As the novel’s title suggests, the “whispers” motif plays a central role. For Blair, whispers refer to her intuition, the inner voice that tells her she is right to suspect Aiden of cheating. Blair struggles to trust herself, in part because she does so much “pretending” that she confuses reality with desire. As she goes to deliver Chloe’s card, “All the whispers she so masterfully ignores […] are screaming at her” (248). However, when she learns Whitney is sleeping with Ben, not Aiden, she convinces herself that her misgivings were wrong. She chooses to ignore the whispers because accepting the truth is too painful and humiliating. This motif illuminates the Effects of Willful Ignorance.

There are other kinds of whispers, too. Whitney doesn’t hear internal whispers; she’s concerned with the ones that come from other people. After her outburst at the party, she knows her guests “will replay it in their private conversations […]. Because Whitney is the kind of mother with whom other women try to find fault” (106). She can usually brush off other women’s judgment as coming from a place of jealousy. However, this time, she has no choice but to acknowledge that the whispers will be right in pointing out her loss of control.