There was in her character precisely that
grit which Iris lacked; and we wanted to know what it would do for her.
This was not a case for an indecisive ending, a note of interrogation.
The author felt no doubt as to Letty's destiny, and he wanted to leave
his audience in no doubt. From Iris's fate we were only too willing to
avert our eyes; but it would have been a sensible discomfort to us to be
left in the dark about Letty's.
This, then, I regard as a typical instance of justified anticlimax.
Another is the idyllic last act of _The Princess and the Butterfly_, in
which, moreover, despite its comparatively subdued tone, the tension is
maintained to the end. A very different matter is the third act of _The
Benefit of the Doubt_, already alluded to. This is a pronounced case of
the makeshift ending, inspired (to all appearance) simply by the fact
that the play must end somehow, and that no better idea happens to
present itself. Admirable as are the other acts, one is almost inclined
to agree with Dumas that an author ought not to embark upon a theme
unless he foresees a better way out of it than this.
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