V.C's intention for incest? - Flowers in the Attic (2014) Discussion

I think her intent was to make people look deep into themselves.

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I think her intent was to make people look deep into themselves.

I agree. Whatever emotions the idea of incest illicits from the reader, is what VC Andrews had intended. As readers, it is easy to be repulsed by the idea of incest as I was, but if we can place ourselves in the same situation as Cathy and Chris, and after some serious and honest introspection, I can at least understand how and why it happened. The repulsion loses a bit of its "ick" factor afterwards but granted, it's still pretty sick.

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[–] softballstarmb13 10 years ago

I don't repulsion is right or to like it even. Though the fact that the romance continues i'm not sure. I feel like it was just supposed to illustrate how isolating and traumatizing being locked in the attic for more than two years with only each other. They depended on one another and they could only depend on one another. I think it was just supposed to show how bad of a situation they were in.

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[–] JJandS 10 years ago

This is what I think too. It reminds me of the Papin Sisters and the movie Sister my Sister. They also were pretty much isolated with each other. One incest story I do not get is the one with Barbara Daly Baekeland that was portrayed in the film Savage Grace. They had money but chose to isolate themselves together as mother and son.

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[–] [email protected] 10 years ago

Had their father not died, they would have grown up normal and been off to college, married to others, etc.

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[–] Eve_of_Destruction 10 years ago

I don't repulsion is right or to like it even. Though the fact that the romance continues i'm not sure. I feel like it was just supposed to illustrate how isolating and traumatizing being locked in the attic for more than two years with only each other. They depended on one another and they could only depend on one another. I think it was just supposed to show how bad of a situation they were in.

Except the parents were incestuous as well which started the whole thing. Wonder what situation (besides grandma) caused that?

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[–] Kelea7 10 years ago

You don't think Corrine's father had anything to do with it? The way he doted on the daughter caused the grandmother to feel that way. Not excusing the grandmother but I think there was possibly something there.

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[–] Eve_of_Destruction 10 years ago

You don't think Corrine's father had anything to do with it? The way he doted on the daughter caused the grandmother to feel that way. Not excusing the grandmother but I think there was possibly something there.

Yes and I do see why the Grandmother was appalled. So would I be. I just wouldn't be so cruel.

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[–] [email protected] 10 years ago

In the book, Corrine had two older brothers who her mother doted on. One was killed in a motorcycle accident and the other died in Switzerland while skiing.
They didn't get much attention from their father at all.

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[–] jm2-1 10 years ago

But you learn in a later book, that one of the sons who was presumed dead (no one ever found his body (I believe it was the one in the skiing accident)), had actually survived. He was rescued and nurtured back to health by someone (maybe a monk or monks - I forget) and when, months later, found he'd been declared dead, he decided to use that as an escape from his family/parents. He didn't want to go back, or at least he wanted to give up a life of materialism.
All three of those children of Olivia and Malcolm seemed to want to escape those parents. Even Corrine eloped on her 18th birthday, so as soon as possible. They say that early marriage is one escape route from an abusive or very repressive family: that children who are mistreated by parents often leave home or marry early - as soon as they can.

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[–] scottlan903 10 years ago

It is also revealed in a later book that Corinne and Chris Sr. Are not only half uncle and niece (because he is a half brother to her father Malcolm)--but they also are half siblings. Corinne is not actually Olivia's child--Malcolm seducd/raped his much younger stepmother and Olivia hid her in the attic and feigned a pregnancy and then passed off the child as her own.

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[–] theLastResortt 9 years ago

Malcolm seducd/raped his much younger stepmother and Olivia hid her in the attic and feigned a pregnancy and then passed off the child as her own.

How the hell did I miss that?! I have read all the books several times (not recently but about 4 years ago)and do not remember that. Of course the films didn't mention it. Thanks for the info. It makes me want to start reading them again.

At least I can now see why a mother can hate her daughter so much.
-----

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[–] ImaQ-T 9 years ago

That information is revealed in the 5th book in the series, Garden of Shadows. It's the prequel to the series. It tells how Olivia and Malcolm's relationship began. It also explains his obsession with his own mother, who left him and his father for another man when Malcolm was five years old.

The Swan room that was his daughter's room used to be his mother's room. He kept it as a shrine to her after she abandoned him. He did not consummate his marriage to Olivia until he finds her in that room.

He named his daughter Corinne, after his mother. There was never a sexual relationship between him and his daughter, as another post suggested, but the relationship still was not a healthy one. Malcolm was as obsessed with his daughter as he was with his mother, causing Olivia's jealousy.

Olivia didn't start off as a cold hearted woman; her marriage to Malcolm made her that way.

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[–] meadowlark54 10 years ago

I definitely got the feeling that Corinne's father had inappropriate feelings for her, particularly when he gave her that expensive necklace during the Christmas party and said "and this is only the beginning".

