Ada or Ardor

Vladimir Nabokov’s masterpiece Ada or Ardor has been very acclaimed by the critics since its publication in 1969, like Flowers in the Attic, this novel deals with challenging family dynamics. Both novels are presented as family chronicles taking place in not conventional scenarios and narrated with an elegant and simple prose that is both sensual and satiric.

 Ada or Ardor takes place in an alternative historical frame in a place called Antiterra, Flowers in the Attic takes place in the known United States but most of the plot takes place in the room and attic of an old estate with peculiar characteristics. Both scenarios accomplish  not letting the reader get very strong references of the cultural and historical happenings of the time in order to give more intensity and mystery to the story.

Even though the common subjects, both stories are very different when it comes to the plot and the character’s life experiences, it’s instead in the style of writing where these two works of fiction find more similarities, both novels are written with a very simple yet very deceptive prose that captivates the reader with its sensuality and satiric power.

 

Dealing

Chris is an aspiring doctor, but this dream becomes more a case for frustration than happiness when he realizes how difficult and expensive  is to become  a doctor. Cathy tries to be understanding to Chris's frustration but at the same time she realizes that her intution urges her to leave Foxworth Hall before is too late.

A Love Post

The world may be an attic that we are all trying to escape, some philosophies teach that if you don't find real love in this life, you will be trapped  in the world . I don't know if it's true, but finding true love may mean different things to every person.  Things get better when love guides your life, although in doing that you choose a more difficult path, it will be worth it and you will find true happiness. This is a drawing trying to show the complexity of making sense of what sometimes doesn't make sense. Also an attempt to see FITA more as an allegorical novel.

Flowers in The Attic by ~crobl005 on deviantART

The Road to Riches

The Road to Riches

"It was totally dark when we stepped from the train, and as the conductor had warned, there was not a house in sight. Alone in the night, far from any sign of civilization, we stood and waved good-bye to the conductor on the train steps..." ( page 37, Flowers in the Attic, August 2005)

Drawing a Portrait: Catherine L. Dollanganger

Catherine is the protagonist of Flowers in the Attic and she is a the second born of Christopher Dollanganger Sr. and Corrine Dollanganger (nee Foxworth). She  describes herself as someone who loves to dance ballet since an early age, with wavy blond hair, blue eyes, and a very athletic body. She owned a sterling-silver music box with a pink ballerina inside which she left behind when she moved to Foxworth Hall (a present from her diseased father).  Due to the traumatic experiences at Foxworth Hall, Cathy become skeptic to people but also becomes wise because of the knowledge she gains through her painful stay in Foxworth hall. The lines below pretty much reflect the  mental state of this character .

“Where was that fragile, golden-fair Dresden doll I used to be? Gone. Gone like porcelain turned into steel- made into someone who would always get what she wanted, no matter who or what stood in her way.”  (Page 379, Flowers in the Attic, pocket books, August 2005)

She is forced to mature fast because of her mother’s abandonment, so now has to learn to take care of herself and also of  her sister Carrie with the help of  her older brother Chris. This is a strong force  of stress in their lives now

“Now that our time to depart was so near, I felt frightened. It was big out there. We’d be on our own. What would the world think of us now? We weren’t beautiful like we used to be, only pale and sickly attic mice with long flaxen hair, wearing expensive but ill-fitting clothes and sneakers on our feet. Chris and I had educated ourselves from reading so many books, and television had taught us much about violence, about greed, about imagination, but it had taught us hardly anything that was practical and useful in preparing us to face reality.

Survival, That’s what TV should teahk innocent children. How to live in a world that really doesn’t give a damn about anyone but their own- and sometimes, not even their own.” (Page 354, Flowers in the Attic, pocket books, August 2005)

Flowers In the Attic  is above anything a survival story,  Cathy is now experiencing a very harsh reality as they need to provide for themselves in an outside world that may be as hostile  and cruel as her own world at Foxworth Hall.

 I wanted to do a portrait that shows  Cathy’s  personality and strong character, but also her vulnerability and sweetness,  regardless of how the real Cathy looked, or how you imagine her, you are looking for someone that besides having blond hair, blue ice, and pretty features, also shows character, vulnerability and wisdom, and a very classy look. There is also an incipient sensuality to her looks, although malnourished which I tried to show in the darkness down her eyes, and her slim body.  

The process for drawing this portrait, first i tried to set up her face, I drew Cathy in her teenage years yes is about fifteen at the end of the novel, so I was targeting approximately about this time. Some people like to use mechanical pencils, but I just use a normal pencil for this part.

