I call to mind the character Folcoche in the pages of Hervé Bazin’s
novel Viper in the Fist. No picnic.
In The Long Road Home, Danielle Steel paints a portrait of a mother who beats up her daughter. Thanks to her husband’s complicity, she maintains a sparkling image in the eyes of the outside world. And yes, there is a happy ending, but it’s not because the mother changes; she doesn’t.
Wendy Walker’s thriller Emma in the Night painstakingly profiles a narcissistic mother. The examples of her low blows ring strikingly true.
In his autobiography, A Child Called “It,” Dave Pelzer summarizes his spiritual poisoning in this terrible sentence: “My soul became so cold I hated everything.”
Goncourt Prize-winning author Michel Houellebecq said of his final estrangement from his female parent, “I knew I would never see my mother again, and I tingled with joy.” “I truly felt that I was experiencing a great moment that was radiant, liberating and peaceful.”
As for films, in Ingmar Bergman’s Autumn Sonata, Liv Ullmann asks this question: “Is the daughter’s misfortune the mother’s triumph?”
A scene in Sybil, directed by Daniel Petrie and based on the book by Flora Rheta Schreiber, shows a little girl hiding her hands behind her back. When asked, “Haven’t you got any hands?” she holds her two small fists up in front of her: “I got fists!”
In Lee Daniels’s Precious, based on Sapphire’s novel Push, Claireece tells her mother, “You won’t see me again.” For me, these words conjured up the term dignity, and I wanted to verify its exact scope. [DIGNITY. A sense of self-worth that inspires respect from others. An attitude of self-respect.]
But it was while watching Frank Perry’s Mommie Dearest, based on Christina Crawford’s book, that I relived entire scenes from my childhood. Some say that the film is more of a grotesque farce than a true account. Personally, I didn’t laugh.
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