I want to add to our discussion in class today about our narrator, the girl’s, trauma and her relationship with her dad. In the beginning of the novel, I love the relationship she has with her father. He seems very kind to her. However, this all seems to start to shift once the mother arrives and the marital fighting begins. This creates a very toxic environment for the girl. I think she suppresses a lot of emotional trauma from her father that starts to come out in bits in adulthood. I don’t want to hate the father, because I know the good that he has done for the girl. Once that thought came across my mind though – I realized how similar this is to my own relationship with my parents. I have moved out of a very emotionally abusive household, but still, feel obligated to call and visit. This feeling of obligation touched me the most when the girl calls her mother to tell her where she is, where she is going, and that she is safe. When the girl meets with social services and her father, I sense a feeling of shame coming over her as she suddenly seems to think she and her father need to escape. She still wants to protect her father, and doesn’t want others to see him as evil because of the good he did for her in the early years. I think the girl struggles with the change in development with the relationship of her mother and father as she is emerging into adult/womanhood. What do you all think?
Childhood trauma into adult/womanhood