Step. 1

Step 2.

I start defining the features that I want to get, a pretty girl, I pay attention to her eyes to show more her personality

Step 3. At this step I'm working on adding value or shading the portrait, Cathy has long, beautiful long hair which may take me more time, that is what I'm doing now,but here you can idea of what I'm trying to accomplish with a teenager Cathy. I'll be showing more pics of the lips and eyes, as well as the finished portrait very soon.

                                               

Olivia Foxworth: a Case of Mind Control

This character is a synonym of violence in the novel, Olivia herself has been a  victim of abuse and mind control at various points in her life which lead her to become a religious fanatic, specially influenced by the old testament in the Bible. This will mean suffering  and abuse for the Dollanganger siblings during their confinement to the point of things getting very overwhelming. For the most part is very difficult to understand her sadistic behaviour as she become accomplice of murdr.

Since the beginning of  the Dollangangers stay at Foxworth Hall, she gave to  the siblings a list of rules to follow and if they were to disobey, they would be accordingly punished. Some of these rules are the following:

One: You are always to be fully dressed.

Two: You will never take the Lord's name in vain, and will always say grace before each meal. And if I am not in the room to see that you do this, you may be sure that He above will be listening and watching.

Three: you are never to open the draperies, not even to peek out.

Four: You will never speak to me unless I speak to you First.

These rules are the beginning of the mind control that the children  would suffer at Foxworth Hall: submission, shame, and fear would become the norm in this room.  The most striking thing is how the sunlight is forbidden and how they will be in darkness, fear and submission. The rest of the rules have the same tone and are just a  violent  attempt of mind control.

The following is an image of the siblings after one episode in which Olivia rejects one of the presents given to her. In general this shows how they feel about the rejection, they suffer at this house.




Scene at Foxworth Hall

 

Looking into the Minds of Sociopaths

Many can classify Olivia, Corrine and Malcolm Foxworth’s behavior  in this novel as that of a sociopath,  another book where I found a similar situation is in The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum. The author  of this novel like Virginia C. Andrews explored the subject of sociopaths and how dangerous they can be to the people around them. These two books are not for the faint of heart but they do give a realistic portrayal of sociopathic behavior. Corrine and Olivia are not serial killers and do not  pose a threat for people in general, but in the scenario given in Flowers in the Attic they show their cruelest and most basic side in dealing with the Dollanganger siblings.   These women  do not want to think what they do is wrong, so they look for refuge in religion, debauchery and eccentricities to forget about their secret lives as tortures of the children in the novel. In the case of Corrine, she mentally is trying to pretend that they do not exist, so she chooses to murder their children in a slow  manner as a way of trying not to deal with the fact she is commiting infantacide. Olivia is for the reader a little bit mystifying because we don't know much about her past, but is hinted that she may have been a mind control victim in her childhood.

Flowers in the Attic: Escaping the House of Incest

"She led me into the house of incest. It was the only house which was not included in the twelve houses of the zodiac. it could neither be reached by the route of the milky way, not by the glass ship through whose transparent bottom one could follow the outline of the lost continents, nor by following the arrows pointing the direction of the wind, nor by following the voice of the mountain echos."

                                                 Anais Nin (The House of Incest)

 The House of Incest by Anais Nin and Flowers in the Attic by V.C Andrews are two titles that you may not hear in the same sentence very frequently; in fact, most of V.C  Andrews readers may not be aware of Anais Nin’s work, and vice versa.  But the content in these two books share a lot of peculiar and interesting similarities.   In appearance, they are very different, The House of Incest doesn’t tell the story of a family, and it’s instead a very surrealistic and metaphorical work about the narrator trying to escape a dream in which she is trapped. Flowers in the Attic doesn’t give the appearance of a surrealistic and metaphorical novel as Anais’s book. For example, the  subject of incest is not dealt  in  The House of Incest  in a literal way, like it’s the case of Flowers in the Attic where you have a explicit  case of incest between the members of the Dollanganger family.    Anais Nin uses  the word incest  to refer to  selfish love, and loving in others what you see of yourself.  Although there is a passage in the book where she gives an explicit example referring to the character of Lot in the Bible:

