Flowers in the Attic: Corrine Foxworth

Corrine Foxworth, the mother of the Dollanganger siblings,  has become the worst mother in the history of literature, check this list http://journal.bookfinder.com/2009/05/worst-mothers-in-literature.html. for corroboration. This character very well deserves the title since She  deprived her children from any contact with the outside world for more than three years.  And then she gradually started poisoning them.   Most people would say that her ambitions and desire to escape her reality are the main causes for her to want to murder her children. And this maybe just the reason, she was a loving mother or at least a caring mother before her husband passed away and then she had to take her children to live with her parents at Foxworth.

Infantacide and child abuse is a very serious issue explored in Flowers in the Attic which makes the novel very hard to digest, because most of the violence in the book is directed towards children that can not defend themselves. For this reason, some critics have called Flowers in the Attic  a "ferocious fairy tale" (V.C Andrews critical Companion) because  we get to see allusions throughout the novel to fairy tales like Hansel and Gretel, Rapunzel, Snow White & Cinderella.  But, unlike fairy tales in which good children always survive at the end, in Flowers in the Attic, the Dollangangers siblings can suffer unbearable torments and even die.     

The Dollanganger's situation is very harrowing, although they live in a luxurious estate where their mother  is always giving them expensive gifts, they can not enyoy the outdoors, and the food that they eat is very plain and repettive for most of the time. And as the Dollanganger children stay at Foxworth Hall grows more dangerous, the gifts start growing more expensive and unnecessary.

The danger of the Dollangangers dying in the novel  is specially  hinted in two incidents: the grandmother's gift to the children of a pot of chrysanthemums and her rejection of the tapestry the children did for her. Althought it is Corrine who ultimately poisons the children with arsenic, the grandmother is the vehicle who takes the poison to the children. This gift of flowers  that represent autumn- that season when blosooms die- and her refusal of their offering seems to imply that she is not expecting the children to live long.

Flowers in the Attic is a book that makes you think about the real motivations behind people's actions. As I read the book, I always wondered why Olivia Foxworth someone that is so religious, would accept to be an accomplice of murder. Why not just deny to Corrine and her children entrance to Foxworth Hall? It is also disturbingly hinted that Corrine may have known from the very beginning that her children were going to die in the room. It seems that the grandmother is not really motivated by religion for her cruel behaviour against her children, obviously she has other reasons more related to personal failures to behave in this bitter, sadistic way.


Sketch of Corrine

                                

Corrine, on her part,  is heavily influenced on one side by the inheritance, but also her relationship with Bart Winslow, the young and attractive lawyer, plays an important role in her decision of not leaving Foxworth Hall and saving in this way the life of her children. Soon after her honey moon, she started sending the poisoned doughnouts to her children, one thing to notice is that this was months before the codicil was read. Corrine's cruelty, cowardice and immaturity makes you angry because she could have asked other people for help, but instead she prefers to stay with her younger husband and her exorbitant inheritance.