The Price of Salt

Carol is Therese’s wealthy romantic interest. When Therese sees Carol, she immediately falls in love with her, and Highsmith provides a sumptuous image of Carol’s graceful beauty and fiery eyes. Carol is also intelligent and worldly, and though their relationship is romantic, Carol also teaches Therese about the world. She makes Therese aware of the world’s anti-lesbian bias, and she helps Therese think about sex and relationships, telling her, “I think people often try to find through sex things that are much easier to find in other ways” (68). The dynamic between the characters sometimes comes across as condescending; Carol calls Therese a “child,” and she often behaves maternalistically, like when she brings Therese hot milk. While Carol has more experience than Therese, Therese is an equal participant in the relationship. She loves Carol and doesn’t feel that Carol manipulates her, unlike Richard.

Carol is a nonconformist and cultivates a mysterious aurora. She tells Richard she’s “nothing,” and Therese thinks of her as “sui generis,” or utterly unique. However, Carol has an identifiable background. She was married to Harge and is also a mother to Rindy, who’s between six and eight years old. She was born in Washington State, looks more like her dad, and has a more conventional sister. As Carol isn’t conventional, Harge’s family doesn’t like her, and she doesn’t like them—though she doesn’t exaggerate their prejudice, telling Therese, “They're not horrid. One's just supposed to conform” (113). Her primary battle is with Harge. He’s her antagonist and, by association, Therese’s antagonist. He hires a detective to follow Carol and Therese so he can weaponize the information and gain full custody of Rindy.

As with Therese, Carol is often unreliable, her declarations often dictated by strong emotions. When the couple discovers the detective, Carol acts nonchalant, boldly declaring, “I don't give a damn. I hope the papers find out about it and rub Harge's nose in his own mess” (189). However, Carol’s actions undercut her flippant diction. She doesn’t want people—“the papers”—to find out, and she doesn’t want to lose her daughter, so she buys the tapes she can from the detective and goes to New York to fight for her daughter. Thus, Carol isn’t as cool and iconoclastic as she’d like to appear.

Similar to Therese, Carol grows. Due to 1950s gender roles, Carol lacks autonomy despite her wealth, and her links to the house and Harge keep her in stasis. In the final chapter, Carol and Harge sell the house, and Carol gets an apartment in the city and a job at a furniture store. The moves reassert her independence. In the end, Carol and Therese embrace autonomy, and as independent people, they can love each other more holistically.

Richard Semco is Therese’s untalented painter boyfriend and initial romantic interest. However, Therese doesn’t love him or have romantic feelings toward him. Sex with him is painful and unremarkable, and it isn’t clear what draws them to each other. When she is with him and his friends, Therese describes herself as a “dangling appendage.” Richard is from a traditional Russian family that lives in Brooklyn, and he wants to get married to Therese. While he is generally kind and seems genuinely interested in Therese—Therese admits, “He does treat me like a person instead of just a girl he can go so far with or not” (67)—his traditional mindset often prevents him from engaging with Therese as her own person. Much of their dynamic in the novel hinges on the looming European vacation, which Richard presumes she will join no matter how much she protests or expresses hesitations. When it becomes clear that Therese feels passionately about Carol, Richard becomes frustrated and claims to know Therese and her desire better than she knows herself. While he is not as hostile as Harge, the anti-lesbian bias he expresses in his Chapter 21 letter and his general unwillingness to let Therese go makes him an antagonist.

Harge is Carol’s husband, and he has a real estate investment firm, so Carol’s wealth presumably comes from his business. Aside from a few encounters with Carol and Therese, the reader doesn’t have much direct knowledge of Harge. Most of what they know about him comes from Carol, who presents him as the archetypal bad ex-husband. She calls him “disagreeable” and a “hypocrite,” and she makes him seem insufferably conventional when she tells Therese, “He likes a little group of people who play golf” (118). He does show some good qualities in his devotion to Rindy and his cordial nature around Therese. However, his antagonistic nature emerges in his anti-lesbian bias and his obsession with Carol—because he can’t have her, he tries to prevent anyone else from having her. His actions are primarily orchestrated around disrupting Carol’s happiness; he hires a private detective to follow Carol and Therese on their road trip and record their intimate moments, then uses that evidence to claim Carol is an unfit mother because she is a lesbian. In the end, he succeeds and gets full custody of Rindy, showing that even if Carol and Therese end up together, their lives are dictated by the culture’s anti-lesbian bias.

Abby is Carol’s childhood friend and former romantic interest, and her multilayered bond with Carol makes her Therese’s antagonist. Before Carol tells Therese about their affair, Therese’s interactions with Abby upset her, with Therese not understanding Abby’s intentions or presence. Therese’s desire for Carol also makes her jealous and suspicious of Abby. After Carol tells Therese about their romantic bond, Therese feels a mix of anger, shock, and jealousy. Nevertheless, Abby remains a key ally to the couple, telling Carol about the private investigator and Harge’s intentions and relaying information to Therese about Carol when Carol can’t talk to Therese due to the precarious custody battle.