                             " Stumbling from room to room I came into the room of paintings, and there sat Lot with his hand upon his daughter's breast while the city burned behind them, cracking open and falling into the sea. There where h sat with his daughter the Oriental rug was red and stiff, but the turmoil which shook them showed through the rocks splitting around them, through the earth yawning beneath their feet, through the trees flaming up like torches, through the sky smoking and smouldering red, all cracking with the joy and the terror of their love. Joy of the father's hand upon the daughter's breast, the joy of the fear racking her. Her costume tightly pressed around her so that her breasts heave and swell under his fingers, while the city is rent by lightning, and splits under the teeth of fire, great blocks of gaping ripped city sinking with the horror of obscenity, and falling into the sea with the hissof the eternally damned. No cry of horror from Lot and his daughter but from the city in flames, from an unquenchable desire of father and daughter, of brother and sister, mother and son."
p. 52ff. (The House of Incest)

Incest is a very taboo subject that creates shock and even disgust in the reader. Although , it was precisely this reaction what made  this subject very appealing to many artist and writers, specially the 19^th Romantics, which saw in incest  a perfect theme for them to fit with ideas about death  and sex .   Famous works that deal with this subject is Nabokov’s Ada or Ardor: A family Chronicle and Louis Malle’s Murmur of the Heart.  But did Nin’s work influence Flowers in the Attic?  An influence  can be assumed , even though the conexion  may  not be  very explicit,  Anais’s book is a very personal  work influenced by things that happened to her and also very controversial like Andrew’s novel. It is a well known fact  that Anaïs Nin was having an incestuous relationship with her father when she published her book, members of her family were supposedly horrified about this because they thought that the book was going to be  an exposé  of their relationship.  But it was not the case, even though there is a reference to Lot’s incestuous relationship with her daughter  in her work.  Besides the obvious resemblance between Nin and Andrews’ books  in respect to the title House of Incest  which can be seen in the form of a house where family members have love affairs accompanied also by all the negative connotations  that this title brings to mind, there are other similarities between  these two works that  caught my attention and I think may be a good field for further  analysis.

 Another interpretation of  The House of Incest  is that trying to live in a self-created world full of pleasure, instead of living in the real world full of pleasure and pain is a mistake.  Self created worlds are full of demons and always degenerate into nightmares.  The world in Flowers in the Attic is one that in a way  fits this decription.  On one side, you have Catherine, the narrator, who live in a room which is hinted to be the closest thing to hell, and her mother  Corrine is on a  very  different plane where she enjoys all the benefits that money can give, luxurious trips, expensive clothes and gifts, a handsome and younger husband, people’s attention and admiration, everything but piece of mind. Corrine’s created world full of pleasure is in reality the worst type of nightmare since she is living a double life and in neither of these two lives she can be fully herself, she is always putting an act. I think House of Incest can be a book  used as reference when analyzing  the mental state that the characters in Flowers in the Attic find themselves completely absorbed, like the narrator in The House of Incest, every character in Flowers in the Attic are looking for dramatic ways to escape their reality .  The Dollanganger siblings want definetely to escape Foxworth Hall where they are being slowly and painfully murdered, and Corrine wants to escape her past and start a new life with her new husband. In reality, it’s not that simple because lives are going to be destroyed  in order for  Corrine to achieve her ideal world.

 The House of Incest  is an excellent book, and Anais Nin is a very intuitive and extremely talented writer as Andrews, both have different ways of exploring the human psyche, but both definitely accomplished to create realistic messages for their audience.

Drawing a Portrait: Christopher Dollanganger

Figure Drawing is always an exiting pastime, here I will be attempting to do  a portrait of Christopher Dollanganger from Flowers in the Attic.


Christopher is the oldest sibling, and in the novel Chris is the one who has the strongest conexion with her mother: Corrine Foxworth. He is described in the book as someone with attractive features, and a boyish attitude. I tried to look for a face with this characteristics, and this is what I ended up sketching.

Christopher is also blond with cerulean blue eyes like Cathy, Cory and Carrie.  I tried to draw him when he was around sixteen, seventeen years old. This is the pencil I used,  charcoal B57-2b for the shading,

       

 I also used a conventional pencil to initially draw the face.  It took my quite some time, but it was very fun, If you are trying to learn to draw, or if you draw already, you’ll know that have your eraser in hand is very important, it helps to improve the quality of your drawing, I always make mistakes, and everyone who draws that I know also make mistakes, but erasing and trying again is always a good option.  Here I started drawing

Thinking about the character that you are drawing, helps you to focus more. Things that I consider about   Christopher  is that he is very authoritative sometimes to the point of being a little bit condescending to Cathy, I noticed.  so I think a face that shows a little bit of petulance may be also  appropriate for Chris, even though he is mainly described to be very optimitistic. But, I am not buying it, I think he knows how to hide his fellings very well.