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[–] Radrian_Grason 9 years ago

You don't think Corrine's father had anything to do with it? The way he doted on the daughter caused the grandmother to feel that way. Not excusing the grandmother but I think there was possibly something there.

I haven't read the books, I've only seen the 1987 and 2014 films, but the 2014 film gave me the impression that Corrine was in an incestuous relationship with her father before the uncle came to live with them. (You even see her kiss him on the mouth at the party.) If I'm right, it wasn't just him doting on Corrine and the grandmother being jealous that she had more attention. The grandmother says something about Corrine taking her husband from her and remarks many times about how Corrine is with boys.

If that implication is true, then the father was sexually abusing his daughter, which is far from doting. As someone underage, she wouldn't have been able to consent to any of that and was conditioned/manipulated to see the abuse as "love." Instead of being angry and disgusted at her husband for such abuse, the grandmother seems to hate them equally, if not hate Corrine more than the man who was mentally, emotionally, and sexually manipulating and abusing their child. If you compare it to the situation with Chris/Cathy, you can see the parallel: Corrine was screwed up because of a childhood beyond her control, so when she meets her father's half-brother, she finds him attractive as well as kind and instantly falls for him in a way that she may not have done if she'd grown up without being a sexual plaything to her father and an object of hatred for her mother. (I theorize the father didn't write her out of the Will because of the immorality of incest, but because he was jealous that Corrine chose to sexually/romantically be with his brother over himself.) As the head of the house in that time period, the grandmother may have been powerless against and/or afraid of her husband, but it's really screwed up that she victim blamed Corrine for stealing her husband instead of trying to protect Corrine in any way that she might have been able to.

And then as FITA shows, Corrine goes back to the way of life she grew up in when her husband dies and becomes a monster herself by perpetuating the cycle of abuse, albeit in an emotional and physical way (even murdering her own son and attempting to murder the other three children) instead of a sexual one.

From what I've observed so far - and that could change when I watch POTW and ITBT - there's a lot of culpability to go around. Abuse explains a lot of things, but it doesn't excuse continuing the abuse cycle.

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[–] BGsClub 10 years ago

I agree

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[–] jennadh0625 10 years ago

The incest could be looked at two ways. First they are going through the time in your life when you really start to develop your own body and mind. Yet the only person of the opposite sex available to be attracted to is you sibling since for 3 year and 5 months they are the only contact you have. This would account for the lust aspect. They also point out on numerous occasions that they are very attractive.

Then you have the fact that they do fall in love and eventually live as husband and wife raising children. (They were Cathy's through another relationship)In the attic they were parents to the twins and became more like husband and wife then brother and sister. They also experienced a life that no one, other then each other, could ever come close to understanding. This is also the time when you didn't go and talk out your childhood issues with a professional, but deal with them on your own. So they are each others partners, first loves and the only people who truly understand each other especially after Carrie dies early in life as well.

Another meaning is that the children are being punished for their parents mistake of incest causing the grandmother to look at them as abominations in the eyes of God. Yet her act of hiding them is the one thing that drew them to each other in the first place making her the cause of further incest in the family. It is the idea that you create what you hate.

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[–] JJandS 10 years ago

Excellent post Jennadh0625.

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[–] funnygurl 10 years ago

I think both. The first time I read it (granted I was about 12 at the time...) I remember thinking "Chris and Cathy should get together, they'd be a great couple" and then thinking "No, wait, that's gross...."

I think the intention is for us to root for the two siblings in spite of our repulsion if that makes sense. That's part of what makes it so disturbing. On some level we understand that their feelings aren't their fault. They come from a long, tainted bloodline. They are locked up together during their teen years and learn to depend on one another when there is no one else to depend on. So we can understand why they would want to be together. None of that the events leading up to it were their doing (in fact by locking them up together and leaving them to fend for themselves and two small children, Corrine and Olivia pretty much did all they could to ensure an incestuous relationship would happen). It was something that was done to them. So we sympathize with them and want them to be happy. And what makes them happy is each other. But at the same time, we're fighting an "ick" factor. Or if we give into that "ick" factor, we're rooting against our protagonists.

I think it's intended to unsettle us as readers.

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[–] itsalemon 10 years ago

V.C. Andrews had an obsession with incest. I often felt she wrote for her own interest more than anything, perhaps even from personal experience.

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[–] screenscreams 9 years ago

It might look like that, but she only wrote 4 books of the Flowers in the Attic series and 2 of the Heaven series. She also wrote a stand-alone book, "My Sweet Audrina". A ghost writer wrote all the rest after she died, and he continued in that same pattern using her name, so it makes it look like V.C. wrote tons of books with that theme.

