Does Gloria Really Want to Test the Narrator?

After reading Queenpin, one of the plot details that stuck with me is how Gloria keeps the narrator’s bloody dress after Vic’s murder. We mentioned this detail in class, but I wanted to further explore this plot point since I think it reveals a lot about the role perspective plays in the novel. As soon as the narrator discovers the dress, I just knew that Gloria would validate keeping the dress through an excuse, but I honestly thought she was going to plant the dress on Regina and frame her for Vic’s murder.

Once the narrator calls out Gloria for keeping the dress, Gloria justifies this by saying she was just holding onto it to make sure the narrator “had her head on straight” (158). Gloria then says, “What do you think I could be scared of? Nothing you could throw my way, junior… If I found out you really tangled with me, kid… I think you’d know what I’d do. I take care of my own business. Right?” (159). Through this explanation, it really does seem to be a credible excuse for Gloria to keep the dress to test the narrator, but a few of the plot details invalidate this claim. Initially, if Gloria wanted to test the narrator, why wouldn’t she leave more pieces of evidence for the narrator to find? Gloria doesn’t leave any evidence that could pin the murder on herself; she only leaves the dress as the one piece of evidence that could incriminate the narrator. Also, once Gloria is aware that the dress is missing, why does she leave the closet open for the narrator to see that the dress is gone? The only purpose this serves is to threaten the narrator to show her that Gloria knows she took the dress. The final piece of evidence going against Gloria is that she doesn’t tell the narrator that she knows that the dress is missing. If she was really testing her, she should have congratulated the narrator for passing her test and discovering the dress.

Through this justification, it seems to me that Gloria held onto the dress as a way to blackmail the narrator, but to counter this assertion, Gloria does seem to be too methodical in her planning to leave the dress in a spot where the narrator could easily find it, like the back of a closet. And also, at the novel’s end, Gloria seems to be too appreciative of the narrator through giving her a new letter opener to want to blackmail her.

This uncertainty about Gloria’s intentions is one of the details that I really love about the book. As a reader, I doubted whether or not Gloria was trustworthy throughout the entirety of the novel. This uncertainty and doubt can be attributed to Abbott’s writing style since she leaves most of the interpretation about the characters open to the reader. Any analysis of plot details is subjective through the narrator’s perspective, and I think that a lot of scenarios in the novel could be analyzed in different ways.

I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts about Gloria keeping the dress, or if someone could argue that Gloria really meant to keep the dress as a test for the narrator.