Headscratchers / A Haunting in Venice

• Unless I missed it, no mention of Alicia's father is ever made, and Rowena is never referred to as widowed. Single motherhood of unmarried women isn't something much commented on today, but during the time period this is set in, it would have been. There's a possibility it would have even prevented Rowena from rising to fame in the first place. Possibly bridging into Fridge Horror, if Rowena was married to Alicia's father, did his death contribute to her co-dependency towards Alicia? Or even more chilling, is Alicia not her first murder victim? Whatever happened, if Alicia's father was still around, is there a chance his daughter would still be alive?
  • The subtitles reveal that at least once Olga addresses her as “Mrs. Rowena,” suggesting that she was married at some point. That might have been to Alicia’s father, or maybe not.
  • That may have contributed to Rowena’s decision to set up her home base in Italy rather than in Britain, where Italian opera also had a modest audience at the time. If she was unmarried and pregnant, fleeing to Italy would have given her the opportunity to reinvent herself, claiming a fake husband who had abandoned her or died in the war or some such story. Italian society of the time was not considerably more supportive of unwed mothers than British society was, but getting away from people who knew her meant that Rowena could lie about her background and get away with it. Once she became properly famous, Alicia’s parentage would have been somewhat less problematic.