As children we are often told stories we accept as truth until we "grow up" and "adjust" our understandings. My thesis is that a similar "growing up" process can happen as we read through a novel or watch a film or a streaming series: if it's any good, our understandings of what's going on in a story will "mature" and become more nuanced as we progress through the work.
Mary Sharratt's novel Illuminations takes place in Germany during Medieval times, in the 1100s. It fictionally recounts the life of Hildegard von Bingen who grows up in a German monastery and was canonized a saint in the Roman Catholic Church toward the end of her life.
As Illuminations opens, we read about a young woman, Jutta, daughter of a wealthy German family who has been banished by her family at an early age and sent into solitary confinement (able to speak to only one other person) due to her insanity.
Early on we see Hildegard's mother actively "selling" the full-time caregiver services of her tenth and youngest daughter to care for that same wealthy family's insane daughter, Jutta, for the rest of Hildegard's life. Her mother is essentially selling Hildegard into slavery for no cost to Jutta's mother. Why is she selling so hard to send her daughter into what was called at the time "anchorage" in a monastery—to totally be done with her? To never see her child ever again?
Hildegard has been having visions since she was a very young child. Everyone in her family, her parents and her nine other siblings, are convinced Hildegard's visions are bringing ill fortune on their family.
That is not what Hildegard is told, of course. She's told she should feel honored because as the tenth child in her family she is being "tithed" to the Catholic Church. The term indicates the family is giving up one-tenth of its wealth to the church, but of course that's just a cover story.
We know the very visions that caused the family to banish their daughter are the ones that many years later inspires a Pope to nominate Hildegard for sainthood.
If Hildegard's mother had not been such an effective salesperson, Hildegard might never have been canonized.
In Sharp Objects, starring Amy Adams, an HBO Limited Series directed by Jean-Marc Vallée, we see children being told a great many stories about why two teens were murdered in the fictional town of Wind Gap, MO. The series is based on a novel of the same name written by Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girl, who we can always depend on to take us to very dark places.
Adams plays Camille Preaker an emotionally scarred, troubled big-city journalist who happens to come from Wind Gap. Her editor sends her back to her home town to cover the unsolved murders.
With Camille, the scars are both emotional and very real. As a younger woman she used to cut herself with razor blades—not just making cuts, but spelling out hateful words on her body, e.g., "whore." The wounds might be healed, but as our story opens, the words are spelled out in shocking scars. You will be driven to ask yourself how any young woman could be driven to such extreme acts of self-harm. You will not be given any pat answers.
As for who committed those two unsolved murders of teenagers? We, the viewers of the series, have our suspicions.
Camille's overbearing mother is played brilliantly by the great Patricia Clarkson. She counters every suspicion of culpability with plausible denial worthy of the finest CIA agent. Never mind that everyone in the community of Wind Gap knows her to be a perfect mother in every way. Years before, she presided over the loss of an older sister of Camille's. The child died of a freak child poisoning. That gives us pause.
The work is tantalizing. We wonder: Could this be a case of death by perfect mothering? Also the carving of words on Camille's skin? What's behind that? Let's say the story snakes into some pretty dark places. Yet, the actress Patricia Clarkson prances around all the lawmen in town and doesn't raise the slightest suspicion.
Her only stated concern with her journalist-daughter who's living with her and her strange husband and younger daughter in their house while Camille is covering the unsolved murders? Camille's writing must in no way embarrass her, nor in any way jeopardize her standing in the community. Now isn't that the sure sign of a perfect mother who selflessly puts the needs of the Wind Gap community ahead her own?
For those who haven't seen the series, I don't want to spoil it for you… completely. All I'll say: The real culprit is not who you think it is—and that's after the mother everyone thinks is the perfect mom is convicted of the crimes and sent to prison.
At every twist and turn in this demented tale, you think you're seeing things from a more mature point of view—closer to the story that will hold up under adult scrutiny—until you realize author Gillian Flynn has fooled you again.
And they say writers have a heart!
