![]() ![]() ![]() Each character-John, Lawrence, Emily, and even Cynthia and Alfred Inglethorp- has a different plausible reason why the fortune should be theirs, and Emily's status as "step" mother complicates her original claim to the fortune. By introducing this complex web of relationships, Christie deftly constructs the family fortune as a thing to which no one has a perfect claim. However, Hastings also clarifies that "they were so young at the time of their father's remarriage that they always thought of her as their own mother." Though, Hastings also recalls that John's father "Had been completely under his wife's ascendancy, so much so that, on dying, he left the place to her for her lifetime, as well as the larger part of his income an arrangement," Hastings posits, "that was distinctly unfair to his two sons" (2). ![]() Hastings points out in his very first encounter with John Cavendish, immediately after he describes being invited to Styles, that Emily Inglethorp is not John and Lawrence's biological mother she is, rather, their step-mother. The basis of the novel's conflict, even before Emily is killed, is competition over Styles Court and the Cavendish fortune. ![]()
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