Gideon the Ninth

Love is something neither Gideon nor Harrow experiences in their daily lives. Gideon has been abused since she was a toddler by the Ninth House and holds a crushing amount of guilt over the death of Harrow’s parents. Harrow cannot stand the atrocities her parents committed and treats herself like an abomination. Harrow also bears the weight of the Ninth House entirely by herself. People treat her as a revered and dangerous figure and not as a person who needs care. Gideon and Harrow take out their frustrations on one another because the other is a key component of their self-loathing: Gideon thinks Harrow hates her because of the suicide of her parents. Harrow sees the mistakes of her parents in Gideon’s survival and believes Gideon will not accept her. Despite their dysfunctional dynamic, the two need one another. They have nobody and nothing else in the Ninth House.

The Lyctor trials in Canaan House push the pair’s loneliness and self-loathing to the brink. Harrow is paranoid about everyone and everything, which causes her to isolate herself entirely from Gideon. This, in turn, prompts Gideon to internalize the false idea that Harrow despises her. Gideon is “sore and furious with loneliness” in the early days at Canaan House (103). Gideon craves Dulcinea’s companionship because she shows an active interest in Gideon, and Gideon is willing to break her vow of silence to make friends since she feels Harrow has abandoned her. In response to Gideon’s attempts to reach out to others, Harrow becomes intensely jealous, especially of the time Gideon spends with Dulcinea. Harrow tries to explain, with little evidence, that Dulcinea is dangerous. She accidentally blames Gideon for the deaths of the Fourth house in the process, triggering Gideon’s trauma. Harrow, true to her character, walls herself off and tells Gideon she doesn’t need her help to become a Lyctor (289-92). The two repeatedly hurt one another back and forth until Gideon contemplates murdering Harrow.

Their personal and interpersonal problems can only be solved by learning to love one another through honest communication. Harrow seems to realize that something must give, so she takes Gideon into the saltwater pool in Chapter 31. The scene is an allegory for LGBTQ+ identities. Gideon is an openly out lesbian; her struggles center around finding meaning in the world and reconciling with her abuse. Harrow exhibits no attraction toward anybody until this scene, where she lets Gideon kiss her and admits to an attraction toward the girl in the Locked Tomb. Harrow’s admission of the terrible secret of her birth and her self-description as an “abomination” distinctly mirror the LGBTQ+ experience of coming out of the closet. Harrow expects Gideon to be disgusted by her and her secret and to reject her because she has taken out her frustrations on Gideon her entire life. When Gideon shows Harrow compassion instead of disgust, Harrow cannot handle Gideon’s love and breaks down (329). In the process of Harrow’s coming out, she absolves Gideon of her guilt over the death of her parents, and Gideon sheds “eighteen years of living in the dark with a bunch of bad nuns” to hold Harrow tightly, kiss her, and repeat the “one flesh, one end” vows (330). The point where all the tension and animosity between the two dissolves is explicitly romantic. The vows impart a sense of marriage to the climax.

After the two repeat their vows and break down the barriers between them, they become a perfectly cohesive duo. When they fight Cytherea, Gideon’s “horror of the monster [turns] to the ferocious joy of vengeance” (377) because the two are such a perfectly synchronized fighting force. The years they spent hating one another translate directly into cohesion, implying that in hating one another, they had to learn everything about the other that they would come to love. What was once the source of their suffering is, for a brief period, a source of joy.

Gideon’s love saves Harrow and Camilla in the end due to her sacrifice: The Gideon who once contemplated murdering Harrow likely would not have killed herself for Harrow’s sake. The “one flesh, one end” vows are fulfilled literally as the two women inhabit the same body. Though Harrow is heartbroken in the end, Gideon’s decision is a validation of Harrow’s monstrous nature. After killing herself, Gideon remarks that Harrow is “already two hundred dead daughters and sons of our House. What’s one more?” (400). Gideon redeems Harrow by voluntarily joining the very thing that makes Harrow hate herself. If Harrow loves Gideon and Gideon is inextricably part of her, Gideon has made it possible for Harrow to love herself.