As the narrative becomes increasingly sprawling, encompassing numerous sub-plots and minor characters, the novel's generic status likewise becomes uncertain, representing a fusion of sensation fiction, detective novel, and legal critique. The liminal status of the necklace renders her own position indeterminate: is she an owner or a thief? To what extent, as a widow and the mother of an infant heir, is she still a member of the Eustace family? These questions become engines of narrative production, generating various accounts of the circumstances under which her husband gave the diamonds to her, and a number of competing stories about how they mysteriously vanish. The plot centers on a young widow's refusal to return a valuable diamond necklace to her husband's family after his death she considers the necklace a gift that she is entitled to keep as her own. Anthony Trollope's The Eustace Diamonds (1872) is a novel plagued with questions about interpretation.
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