“We do not talk about the child inside of me, his future, my future, love, fear, betrayal, loneliness” (22).
Meredith does not get the opportunity to be treated fairly. She is just looked at as a mistake, afailure, and a whore. No one lets her talk or be seen. She needs to be hidden and she rots in her s
shame. She is never allowed to talk about the idea of her keeping her child. She is not allowed simple
privileges. She is like Rapunzel, kept away by her "mother". Her family has somehow decided that
her life has ended. That after this event her life will cease to exist. Her past will always be kept
hidden and she will never again feel like a good girl.
Hall is describing her parents neglect in this one sentence. She was all alone before her Labor Day
sex on the beach and they have left her alone again. She is talking about her silence within her
relationship with her parents. She never had a voice because they were never around and now she
doesn't have a voice because they refuse to allow her one. She can never ask questions, talk about
how she is feeling, and especially acknowledge that she may want to see the life inside of her grow
up. She describes in one sentence, to me a jail sentence.
I agree with you, her parents are making it seem as if she has murder someone. They made it seem as her baby was the demanding cause as to why she was in the neglect of everyone. It wasn't fair to her or her unborn baby to be treated so poorly. And even after she has this child it is still set up to never win for her. For one situation that was semi out of her control she was really set up to be an outcast no matter how much she has changed as a person or human. Its rather depressing to think how easy it was her family to neglect her like that and not even shed an ounce of compassion to their hurting daughter over a long 9 month caring of a "nonexistent" child.
ReplyDeleteI feel you so hard on this response. It seems like this one slip up caused a ripple effect on Meredith's entire future. This one slip up shut her whole life down, and it is now incapable of growing. The supportive figures in her life, who were supposed to be there for her and letting her know that life will go on, shut her out as much as society did. Meredith truly had nobody, and a person cannot live like that.
ReplyDeleteSilence is such a devastating theme throughout this memoir. I truly do not know how she survives so long without talking about it. Yet, she seeks relationships that allow her to maintain the silence. Intentionally. While at the same time, she so desperately wants to talk. However, I think the one person she needs to talk to is her mother, so that one aspect of shunning--her mothers--has such damaging impact.
ReplyDelete