CHARACTER
The Pushby Ashley Audrain

Violet Connor

Violet Connor

Quick Facts

Who They Are

Violet Connor is the novel’s most disturbing enigma: a child who may be born cruel, or a girl warped by a mother who cannot love her. From her first moments—eyes “slimy and dark” and unblinking—Violet attracts Blythe’s terror and becomes the nexus of the book’s questions about inherited damage and maternal failure. She is both a character and a provocation: a test of how much of a child’s behavior belongs to bloodlines haunted by women like Etta and Cecilia, and how much grows from the soil of a mother’s fear. Her ambiguity sustains the story’s psychological suspense and makes her presence feel larger than the rooms she occupies.

Personality & Traits

Violet is defined by contradiction—public sweetness alongside private menace; brilliance coupled with a chilling absence of empathy. Because we see her only through Blythe, every gesture carries double meaning: an innocent child’s misstep or a calculated performance.

  • Cold refusal of maternal comfort: As an infant, she rejects Blythe’s touch yet “melts” into her father’s arms, installing an early hierarchy of affection that isolates her mother.
  • Performative affection: She times “Mama” for maximum effect and displays tenderness selectively, especially in front of Fox and Gemma, to control adult perception.
  • Exceptional intelligence: Teachers call her “exceptionally bright” and “mature for her age,” which makes her cruelty feel deliberate rather than impulsive.
  • Aggression that escalates: Twisting a boy’s fingers, stabbing a girl with a pencil, slipping rocks into underwear, yanking out hair—acts that prefigure more grievous harm.
  • Calculated danger: She later hands a modeling blade to her baby stepbrother, Jet, signaling that her appetite for risk (and power) did not fade with age.
  • Weaponized femininity: As a pre-teen, she moves with “a woman’s gestures,” her “hips…growing” and “chest…blooming.” Blythe’s recognition—“our daughter looks like me”—turns resemblance into dread; Violet can inhabit the role expected of her while deploying it against her mother.

Character Journey

Violet’s arc runs from an inconsolable baby to a poised pre-teen who governs the household’s mood with silence. Early incidents at preschool seem petty but patterned, driven by intent rather than impulse. After Sam’s birth, her temporary calm suggests adaptability, not reform. The playground death of Elijah hardens Blythe’s suspicions; Sam’s death annihilates her certainty that she can protect any child. In the aftermath, Violet becomes a spectral presence—watchful, withholding, thriving under Fox’s protection and Gemma’s approval—until her final, silent confession resolves the novel’s queasy ambiguity. Whether “bad seed” or perfectly attuned to her mother’s weaknesses, Violet ends as the architect of her family’s ruin.

Key Relationships

  • Blythe Connor: Violet’s defining relationship is adversarial and intimate. She rejects Blythe’s love while testing her limits, forcing Blythe to confront the terrifying possibility that motherhood may not create love—or goodness—where none exists. Their dynamic embodies the novel’s bleak portrait of maternal ambivalence and shame.
  • Fox Connor: With Fox, Violet is affectionate and “good,” curating a daughterly persona that makes Blythe appear hysterical. Fox’s refusal to see Violet’s cruelty doesn’t just protect Violet—it weaponizes skepticism against Blythe, amplifying the story’s gaslighting.
  • Sam Connor: Violet’s tenderness toward Sam is real enough to unsettle, making Blythe’s suspicion of Violet in both children’s deaths feel at once paranoid and plausible. The ambiguity around their bond keeps Violet unreadable until the end.
  • Gemma: Violet adapts instantly to her stepmother, presenting as a “sweetheart” and “best big sister.” This seamless performance completes Blythe’s isolation: the family system works—except with the woman Violet intends to break.

Defining Moments

Violet’s milestones are less about plot twists than about how each incident sharpens her power over perception.

  • The preschool meeting: A teacher corroborates “hurtful,” calculated behavior. Why it matters: It’s the first outside confirmation that Blythe’s fears have substance, cracking Fox’s “it’s all in your head” defense—even if he later patches it back together.
  • Elijah’s fall from the slide: Blythe believes she sees Violet cause the boy’s fatal drop. Why it matters: The moment recasts earlier “pranks” as rehearsals for violence and makes Blythe complicit—she saw, but cannot prove.
  • Sam’s death at the curb: Blythe is sure she sees pink-mittened hands push the stroller. Why it matters: The family implodes; Violet’s innocence survives in the court of adults around her, deepening the split between truth and belief.
  • The blade for baby Jet: Violet retrieves a sharp tool and offers it to her infant stepbrother. Why it matters: Years later, she still seeks control through proximity to harm—no longer a child’s mischief, but a teenager’s experiment in consequence.
  • The window confession: Violet mouths “I pushed him” to Blythe. Why it matters: It resolves the mystery privately, preserving Violet’s public innocence while confirming her private triumph over her mother.

Essential Quotes

Her eyes looked slimy and dark and they stared right into mine.
This birth image refuses the myth of infant innocence and inaugurates the power struggle: Violet does not gaze with need but with recognition. From the start, Blythe reads intention where most mothers read attachment—planting the seed of lifelong distrust.

"I'm going to hurt Noah tomorrow."
Whether threat or test, the line displays Violet’s frank relationship with harm and timing—violence placed on a schedule. It also invites adult intervention she knows won’t come, underscoring her mastery of the gap between saying and proving.

"Do you love baby Sam more than me?"
The question is both vulnerable and tactical. Violet probes Blythe’s guilt, then uses the answer (any answer) to reshape the emotional hierarchy at home, revealing how acutely she reads adult weakness.

You come to the window and kneel down to the boy’s level. You look out and then you look up... Her eyes are still fixed on me. I find myself sitting back in my seat. I swallow and finally look away from her. She always wins.
This scene captures Violet’s preferred battlefield: silent surveillance and control through eye contact. Blythe’s physical retreat—“I sit back…look away”—makes defeat visceral; power is measured not in words, but in who forces whom to blink.

I pushed him.
I pushed him.
These are the words I think I can hear.
The confession arrives as a private liturgy, heard but unprovable. By giving Blythe certainty without evidence, Violet completes the psychological trap: Blythe finally knows the truth—and remains the only person who ever will.