No parent-child relationship is perfect. There is not a single person who does not believe that something could have been better in his upbringing. The child can see, more clearly than many believe, where her parent has fallen short. The thing about this though is how it relates to the next generation. That child grows and vows to correct the mistakes of his parents on his children. This attitude always leaves out a very important aspect of reality—the present—rendering a parent incapable of responding fully to the needs of her child with full, unrestrained awareness. The parent is acting from the past. The well-meaning intention is what causes most difficulties in parent-child relationships, and can be exemplified in the short stories “The Girl Next Door,” “Everyday Use,” and “The Triumph of the Egg.”
The thing about a tragic victim is in each is a penchant to victimize. Subtly, in “The Girl Next Door,” David Sedaris shows this to his readers. Two parent-child relationships are on display in this short story. One is shared by the main character, who remains unnamed, and his mother. The other is shared by the main character’s two neighbors. Brandi is 9-years old and is the title character. She “latched onto” (Sedaris, 2009, p.1) the main character shortly after he moves into her building.
Her relationship with her mother can be best summed by the following: “A normal mother might have wondered what was up—her nine-year-old daughter spending time with a twenty-six-year-old man—but this one didn’t seem to care” (Sedaris, 2009, p.1). The main character’s relationship with his mother can be summed also: “She liked to take my problems back to the source, which was usually me” (Sedaris, 2009, p.1).
His mother is overbearing, while Brandi’s is neglectful. Though the main character claims to be reaching out to the young girl, he cannot help but to make use of her vulnerability to help himself feel smart, strong, and capable—a stark contrast to the insufficiency he must endure in his dealings with his mother. Brandi steals from him, at which point the major conflict emerges. The important thing to notice is that both of these children victimize each other in proportion to the extent of their victimizations.
The main character’s mother stays true to her overbearing nature in response to this conflict. She insists that he leave the building, and she finances his move into an apartment some blocks away. This is the method of her caring and is also the cause of her child’s need to descend in society to feel as if he is capable of taking care of himself.
There are two parent-child relationships in “Everyday Use.” The closer relationship is between the narrator and Maggie. The more distant and fractious relationship is between the narrator and Dee. The narrator is referred to as “Mama,” and a mama she is (Walker, 1973, p.1).
She cares about each of her children but is forced to decide to favor one over the other as the story’s conflict comes to a head. Should Mama give an old, antique quilt with the value she and her daughter Dee do not understand to Dee, who appreciates the history and heredity it represents? Or should Mama give that quilt, as promised, to Maggie? Dee has never been told no before, as stated by the narrator, so this decision is filled with palpable tension. Her mother always gave Dee what she wanted, because she always seemed to know exactly what that was. She was smart, and flashy, unlike Maggie who is not smart or pretty and renders pity from any reader.
Dee, as a result of her mother’s indulgences through the years, is self-involved—a character-rich with the materials necessary to venture out into the world, but bad at maintaining the simplest of familial relationships. This short story turns out to be a hero’s tale of a mother who chooses to maintain a fair balance between her two, incredibly different daughters, by telling Dee no for the first time in her life, and staying true to her intention to hand the quilt down to her meek Maggie. This story, however, can also be viewed in the light of a well-meaning parent creating problems for her child, as Dee would not be incapable of seeing the value in passing the quilt down to Maggie if she had not been overindulged because of her talents.
Sherwood Anderson tells a story in “The Triumph of the Egg” that yet again shows how well-meaning parents can overlook their children’s needs. In the story, the parents of the narrator become overwhelmed by the “American spirit” (Anderson, 2010, p.301). Anderson begins by explaining that his father was once a contented farmhand and that his mother’s nudgings toward rising in society did not begin until after he was born (Anderson, 2010, p.295).
His mother wanted nothing for herself, but for the boy and his father she was “incurably ambitious” (Anderson, 2010, p.295). Her intentions being pure, she urges the father to begin a chicken farm. It is here where the narrator becomes, by his description, “inclined to see the dark side of life” (Anderson, 2010, p.295). He attributes his gloominess as a man to the that he spent “what should have been… the happy joyous days of childhood” on a chicken farm (Anderson, 2010, p.295). The boy explains how his father’s pursuit to profit from this endeavor was in vain, and that later when the family opens a restaurant business, the American spirit drives his father to do something out of character completely.
He humiliates himself in an attempt to entertain a customer by doing tricks with an egg. After an explosive night of emotion from the father, the boy is left looking at an egg upon which he projects his confusion about the struggles of his parents: “I wondered why the egg had to be and why from the egg came the hen who again laid the egg.” In the parent’s honest ambition to rise and make a better life for their child, they overlook the presence of his need for stability and create in him a neurosis that he gets into his blood (Anderson, 2010, p.304).
In all these stories, there is not a parent with malicious intent. In David Sedaris’ “The Girl Next Door,” the mother of the narrator does not wish to drive her son to a lower rung of society in search of independence, but cannot bear the thought of his decisions landing him in the poverty in which she grew. In “Everyday Use,” the mother does not attempt deliberately to create a spoiled adult in Dee but does because she wants for this bold, black woman a life she could have never dreamed of for herself as Negro in her day.
In “The Triumph of the Egg,” both parents become overwhelmed by the desire to ascend to a status from which they are not, and in their desperate clamor create in their son a neurosis that he contains for the rest of his life. Indeed, the overwhelming majority of parents mean to bring their kids up in a fashion they never knew, and in so attempting, neglect their children’s ever-present needs for simple boundaries, security, and supervision.
References
Anderson, Sherwood. (2010). The Triumph of the Egg. [Electronic Version]. Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library: 295-304. Web.
Sedaris, David. (2009). The Girl Next Door: How Much Trouble Could a Nine-Year Old Be? [Electronic Version]. The New Yorker: 1-6. Web.
Walker, Alice. (1973). Everyday Use: For Your Grandmama. [Electronic Version]. African American Review: 1-8. Web.