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Dolores Claiborne is a popular novel by Stephen Edwin King. It’s about a woman who tries to clear her name after she’s accused of killing her rich employer, and it has been adapted into a movie. The book was the bestselling novel in the United States in 1992 and praised for its unusual narrative style. King became an internationally acclaimed author whose books have been turned into successful movies and television series before he started writing full-time as a teacher.
The protagonist is a woman named Dolores Claiborne. She’s 65 and lives on Little Tall Island, Maine. She’s opinionated and well-known across the island. Her husband was abusive to her, so she got work as a maid for an elderly woman called Vera Donovan in 1949 to escape him. Without that job, she would have been stuck at home all day with nothing else to do but think about her husband abusing her.
When the book begins, Dolores’ boss is dead. The police think that she killed her boss and now they want to speak with her about it. She explains that although Vera was a difficult person to work for at times, she didn’t deserve to die and never would have killed her.
Dolores Claiborne is a book written by Stephen King. It differs from his other works in that it doesn’t have chapters or paragraph breaks, and the narrative style is like a confession. The story begins with Dolores’ relationship with her employer and ends when she reveals that Vera didn’t die at her hands after all. This book has few supernatural elements, which are common in King’s other books.
Dolores begins her speech by saying that she was broken and lost when she first met Vera. She heard rumors about Vera’s mood swings and how difficult it was to work for her, but these things didn’t faze Dolores at all. After asking for a job, she got one from Vera. Although Dolores had to deal with the fact that Vera is a perfectionist who constantly punished her for not doing enough work, Dolores just kept working hard despite everything.
Dolores knows that Vera’s husband recently died, so she is sympathetic. Dolores hates her own husband and wishes he would die, but she doesn’t say anything to Vera about it. When Dolores isn’t working for Vera, she suffers abuse at Joe’s hands. She is unhappy and has no purpose in life except for her job with Vera.
Vera is so impressed by Dolores’ tenacity that she promotes her to housekeeper. Dolores happily accepts the promotion because it means spending less time at home with Joe, who molests her daughter. When Vera slowly develops dementia, Dolores volunteers to move in with her and becomes a full-time caretaker for Vera. Meanwhile, Selena reveals a terrible secret: Joe has been molesting her as well. She doesn’t want to stay in the house anymore; however, Dolores explains that she’ll make sure he never puts his hands on them again if he does touch either of them again; otherwise she will kill him. Although Dolores is angry at Joe for what he’s done and herself for letting this go on for so long, she’s angrier at him than herself because of what happened between them before when they were younger.
Vera discovers why Dolores wants Joe gone. Vera mentions that it’s simple enough to arrange a car accident or something similar, because she used the same approach with her husband. Dolores can’t believe that Vera murdered her husband, but she’s grateful for the moral support from someone who understands what she’s going through.
One night, Dolores has an idea. She plans a date night with her husband and is excited to be intimate with him again after so long. However, she has other ideas. When Joe attacks her, she runs away into the woods surrounding their property and throws him down a well where he dies painfully.
