White Oleander, and other N literature

[Marta]

Hello,

Has anyone seen White Oleander, the film where Michelle Pfeiffer plays an N mother? I have no read the book, but what struck me about the movie was the daughter's clear perspective early on about who her mother was. Can anyone identify with that?

I can see how kids whose parents are all Mr. Hyde all the time can hate them from a young age. However, my own mother was Jekyll and Hyde, and it was not until I was well into my thirties that I understood the extent to which my family was screwed up, so all along before that I thought that I was the one who was a problem.

When I first read Kafka in my twenties, it was as though someone had dropped a bomb shell on me. I cried and cried, without quite knowing why at the time. At the time, I had not identified the dysfunction of my family. Now I know why. That horror of Kafkaesque world was what we lived through.

Another N book is supposed to be Stendahl's Red and Black, but I did not care for it so much. Somehow we don't get to know Matilde well enough for Julien to conclude that she would not love her child.

Any other examples from literature?

[October]

Any other examples from literature?

Scarlett O'Hara from Gone With the Wind.  She was toned down to loveable for the film, but is really nasty in the book.

Also, Vanity Fair; Becky Sharp is very N in her behaviour.  Again, toned down into a misunderstood heroine in the recent film.

Mr Rochester in Jane Eyre is pretty selfish and manipulative. 

Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment, who only feels remorse for being found out.

Miss Haversham in Great Expectations.

I am sure here are millions of them, once you start to look.  :  )

[miss piggy]

hello!

here are my contributions:

Cathy in East of Eden

The father in Poisonwood Bible

As far as recognizing Nhood of the parents as a child, I think it depends on how much ambivalence and back-and-forth behavior there is confusing the atmosphere.  (I was very confused and didn't have a clue.)

MP

[Xenia]

The no.1 narcisissistic book / film that kept me awake for nights afterwards with uncomfortable recognition was Mommie Dearest by Christina Crawford.  It was like a flashback to my own crazy childhood. Uuuugh!

[mum]

I think the reason there is some clarity in the children of N's  in literature and film (any Dickens, oh my!) is that it is fantasy, based on life. Nothing is scarier than real life. In a book, children can become heros and are empowered like semi-adults....it would be too hard for us all to read how it more frequently really is, with the child confused and scarred, only to heal much later in life...

I am glad these hero/children are there for us to emulate. How I loved when Nicholas Nickelby took control!  Made me think I might be so brave in that situation.  I think they are empowering role models, perhaps.

[Plucky]

All the books by V.C. Andrews (or is it Anderson?) are chock full of Ns and dysfunction.  I loved them all.  Especially the first one: Flowers in the Attic.  Not classic lit but definitely a page turner.
Plucky

[sj]

Henry James' "Beast in the Jungle" -- grandiosity and asexual "romance"

Terrifying.

[s]

Also, Ignatius Reilly in John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces, working on a "monumental indictment against our society."

Recommended this book to someone because his own book reminded me of Ignatius Reilly's magnum opus. Several painful months later realized my "friend" is an N.

Also and especially Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground.

[s]

Postscript:
Naturally he didn't like the book at all.

[Stormchild]

Oh my. I loaned A C of D to two people who had very negative reactions to it - both also turned out to be camouflaged Ns.

Maybe it can be validated for use as  "N litmus paper". !

What terrified me most about the James short story wasn't so much the narcissism of the male, but the woman's slow emotional starvation as she waited for him to 'get it'. They never 'get it'...

[amethyst]

Mildred Rogers in "Of Human Bondage" by W. Somerset Maugham is a totally destructive N. Story of obsession and repeated betrayal.

"Emma Bovary" was very much of an N too, but a boring one. 

The protagonist, Nicholas, in "The Magus" by John Fowles is very Nish, but gets a severe commupence. A great book.

"Nana" by Emile Zola.

The father in "The Thibauts" by Roger Martin du Gard is a total N autocrat and is ruinous to his sons' spirit.

"The Buddenbrooks" by Thomas Mann-a study of a deeply narcissistic family caught in world changing events.

[vunil]

Amethyst, that is so funny that you say that about Emma Bovary!  I thought the same thing-- I had to read it in French and English and I was really tired of that poor girl (I can't call her a woman) by the end.

Othello is an example, I think, of a bullying N.  I always hated that we were supposed to feel sorry for him.  Desdemona is so codependent.  Not that it isn't great literature, of course, but I always had this desire to run into the play and tell her to just run away from that nutcase.

Richard III, although maybe at the end he is supposed to be having remorse (it's tough to tell if it's remorse or just comeuppance).

Well, gosh, now that I'm thinking about it, I would say MANY of the folks in Shakespeare   He does a good job of writing a pompous soliloquies full of narcissism.

Most of the men in The Color Purple were very N.  I guess if I were a man reading that book I might not like it much.

I love Richard Ford and I think one interesting aspect of his work is how he explores the life of fairly immature men who have very selfish tendencies without making them  into villains, or at least while making them interesting villains.  It's in some ways a nice exploration of how a regular person could end up behaving very N-like due to lack of self-insight and maturity.

[s]

What terrified me most about the James short story wasn't so much the narcissism of the male, but the woman's slow emotional starvation as she waited for him to 'get it'. They never 'get it'...

I always thought the relationships described in Henry James' short stories were rarefied and intensely beautiful. Now (after a bad burn from a particularly pure specimen of N-ism) I understand rather more.... Your comment makes me realize this. I had never thought of the woman's condition (in "The Beast in the Jungle") as one of "starvation." Ow. Ow.  Read in Edel's biography that James had a saint-or-predator view of women, typical of N-ism, though a gay friend tells me HJ was homosexual.

[Stormchild]

Interesting that James 'split' women like that - I'll have to look at the characters more. I'd noticed the emotional anorexia, if you can call it that, because that is still advocated for women (waiting bravely & fruitlessly to be fully appreciated, etc.).

What do you make of Daisy Miller? I had thought of it as a sort of 'tragedy of manners', like the tale (title eluding me) about the incredibly clueless family with the delicate, wise-aware child who, of course, does not survive and whose true worth, of course, is never grasped by any member of his own uncouth family... James wrote a great deal on that theme, didn't he? It fits with what you were saying about him possibly being homosexual - he would have felt endangered and unprized...

[s]

About Henry James and women -- I was talking about James' own life -- as Edel describes it, anyway. Apparently there was a certain "idealized" literary woman (a descendant of James Fenimore Cooper) in his life who may have committed suicide because she realized they couldn't be together. I think that's it. Not clear on the details.

Haven't read DM for a long time. Will have another look.

Someone recently told me that HJ was very much affected by a "mystical" experience which oppressed his father in HJ's early childhood: HJ Sr. became convinced that he was haunted by a malevolent spirit. Was cured of this belief only by the study of Swedenborgianism. There is an interesting account of this in Edel's first vol., "The Untried Years." Anyway, the experience is believed to have inspired HJ Jr.'s interest in the supernatural.

Thanks for the literary chat....

-s