and that the story is about healing as much as it is about solution, since solutions can be brief and specious and subjective, while healing is necessary in order to simply live on--itself, a species of victory.
Absolutely this. I think it's why the first act doesn't feel like a fakeout, even though I've now seen multiple reviewers complain about the way the focus shifts from the school environment to Florence herself. Her job at Rookwood is done when she solves the death of Walter Portman. It is a terrible answer, because it is made of human sadness and stupidity, but it is a better one for the headmaster than some predatory kind of phantom running loose among the boys. It settles nothing for her. She could leave that afternoon and go back to her strange, penitential life in its staggered downward spiral, disproving case after case and losing a little more of herself each time; it's what she's done every time before. It's only because she stays on, past her apparent part in the story, that she has the chance—however perilous—of anything more.
no subject
Absolutely this. I think it's why the first act doesn't feel like a fakeout, even though I've now seen multiple reviewers complain about the way the focus shifts from the school environment to Florence herself. Her job at Rookwood is done when she solves the death of Walter Portman. It is a terrible answer, because it is made of human sadness and stupidity, but it is a better one for the headmaster than some predatory kind of phantom running loose among the boys. It settles nothing for her. She could leave that afternoon and go back to her strange, penitential life in its staggered downward spiral, disproving case after case and losing a little more of herself each time; it's what she's done every time before. It's only because she stays on, past her apparent part in the story, that she has the chance—however perilous—of anything more.