urriola Ramos · Answer

The weather is important. It is raining. The roof is slippery. This evidence supports an accident reading of the tragic event. An elderly, frail woman, probably confused, wandering about on a steep, slick roof in her nightgown, slips and falls to her death. This is not a deliberate act of suicide. The event is tragic enough when considered in contrast to this woman’s probably difficult life. The rain also washes clean the scene of the tragedy. The grey, weeping sky mirrors the tragedy but also establishes the physical conditions that led to the event. The pathetic fallacy is extreme here and is just plausible enough to be able to read the event as an accident while remaining true to the them of the story as well.

kris b · Answer

The view from the rooftop must be stunning for someone who has not seen such a sight since childhood. The view from the height of the rooftop must be overwhelming, liberating, even terrifying for someone who has not seen such a sight since childhood. The world had continued to move on whilst she was stuck in a place which had long forgotten her. The view from the rooftop would reinforce her perception of her disconnection from the world below. The rooftop is a liminal space, outside of the boundaries of the asylum and the world below it. It is the perfect metaphor for her existence: in-between, unseen and precarious. She commits her final act of defiance in the one place where she feels she truly belongs, nowhere. The rooftop is nowhere.

What Happens To Esme At The End Of The Vanishing Act Of Esme Lennox?

11 Answers

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