Gwen tells us that her father was abusive – he cut symbols into her side, sometimes wouldn’t let her eat for days, killed in front of her – yet she bonded with him as a child (p.55). Why do you believe that was?
Maybe she thought that was the only way he showed love. Very warped but when you been surrounded by such dysfunction, you might grab any little thing that might make you feel normal. She wanted to be loved because people are supposed to love each other. He just had an odd way of showing it.
She was very young and had no perspective of normal. She wanted to be loved; her mother did not respond and her father gave her lots of attention so she naturally bonded with him.
I also think that it’s very common for abusers to want their victims to feel special. It seems like by the time she was an adult she realized how toxic and manipulative her father could be, but that she still wanted to feel she was special to him.
The killing started when she was very young and she liked being with her father and the attention. She was not close to her mother. The abuse, all if it, especially cutting her side was horrible. I imagine as she got older she would have thought twice about what he was doing to her. Also would think more about the killing.
Unfortunately what Gwen saw was all she knew. To her the way she was treated by her father was perfectly normal. As she got older and was around other people she found out that was not the case but it was still hard for her to see her father as all bad.
I agree with the other readers - this is all Gwen knew when she was so young, fragile and impressionable. Her father apparently made her feel special even though he was so twisted.
I agree Robyn, what was weird to you and me, was not for Gwen. She was not close to her mother, her father was the only one that wanted her with him even though it was for sad, unhealthy reasons.
Its not uncommon for children to bond with their parents no matter how badly they are treated. But she bonded with her dad not her mother because he spent time with her even if it was negative time.
I think children naturally have a bond to a parent. They also want to be loved by that parent and start to believe that their situation is okay. When one is young, they accept many things that aren’t right because they don’t know better.
Because that was her dad and that was all she knew! A dad is a girls first love!
I agree that this was her sense of normalcy and she did not know any better at this young age. Sadly, many people suffer a lifetime with these unresolved feelings of what they interpret as love from their dysfunctional family members. I can imagine what physical and emotional pain this caused her.
She was a child..to her this was normal behavior.
Gwen was young and did not really understand what was happening, to know how wrong it was. Her mother did not show affection so she looked to her father for the attention from her father. I guess she felt any attention was better than no attention.
She didnt really have any normal relationships to compare her relationship with her dad to. It is so sad to think that she thought this was normal behavior, but as we come to see in the rest of the book, it definitely affected her mental state throughout her life.
Since her mother was so unresponsive to her, her father’s attention or “love”, however warped it was, was all she knew, and in her warped way, craved it.
I think some of it was probably Stockholm Syndrome. But I also think that we are always trying to seek out love from our parents, especially as young children. Her mom was cold and distant, and he was at least paying her attention. So, she bonded with him. In much the same way that children love parents/caregivers who abuse them. He was also a bigger, all-encompassing personality in her life, so he was easier to gravitate towards.
I think every child wants to be loved by their parents. They will do anything to get acceptance. As a child, Gwen didn’t realize the way her family operated was completely wrong.