Lady in the Lake

The African violet is a potted plant in Maddie’s apartment. Maddie uses the pot as a hiding place for her engagement ring, burying it in the violet’s soil when she stages the robbery she creates as a ruse to collect on the diamond’s $2,000 insurance policy. Accounting for inflation, in the 2020s, that sum would be the equivalent of approximately $20,000 in buying power, enough to temporarily sustain Maddie’s newly independent lifestyle. She keeps the ring in the soil, as her only guest, Ferdie, the officer who arrived to help on her reporting the robbery, is the last person she wants knowing it wasn’t stolen. The notion that she could face consequences for insurance fraud remains a source of worry. She vacillates between believing that Ferdie knows and being certain he has no idea, with her wavering teasing out subtleties within the theme of The Intersectionality of Midcentury Prejudices: While Maddie is confident a white officer would never question her claim, she wonders if a Black officer might be more astute. Her concern leads to a habit of glancing at the violet every time the ring is mentioned.

The African violet serves as a symbol of the secrecy and deception in which Maddie is willing to engage in order to ensure that she receives that which she believes herself entitled to.