The Iron Gates was published by Random House in 1945 (titled Taste of Fears in the UK). It represents Millar’s transition from the light mystery novels of her early career to the psychological suspense that would become her signature mode. Lucille Morrow is married to Dr. Andrew Morrow, a psychiatrist. She is deteriorating — suffering hallucinations, losing time, finding herself unable to distinguish reality from paranoia. Is she going mad? Is someone driving her mad? Or is she the sanest person in a household of manipulators?
The novel draws on the Gothic tradition — the woman trapped in a house where everyone claims to be helping while actually conspiring against her — but translates it into a modern, clinical register. Dr. Morrow’s psychiatric vocabulary becomes another instrument of control: by pathologizing Lucille’s fears, he renders them inadmissible as evidence. If she says someone is poisoning her, that’s a symptom. If she tries to escape, that’s acting out.
Millar wrote this novel during World War II in Toronto, and the wartime setting contributes to the atmosphere of anxiety and entrapment. The “iron gates” are both metaphorical (the barriers of diagnosis and domestic authority that imprison Lucille) and literal (the gates of the institutions that threaten to receive her).
Collecting The Iron Gates
First edition (Random House, New York, 1945): Cloth with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $200–$500
- Very good: $75–$200
- Early Millar — quite scarce in fine condition