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The Valet
Florence is Inez’s lover on earth. Florence is married to Inez’s cousin, but when Inez moves in with them, Inez seduces Florence and convinces her to leave him. Florence does this, but she never stops feeling bad about the decision, especially because her husband is hit by a tram and killed shortly after she moves out. Distraught, Florence slips out of bed one night and turns on the gas stove, gently killing both herself and Inez. When Inez first arrives in hell, she asks Garcin—whom she thinks is her torturer—where he’s keeping Florence, and when he tells her that he doesn’t know who Florence is, she shrugs the matter off, admitting that she won’t miss Florence anyway.
Florence Quotes in No Exit
The No Exit quotes below are all either spoken by Florence or refer to Florence. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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No Exit Quotes
When I say I’m cruel, I mean I can’t get on without making people suffer. Like a live coal. A live coal in others’ hearts. When I’m alone I flicker out. For six months I flamed away in her heart, till there was nothing but a cinder. One night she got up and turned on the gas while I was asleep. Then she crept back into bed. So now you know.
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Explanation and Analysis:
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Florence Character Timeline in No Exit
The timeline below shows where the character Florence appears in No Exit. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
No Exit
When the valet leaves, Inez turns to Garcin and asks, “Where’s Florence?” Garcin, for his part, doesn’t know what she’s talking about, telling her that he doesn’t...
(full context)
...so she explains that she moved in with her heavy-drinking cousin and seduced his wife, Florence. “I crept inside her skin,” she says, “she saw the world through my eyes. When...
(full context)
Inez says that she used to tell Florence that they killed her husband (Inez’s cousin) together. “I’m rather cruel, really,” she says, and...
(full context)
...“going to burn” for eternity. “I’ll catch her, she’ll see you through my eyes, as Florence saw that other man,” she says.
(full context)
