Flowers in the Attic

As a fun summer reading project with my friend Anne, I've decided to reread V.C. Andrews' Flowers in the Attic. This book (or perhaps the movie with Kristy Swanson that was on TV a lot when I was young) was part of the adolescence of many a young girl in the 80s and 90s. There was a time when you couldn't go into the grocery store or the Target without some kind of V.C. Andrews book on the cheap paperback rack, and the whole shebang started with Flowers in the Attic. This story, of stern grandmothers, selfish mothers, sexual daughters, and--most infamously--lustful brother, occupied a place for many girls that (I believe)is the same place that "mature" manga held for boys; that is, a piece of fiction that had a story and characters, but fascinated above all for its depictions of relationships between men and women outside of what was available on regular TV, or at school, or from your parents. This book touched and lingered on growing up and emerging female sexuality in a way that many of its readers sort of identified with, but magnified it and distorted it within a context of imprisonment and incest, with which its readers (I really hope for real) couldn't identify. The mixture of these things, the weirdness of the story and the writing, and the age and impressionability of the readers probably translated into some attitudes that lasted until adulthood, or college, when life experiences supplanted those gleaned from lurid, secret novels. Revisiting this book now as an adult, having kind of forgotten it for a long time, I am picking up on things that kind of bothered me before (like the atrocious writing) and REALLY bother me now (the depiction of rape) or just kind of confuse me (the author's views on the importance of independence for women). I'll be writing about these things, with my friend Anne (who contributed the razors post here) on The Gray Taffeta Files on Blogspot, but I'll also be writing some things here. If you haven't read this book, I recommend it as a fun way to pass a day, and also as a crazy document of sexual attitudes. Sadly, some of those attitudes seem to be making a comeback in pop culture, and I'll be touching on that in my next couple of posts.