The Price of Salt (later republished under the title Carol) is a 1952 romance novel by Patricia Highsmith, first published under the pseudonym "Claire Morgan."

Therese Belivet is a lonely young woman, just beginning her adult life in Manhattan and looking for a chance to launch her career as a theatre set designer.

On a long and monotonous day at work in the toy section of a department store during the Christmas season, Therese becomes interested in a customer, an elegant and beautiful woman in her early thirties.

To escape from the tension in New York, Carol and Therese take a road trip West as far as Utah, over the course of which it becomes clear that the feelings they have for each other are romantic and sexual.

The women become aware that a private investigator is following them, hired by Harge to gather evidence that could be used against Carol by incriminating her as homosexual in the upcoming custody hearings.

On a road in Nebraska, after the detective has followed them for miles and clearly intends to continue doing so, Carol confronts him and demands that he hand over any evidence against her.

Therese, after a brief flirtation with an English actress that leaves her ashamed, quickly reviews her relationships—"loneliness swept over her like a rushing wind"—and goes to find Carol, who greets her more eagerly than ever before.

[4] Kelly calls the private sphere a "homonormative tool" that shelters the "same-sex sexual practices within it to appease a mainstream society."

Because they are surrounded by both people and societal norms that do not allow them to express their sexuality and relationship, their self-expression is limited to being concealed behind a heteronormative façade.

The Price of Salt not only explores lesbian spaces but also the sudden intervention of heteronormative society, represented through Harge hiring a detective to follow Carol and tape-record her most intimate moments with Therese as evidence to win sole custody of Rindy.

The age difference between Therese and Carol is a characteristic of Highsmith's novel that many critics have sought to analyse, particularly under readings of mother-daughter relations.

Therese's youthfulness can be linked to her "relatively naïve perception",[9] which feeds into the very presentation of her sexuality: an often-outward display of affection that Carol reprimands.

Lindsay Stephens pays attention to this governing of "closeting" in her article,[9] particularly drawing upon the instance where Therese takes Carol's arm in a moment of fondness.

If we view the ending as a triumph on Therese's behalf, Rindy loses her mother in a sense, feeding into the idea that same-sex relationships and parenthood are mutually exclusive.

It is equally important to recognise the restrictions of the law at the time, as "lesbian mothers...in this period lived under the threat of custody loss if their same-sex sexuality was discovered".

[1]Highsmith recalled completing the book's outline in two hours that night, likely under the influence of chickenpox which she discovered she had only the next day: "fever is stimulating to the imagination."

"[16] The character of Carol Aird and much of the plot of the novel was inspired by Highsmith's former lovers Kathryn Hamill Cohen[17][18] and Philadelphia socialite Virginia Kent Catherwood,[19][20][21] and her relationships with them.

[22][23] Virginia Catherwood lost custody of her daughter in divorce proceedings that involved tape-recorded lesbian trysts in hotel rooms.

"[41] The marketing of the novel in successive editions[42] reflected different strategies for making the story of a lesbian romance attractive or acceptable to the reading public.

"[24][e] The 2004 reissue by Norton appealed to highbrow tastes with the tagline "The novel that inspired Nabokov's Lolita " on the cover[44]—a claim that stemmed from a theory by Terry Castle published in a 2003 essay for The New Republic.

[47]) As a movie tie-in with the release of the 2015 motion picture adaptation of the novel, Norton published a new paperback edition as Carol with the subtitle "Previously Titled The Price of Salt", and the cover featuring the image of the North American theatrical film poster.

When BBC 2's The Late Show presenter Sarah Dunant asked her in 1990 if Carol constituted a "literary coming out", she replied looking irked: "I'll pass that one to Mrs. Grundy", referencing the character who embodies conventional propriety.

"[63] When Highsmith allowed her name to be attached to the 1990 republication by Bloomsbury, she wrote in the "Afterword" to the edition: The appeal of The Price of Salt was that it had a happy ending for its two main characters, or at least they were going to try to have a future together.

Prior to this book, homosexuals male and female in American novels had had to pay for their deviation by cutting their wrists, drowning themselves in a swimming pool, or by switching to heterosexuality (so it was stated), or by collapsing—alone and miserable and shunned—into a depression equal to hell.

Highsmith depicts Therese as puzzled when her experience does not match that "butch-femme paradigm":[24] She had heard about girls falling in love, and she knew what kind of people they were and what they looked like.