I have always said that the great thing about the whole Dollanganger series is that while the characters in Flowers in the Attic can be seen as somewhat sympathetic, every problem they have in their life thereafter is no one’s fault but their own. All three of the remaining Dollangangers go about gleefully fucking up their lives and personal relationships, and it’s hard to feel a moment’s pity for any of them. Even Carrie, who ends up being the sacrificial lamb, would have fared far better in the company of people who took two seconds to consider that maybe having your mother lock you up for three years, being poisoned, starved, and sun-deprived, watching your identical twin die, and being a first-hand witness to the blatantly obvious sexual tension between your two older siblings—well, all of that MIGHT REQUIRE SOME PROFESSIONAL COUNSELLING. But no. It’s Andrewsland. Modern psychology need not apply, unless it comes in the form of Our Heroine being wrongfully committed by her dastardly stepmother.
Mostly, though, this is the book where my sympathies swung to the grandmother. Plainly, she was a woman possessed of a prophetic soul whose only crime was trying to save the world from these horrible people. Because by the end of this one, Cathy lays waste to everyone and everything in her whole life, and it’s all her own fault. As my own dear grandmother (who never once locked me in an attic) used to say, that child is too dumb to cook quick-grits.
Trust me. In the South, them's fightin' words.
But enough of that! Let's get this party started!
