payment page
“My own mother wasn't much help. My mother had taught shorthand and typing to support us ever since my father died, and secretly she hated it and hated him for dying and leaving no money because he didn't trust life insurance salesmen. She was always on to me to learn shorthand after college, so I'd have a practical skill as well as a college degree. ‘Even the apostles were tentmakers,’ she'd say. ‘They had to live, just the way we do.’”
The above description of Esther’s mother is important for two key reasons. To begin with, it showcases that Mrs. Greenwood has had a difficult life, which explains some of her questionable parenting methods. One gets the sense that Mrs. Greenwood has been struggling to make ends meet and raise her two children on her own. The passage also illustrates the disconnect between Esther and her mother, as Mrs. Greenwood cannot understand why Esther wants to be a writer instead of settling for for a safe, reliable job.
“Hadn't my own mother told me that as soon as she and my father left Reno on their honeymoon -- my father had been married before, so he needed a divorce -- my father said to her, ‘Whew, that's a relief, now we can stop pretending and be ourselves’? - - and from that day on my mother never had a minute's peace.”
This is one of the only descriptions that we get of Esther’s parents’ marriage, and it is not an ideal one. This brief but concerning summation of her parents’ relationship helps explain some of Mrs. Greenwood’s bitterness; evidently, she did not have a happy marriage. This passage also explains why Esther is so wary of marriage in general—she is clearly afraid of ending up in a similar state.
“I knew my baby wasn't like that… Like those awful people. Those awful dead people at that hospital…I knew you'd decide to be all right again.”
Mrs. Greenwood offers these lines of dialogue to Esther while they are driving home from Dr. Gordon’s private hospital, where Esther received traumatic electroshock therapy. The dismissive, cheerful way that Mrs. Greenwood talks about mental illness confirms that she is desperate to sweep everything under the rug and forget about the whole ordeal instead of trying to see if her daughter is actually okay. Her language is also concerning because she implies that Esther’s depression is a choice as opposed to something that she can’t control.
“My mother was the worst. She never scolded me, but kept begging me, with a sorrowful face, to tell her what she had done wrong. She said she was sure the doctors thought she had done something wrong because they asked her a lot of questions about my toilet training, and I had been perfectly trained at a very early age and given her no trouble whatsoever.”
Here, Esther explains that while she hates receiving visitors at the treatment center in general, she hates it when her mother visits the most. Esther’s mother is not sympathetic to Esther’s situation. Instead, Mrs. Greenwood makes everything about her, making Esther feel guilty and resentful. Her mother’s line of questioning also implies that there was an external trigger that caused Esther’s mental illness as opposed to it being part of her brain chemistry. It is no surprise, then, that Esther goes on to tell Dr. Nolan she hates her mother immediately after Esther gives us an overview of her mother’s visits.
