How the Light Gets In

How the Light Gets In examines the contrast between a life lived in isolation versus with a community. Characters who embrace one another are able to weather life’s difficulties together, while characters who choose to be alone decline without support. Penny suggests that in the light of others, evil is kept at bay, while it grows slowly in seclusion. Community, embodied through Three Pines and Gamache’s department, strengthens characters and helps them heal.

In Penny’s novel, life in hiding amplifies pain and distorts reality, causing otherwise good people to become corrupt or complicit in evil. Constance Ouellet’s isolation started out as a form of protection to keep her, and her siblings sheltered from the public eye. Over time, privacy became an obsession, keeping them from forming connection and processing their experience with others. People never get to know the real Constance, even if she comes across as friendly: “There was a veneer over her. A sort of lacquer. It was as though she was already a portrait. Something created, but not real” (148). The Quints were never allowed to have friends because of their celebrity, something that affects Constance’s relationships into adulthood. When her other sisters died, Constance was left to remember the murder of Virginie and their hidden brother, André, alone. Her brother André is also isolated in their family’s home. Now that his parents have passed away, he has nothing but his bitter memories to keep him company. Gamache has warned the reader about what being alone with nasty emotions can do to a person–it can drive them to murder. Her family’s hidden secrets are what truly kill Constance. Her brother murders her for trying to break through her isolation and share her experience with Myrna.

While Constance dies before she is able to tell Myrna about her secret, she has made changes thanks to the community at Three Pines. When she arrives, she is stiff and keeps others at a distance. So accustomed to secrecy, she finds Clara’s opening up about her separation indecent, like “parading around in her underwear” (9). The warmth of the community wins her over. By the time she comes back for Christmas, she has knitted Clara, Olivier, and Gabri personalized scarves, just as her mother made hats for her and her siblings. By imitating her mother’s gesture of care, Constance shows that she was learning to get over her isolation. She makes a reference to her brother, André, and gives Myrna his hat. While these clues might not seem like she’s opening up, for someone as secretive as Constance, this is a profound act of communication.

Similarly, isolation from community exacerbates Beauvoir’s cycles of addiction, and Penny posits that community provides a form of accountability. Gamache kept Beauvoir accountable for his addiction and other actions, whereas Tessier and Francoeur use them to keep him more isolated and therefore vulnerable to their manipulation. Since Gamache left him on the floor of the factory to pursue the terrorists in a raid, Beauvoir has struggled with abandonment. He feels that he isn’t worth saving. While Beauvoir longs for connection, he counterintuitively cuts himself off from his loving relationships out of shame and fear. Beauvoir has no one to comfort him or to help him and turns to substance use for solace instead. When the other agents leave, he buries his head in his hands and cries in fear. When Gamache tries to convince Beauvoir to come with him, he says, ““How lonely you must be” (271), a phrase that almost breaks through Beauvoir’s defenses.

What finally allows Beauvoir to heal is to open himself up to the love and connection that he has rejected. At the beginning of the novel, he shrinks from Henri’s kiss, a gesture of love. Not until Ruth Zardo, the old poet who had struck up a friendship with Beauvoir, gives him her beloved pet duck, Rosa, does Beauvoir allow himself to reconsider his assumptions about how others feel about him. While Ruth could have sworn at Beauvoir or made fun of him, she shows him how much she cares by giving him something so precious to her and comforting him that some people take the long road home: “They seem lost. Sometimes they might even head off in the wrong direction. Lots of people give up, say they’re gone forever, but I don’t believe that” (379). This breaks through Beauvoir’s emotional barriers and allows him to feel the weight of the love others have for him.

Throughout the novel, isolation and secrecy are a breeding ground for destruction. The Ouellet’s secrecy deprives the children of connection into adulthood, and ultimately kills Constance. Beauvoir’s inability to open himself up to others drives him to addiction and complicity in corruption. Penny posits that the only antidote for isolation is community. As Constance and Beauvoir open themselves up to others, they show that healing comes by shedding light on wounds rather than hiding them.