All Her Little Secrets

Ellice’s childhood trauma illustrates how the justice system does not always protect and defend survivors of abuse, underscoring the novel’s theme of Ethical and Moral Dilemmas. Ellice takes ethics seriously as a lawyer and has her own experience with moral dilemmas as the murderer of her rapist, Willie Jay Groover. She faced the repeated trauma of sexual assault from Willie Jay, with no one to protect her. Even when Ellice becomes pregnant by Willie Jay, Martha blames Ellice. Vera is the only person who advocates for Ellice, who escaped to Chillicothe after “killing a man whom she reported as her rapist” (273). Vera and Ellice both know that nothing but more harm to Ellice will come from reporting Willie Jay since he is a police officer. Willie Jay remorselessly abuses the ethics his position as an officer by sexually assaulting his stepdaughter and physically abusing his stepson. Sam’s abuse provokes Ellice’s resolution beyond her moral dilemma of staying with her family to murder. She upholds her own ethics as she protects her brother from Willie Jay, when no one protected her.

Willie Jay’s treatment dehumanizes Ellice, as his abuse begins to convince her that if she died, “no one would miss [her] and all the pain and heartache that crawled through [her] would vanish, too” (313). The lack of assistance from law enforcement highlights the friction between moral dilemmas and ethics of the novel. Morris emphasizes how the police refused to help, and even harmed, people of color when young Ellice, says to Vera, “It seems wrong that someone who’s supposed to enforce the law doesn’t follow the law. What kind of justice is that?” (321). Vera knows that there will be no justice for Ellice, only more pain and suffering. Vera upholds her own sense of ethics to ensure Ellice will no longer suffer from Willie Jay’s abuse by helping her poison Willie Jay. Ellice knows she made the right decision to kill Willie Jay, thinking that he “would never lock up another innocent person in jail or another helpless child in a backyard shed” (330). Ellice’s decision demonstrates the convoluted relationship between ethics and moral dilemmas as she murders a corrupt police officer. She believes she is protecting countless people who he would have abused and assaulted in the future, including herself and Sam. Ellice takes justice into her own hands again when she lets Hardy fall to his death, because she does not want to leave the justice of her brother’s murder to a system that has repeatedly failed her. Ellice absolves herself of the moral dilemmas she’s experienced throughout the novel by divesting her sense of ethics and morals from legal institutions, despite her job as a lawyer.