The Other Johnson

Ruth Rendell’s A Demon in my View has so much imagery and symbols that I have been almost forced to blog again after reading only another 20 twenty pages. Arthur Johnson, the main character of the novel, lives on the top floor of an apartment. Near the beginning of the novel we find out that the bottom room-that is currently vacant-will be getting a new tenant soon. This tenant’s name is Anthony Johnson. So Arthur Johnson lives on the top floor, and Anthony Johnson lives on the bottom. Immediately a connection is assumed between them, and this coincidence is even brought up in the novel:

“’Are you by chance the other Johnson?’…

‘I think you must mean you are the other Johnson. I have been here for twenty years’”(33)

Ruth is clearly trying to show us that these two characters will be very intertwined, as their names are almost identical.

Both Arthur and Anthony have a woman who has/had a very large impact on their life. Arthur’s woman is his Aunt Gracie, whom I discussed in my earlier post. He also has the present embodiment of her as the mannequin in the cellar. Anthony’s woman is Helen. Helen is the woman that he loves, and she loves him. She however is already married, and pities her husband too much to leave him. Helen however has a very large impact on Anthony’s life.

“…he had never woken up to this awareness and insight before he met Helen. She it was who had turned his soul’s eye towards the light” (29)

Helen is what turned his eye to the light. For Arthur, Gracie is who controls his life; she is who would have the power to turn his eye to or from the light.

Another similarity between these men is their interest in a particular house. For Arthur, this house is one that he walks by every day on his way to work. It is the house in which he was raised: his aunt Gracie’s old house. The house is being demolished, and it brings back memories for him.

“The demolition men were at work and Auntie Gracie’s living room – brown lincrusta, marble fireplace, pink linoleum – all exposed to the public view. There on the ochre-colored wallpaper was the paler rectangle marking where the sideboard had stood, the sideboard into whose drawer he had shut the mouse. His first killing. Auntie Gracie had died in that room” (48).

Anthony’s interest in this room is different however. He saw this demolition site as the perfect place to begin his career as a social worker. He wasn’t allowed to begin officially until done his schooling, but at this demolished house he could begin unofficially. He wanted to get people together to study, and this site was the perfect location.

“A man seen building a bonfire there would soon attract all the juvenile society in the neighborhood. And he could rope in the parents…” (55)

Both men have an attachment with this house, yet the attachments are very different.

Rendell is clearly bringing these two men together for some reason. Their names are very similar, they’ve both been deeply affected by a woman who they do not have direct contact with, and they both have interest in the exact same piece of property: all of this in only the fist 55 pages of the novel. Their connection’s importance is not clearly visible yet, but in time I’m sure Rendell will reveal it.

She had never been very pleased with him, had she?"

A Demon in My View by Ruth Rendell has some very strange twists. Generally a suspense novel includes a person’s murder, and guessing for the novel’s entirety at who the murderer is. This novel is not like that. The murderer is known right away, and the murdered is not a person. The murdered being isn’t even an animate object.

Arthur Johnson is the main character, and he is not your average man. He was raised by his aunt Gracie and was very controlled by her. Even after her death she is running his life.

Would she be pleased with him if she could see him now? If she could see how he kept his own place, his bank balance…? But she had never been very pleased with him, had she? (20)

His current life is all about pleasing her. It is much like Hitchcock’s Psycho in the way Arthur cannot escape his aunt Gracie’s control. She runs his life.

Arthur seems to respect his aunt. The reader gets into his head and can read his thoughts. His actions however convey a different attitude toward her. Arthur has a mannequin in the cellar of the apartment he is renting, and that mannequin is dressed in his aunt’s old clothes. “An impulse came to him to dress [the mannequin]…the flat black dress, a handbag, and shoes. These had belonged to Auntie Gracie”(16). This mannequin was what Arthur took out his rage on. After a long day he would unwind by “murdering” her.

She was ready to die for him again. A week, a fortnight, might go by but she would wait for him. It was good, the best thing in his life. (3)

He would kill a thousand women in her person, she would be his salvation. (17)

Arthur tells of his rage towards women, but what would this hatred of them have come from? He speaks constantly about his aunt, and describes about how upset she would be with him if she were there. He never tells any story of something his aunt Gracie did that pleased him: always just more examples of her control. He dresses the mannequin up in her clothing, and strangles her weekly. His conscious respect for his aunt’s behavior seems to be undermined by a subconscious hatred of her, and all women.

His aunt’s control over him has led him to hate all women: “The woman who waited in the dark streets, asking for trouble, he cared nothing for them” (17). He knows that it is illegal to kill women, and because of his superficial image of him being a put-together respectable man, he would never break the law. He cannot control himself because of the deep mental scarring his aunt has marked him with, so he is forced to murder something no one will no about. Someone/thing has to die for his troubles, and who better to kill then the woman who ruined him? His aunt, in an inanimate form.