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[–] jimsummers87-131-771706 10 years ago

I don't think the intent was to be disgusted by it, I actually think the author was suggesting that in those traumatic circumstances it was almost a necessity for the two siblings to express sexual love for each other because they had no other relationship options.

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[–] Falconeer 10 years ago

I think the author wanted to write a story about forbidden love; and what is more forbidden than incest? Also she probably wanted to create something controversial, something new, that would shock people. I think she succeeded, as her books are still getting a lot of attention, 40 years later. Personally, i wasn't repulsed by the brother/sister relationship, but rather fascinated. I remember thinking after a while, that they actually belonged together; like they would be miserable if they were apart. I thought that it would be ok as long as they never had children together. It's just a very sad story, with no easy answers or solutions.. This is the ultimate Southern Gothic romance series..

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[–] Catnip86 10 years ago

I don't think she cared either way. She was just a sicko who was obsessed with it. Which is why that was pretty much all she could write about.

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[–] destyne76 10 years ago

Honestly, I think VC Andrews had a different view of sex than most other people. I've read she never married and it was quoted by her family she never saw a man naked, so I'm guessing writing about sex wasn't something she was writing about from experience. Knowing this about VC Andrews actually explains A LOT about the way she writes sex scenes and could even offer some insight into why she takes rape so lightly. (Cathy is raped by every man she has a relationship with, sometimes violently, yet VC Andrews hardly addresses it, and if she does it's often to make Cathy look like she deserved it.)

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[–] Catnip86 10 years ago

Then she was truly twisted if she didn't think rape was a "big deal". When I was ten I understood the concept of rape, and I had not had sex or seen a naked man.

She sounds like a twisted woman I know who hates "pretty" girls and if she hears about them being raped, sexually assaulted, etc., will always say they somehow "deserved it". (If it were up to her, all women would have to be covered from the neck down to the ankle at all times. She has even said that she "fully supports" the Muslim way of making women dress, except for the head/face covering.)

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[–] destyne76 10 years ago

I don't know that I would call her twisted, but I do agree she did not have a healthy regard toward sex.

I haven't read anything from the ghost writer, but I wonder if his attitude toward sex is different and if that shows up in his writing.

~In the end the love you take is equal to the love you make~

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[–] Oddark123 9 years ago

Actually, it's quite interesting. VC Andrews and Andrew Neiderman were friends. And what I think most would consider Neiderman's best work "Pin" is a pretty memorable take on a twisted sibling relationship all on his own.

So for subject purposes he was/is a good choice to continue on her line. The real problem being that I don't think many rank Neiderman as high as Andrews on the actual writing craft.

One thing I always see that on this subject is in many cases, people have a firm set of ideas on what "romance" should be. By this I mean anything a person considers to be too weird or sick is cast completely into the dark. And in these times I think it's best remember there are weirder people out there, and with them come different ideas of what's attractive and romantic.

Long before Flowers in the Attic, there were some others twisted family trees that took things up a notch. One of the famous examples if you see people call Wuthering Heights "a romance that's not romantic". Which in itself is a love story, but it is a love story between people that really are twisted. This turns a lot of people off, but that doesn't negate that is a romance between the characters.

This specific series is a very deep twisted tale of romance and lust between a family that keeps turning itself in knots. And to the characters in the story i'm sure it's a romance, not matter how much it icks the reader out. But then again perhaps some readers out there are indeed into it? I'm certainly not one of them, but I suppose whatever floats your boat.

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[–] harveythepooka 9 years ago

I don't think it's fair to comment about her interest in rape. I am going to be talking about rape in romance, not rape in real life and yes, they are totally different things. I read an interview a long time ago, and I'm sorry but I don't remember the details. But the gist was that a romance author in th 70's-80's period took her book to her editor and the book was rejected because "the hero doesn't rape her. How can we know he finds her irresistible?" I kid you not. My jaw about hit the floor over that quote. But the more I think about it in that time period it sort of makes sense.

The heroines of almost all romances at the time where good girls and by good girls I mean virgins. So if you are a good girl you are not going to feel carnal attraction and give yourself to some man. You can tease, you can kiss but in the end you say no. The only ladies in these books getting any are the villains. But, the heroine can't say yes to sex outside of marriage and still be a good girl. So if the writer doesn't want to turn her into a slut, being at the time a woman could only be a virgin or a whore, obviously, he or she has to come up with a reason to excuse the heroine from having sex and also proving that the hero finds her irritableness: literally. It's insanely messed up, but it's not something that was a specific hang up of the author of these books. It was just one of the most sexist things to come out of the romance genera, on par with the currently popular 50 shades type books the operate under the assumption it's a woman's right and responsibility to be submissive.

Yes, the author had a hang up was incest and I don't have the PhD necessary to diagnose her issues, but imo rape wasn't one of them. It was just a sign of the times the books were written in.

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