The Secret Keeper

Dorothy “Dolly” Smitham is a protagonist and point-of-view character in the first and second parts of the novel. She grew up in Coventry with a father who was an accountant for a bicycle manufacturer, a mother who gave up her dreams of singing to marry, and a younger brother who is something of a troublemaker. Dolly has brown hair, brown eyes, and is considered pretty. When she is 17, Dolly falls in love with Jimmy Metcalfe and dreams of leaving home for London. Dolly’s plans are unformed, but she “had always felt different, as if she were somehow more alive than other people, and the world, fate or destiny, whatever it was, had big plans for her” (75). Jimmy thinks of Dolly as playful, “full of life, full of dreams” (390). He sees her as “the sort of person who needed to be kept happy […] Not as a matter of selfish expectation, but as a simple fact of design; like a piano or a harp, she’d been made to function best at a certain tuning” (287).

Dolly likes glamor, excitement, and comfort. She admires the wealthy and keeps a scrapbook of pictures that capture what she wishes her life could be like. Dr. Rufus, her friend’s father, speculates that Dolly’s tendency toward selfishness, narcissism, and fantasy stems from her feeling of not quite belonging in her birth family; indeed, Dolly fantasizes that she was stolen from her real family and isn’t actually related to her parents at all. While she feels stunned and bereft when her family dies in the bombings, they were not part of her future dreams. She prefers not to talk about her grief. In general, Dolly tends to be secretive, which Kitty Barker interprets as being sly.

Dolly loves invention, fantasy, and games of pretend that add excitement to her life, something she often feels is missing. At her core, she believes she is a good person who deserves to have good things happen to her. Dolly’s happiness, not the welfare of others, tends to be her greatest concern. Dolly also loves beauty and luxury. When she works for Lady Gwendolyn, she enjoys trying on her gowns and furs and pretending that she, Dolly, is wealthy and important. Her vivid imagination also leads her to imagine a friendship with Vivien Jenkins, Lady Gwendolyn’s neighbor, with whom Dolly has very few interactions but whom she often observes through the window. According to Dr. Rufus, it is as if Dolly wants to be Vivien Jenkins; she refers to them as “two of a kind” (385). Dolly hopes her friendship with Vivien and her loyal service to Lady Gwendolyn (even if she detests the woman herself) will elevate her status. This makes her embarrassed to admit that Jimmy is her boyfriend; overlooking Jimmy’s many good qualities, Dolly is mainly concerned that he won’t fit into the glamorous life she envisions for herself.

When Lady Gwendolyn dies and Dolly feels rejected by Vivien, Dolly manipulates Jimmy into a scheme that she knows goes against his morals. Dolly sees any obstacle in her path as inconveniences that need to be overcome in order to realize the life she believes is waiting for her. Dolly shows no consideration for Jimmy’s feelings, playing on his love, pity, and loyalty to gain his consent without demonstrating any true interest in him or his life. Tellingly, Dolly never meets Jimmy’s father, nor does she introduce Jimmy to her friends. Driven only by her own needs, Dolly tricks Jimmy by taking a photograph of him and Vivien without his knowledge and presses ahead with her blackmail scheme, abandoning it only when she discovers Vivien has already given Jimmy a hefty sum of money. The bomb that kills Dolly is a fitting irony, as the blackmail letter written by Dolly sets in motion the events that lead Dolly and Vivien to the scene of the explosion.

Vivien is another protagonist and a point-of-view character in the third and fourth parts of the novel. Vivien was born in Australia into a family with three other children. Her father was Australian but her mother was English. Vivien was devastated when she lost her entire family in a car accident; thereafter, family becomes the thing she most longs her. Vivien tends to feel guilt and self-blame for events beyond her control as a result of her tragic loss. She believes that each subsequent trauma she suffers in her life is further punishment for their deaths. Vivien’s need for family is not fulfilled by her uncle, as he marries her to Henry Jenkins, a man whose love is brutal, abusive, and suffocating. Vivien has inherited the wealth of her grandparents and she owns the house in Campden Grove where she and Henry live. She suspects that Henry marries her mostly for her money.

Morton characterizes Vivien as more reserving than Dolly—in part because she is concealing the truth about her abusive marriage—causing the other characters to draw various conclusions about her. Katy Ellis, a travel companion who becomes Vivien’s friend, describes her as “proud and willful” but “oddly likable” (349). Kitty Barker, who lives next door to Vivien for a few months during the war, thinks of her as cold and stuck-up. Vivien moves quickly, rushing when she walks, but she grows up to be beautiful, wealthy, and well-dressed. Dolly thinks of Vivien as possessing a “veneer of elegance” and “perfect self-control” (30).

Even as the reader gets to know Vivien in the 1941 timeline, they are unknowingly getting an even more complete picture of her via Laurel’s perception of her mother in the present day. Laurel thinks of her mother as beautiful, but her real beauty is “her presence, her joy, her magnetism. That, and her splendid appetite for make-believe” (106). Vivien’s reserve is due to the fear she lives with as a survivor of domestic violence. When away from Henry, her personality is warm and bright. Jimmy notices how she shows affection for and listens closely to the orphans she visits at the hospital. Vivien has a tender heart and an active imagination. She falls for Jimmy because of his kindness and his ability to observe and understand people. She feels comfortable around Jimmy—a rarity for her. While she doesn’t wish for other people to be hurt, Vivien endures beatings from her husband because she thinks the suffering is a kind of penance for the deaths of her family. When she loses Jimmy, Vivien even hopes that Henry will kill her, so crushed is she by losing that brief glimpse of freedom and happiness.

After Dolly’s death when Vivien takes her second chance and escapes her marriage, she also escapes the tragedy of her past. She quickly falls in love with Stephen Nicolson, recognizing that he is a good, deeply moral man who is loving and kind. When she takes on the identity of Dorothy Nicolson, Vivien becomes the woman she always wanted to be, one surrounded by family and children in a warm and cozy home. Vivien exhibits a streak of ruthlessness that lets her act decisively when Henry Jenkins finds and confronts her so many years later at Greenacres. Her feelings at his death are not remorse but relief. At the end of her long life—she lives to be 90 and enjoy her grandchildren—Vivien/Dorothy seems glad that Laurel learns her secret and, moreover, that Laurel understands why Dorothy did what she did. Family has been the most important thing in her life, and while she feels guilty for causing Dolly’s death, as she sees it, Dorothy has lived in gratitude for her second chance.