So it seems that Chis hair is very curly to the point of being a mess, at some point in the novel, he gets a haircut by Cathy.  I wanted to put hints of blond hair and give the impression of coarse hair.

And I ended up  with this. Well I may not have done the best drawing, but  doing this portrait helped me to visualize and understand better the Chris that V.C Andrews created. I was left with the idea that he was most likely an Adonis, after reading all the references of beauty in the Dollanganger family and Cathy's descriptions of her brother. But most importantly is that he was very ambitious and his goal in life was to be a doctor.

Cathy and Christopher have many interests in common they both enjoy reading, and philosophysing. Christopher is specially good at painting using watercolors and is very studious and dedicated to learning more about medicine. He is psychologically a very healthy character, but the stress of living at Foxworth Hall took the best of him and eventually led him to abusive behavior towards his sister. Although the level of complexity of this relationship may not be suitable for everyone, one can infer that some of his behavior was the result of  the mind control  that was taking place at Foxworth Hall. The Gothic Horror commentator  Cosette Kies says that the intimacy between the siblings in the novel is not that of abuse but rather of forbidden lust. This subject may have Freudian undertones that deserve better exploration.

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.

The World of Carrie

Carrie is one of the twins in Flowers in the Attic,  Cathy describes her as  a very cute, " doll like" talkative girl who loves to play with  her teacups and dolls.  Here,  I tried to draw a portrait that transmitted her vivacious personality using pencils.

I'll post more portraits of her and her siblings as well. Something I really like from the Dollanganger twins like the way they cared for each other.

The Foxworth Hall Room

Foxworth Hall is a very intimidating place with many halls and rooms. The vision of Foxworth Hall compared  to the house where Cathy lived in Gladstone is very striking because it's a place where the children, even their mother were not expecting to live. The moment the children  arrived to this estate, they are immediately locked away in a very secluded room. Cathy describes this room where she stays as large but cluttered.

   " I sat up and looked around this room that was, perhaps, sixteen-by-sixteen. Large, but with two double beds, a massive highboy, a large dresser, two overstuffed chairs, a dressing table between the two front windows, with its own small chair, plus a mahogany table with four chairs,  it seemed a small room.Cluttered. Between the two big beds was another table with a lamp. Altogether there were four lamps in the room. Beneath all the ponderous dark furniture was a faded Oriental red rug with gold fringe. At one time it must have been a beautiful thing, but now it was old and worn. The walls were papered in cream with white flocking. The bedspreads were gold-colored and made of some heavy fabric like quilted satin. There were three paintings on the walls. Golly-lolly, they did steal your breath away! Grotesque demons chased naked people in underground caverns colored mostly red. Unearthly monsters devoured other pitiful souls. Even as their legs still kicked, they dangled from slobbering mouths filled with long, shiny, sharp teeths..."
(Flowers in the Attic, page51)

If you try to visualize it, you will notice how stressfull this place really is to the point of insanity. The old furniture and the fact that the children can't open the windows make it very unberable for them to live. The following is the sketch I used to draft a more detailed  room.

There are two beds inside the room, and  a table with four chairs for them to eat, a bathroom, and a closet with access to the attic. I think this is pretty much how the  room would look like,

Cathy mentions all the existence of three paintings of  hell in the room. Here is the outline of the closet that has  access to the attic.

Cathy describes the door to the stairs that lead to the attic as very narrow, but I think the dimensions that she gives,one foot wide, is very unrealistic. I think the exaggeration is also an allusion to Alice in Wonderland.

I find this room very peculiar, and I wonder if there are actual houses that have rooms like this one. Virginia C. Andrew was very creative in creating this room, and I wish we had more descriptions of the rest of the house.

The real room is even more stressful but because of software limitations, I couldn't add more dark furniture.

Literary Allusions: The Doppelganger

The last name of the family in Flowers in the Attic alludes to the german word doppelgänger. The idea of a doppelgänger has been explored in popular culture throughout ages. One of the most  popular movies that I can think of inspired by this concept is the 1993's cult classic Doppelganger starring Drew Barrymore. 

  Doppelgänger literally means "Double Walker"  and legend says that if you were to meet or see your  doppelganger, you would die soon or something really unlucky would happen to you. I think it's a very interesting concept, these are other two movies that also deal with the subject.

                                                         

How similiar are the previous mentioned movies to Flowers in the Attic, you will be surprised. I will write more in depth about it in the future, as it really takes more detail since the comparison is not very obvious, actually for the most part is very cleverly hidden.