Therese's indecisiveness

In reading the last half of The Price of Salt, I finally have sympathy with everyone who was complaining earlier about Therese’s indecisiveness and confusing lack of direction. Near the beginning of the book, I’d chalked it up to the fact that we didn’t know Therese well enough yet and that maybe her dazed voice and behavior were symbolic of the detachment she felt in her relationship with Richard. But the latter half of the book is filled with similar floundering on Therese’s part and is even more frustrating because I thought she would be much surer of herself and her decisions now that she is with Carol. A scene in Omaha, when Carol left Therese in a hotel room so she could write a letter to her lawyer explaining her situation had Therese looking out a window restlessly: “She opened the window and looked down. It was the seventh or eighth floor, she couldn’t remember which. A streetcar crawled past the front of the hotel, and people on the sidewalk moved in every direction, with legs on either side of them, and it crossed her mind to jump.” It’s baffling—where did this urge to jump even come from? She has come so far and is with the woman she loves—what on earth could be going through her mind that would bring on this train of thought? That line is never explained or expounded on. Therese’s later agony in the library is similarly confusing. It’s true that Carol’s letter telling her they can’t see each other was upsetting, but her brief phone call with Carol definitely had a different tone, with Carol wanting her to come home as soon as possible so they could talk freely. Rather than focus on this, Therese expands Carol’s actions into a big, dramatic betrayal. I view her breakdown over the picture in the library as a pretty good representation of the way Therese’s actions and thoughts sometimes don’t make any sense. I’m glad at any rate that Therese and Carol end up together at the end. When Therese refused Carol’s offer of moving in with her (after pining for her for about 200 pages), I was pretty much ready to give up on the book, and on Therese, entirely. Luckily, even with all her naivete and confusion, she made the right decision in the end.