Umineko: Thoughts on how some people deal with what happens to Maria…
I can’t deny if there’s a thing that bother me is when people claim that if Maria were to do this or not to do that, her mother wouldn’t beat her.
I understand that part of the claim comes from Maria’s behavior being VERY annoying but the only way to justify Rosa’s reaction to it is to assume Rosa is a good mother who’s beating her daughter for educative purpose who’s however following outdated disciplinarian methods who actually included beating and such.
Rosa though, isn’t merely following some old educative method. She’s an emotionally scarred person that tends to take out her stress and her sense of failure on the closest and helpless thing she can find, in this case Maria. Here and there she realizes she’s doing wrong, she would like to be a better person, a better mother, she regrets she can’t be but… in the end she knows what she’s doing to Maria is wrong but… can’t stop. She won’t stop.
Sure, maybe, and I’m saying maybe, if Maria were to act better, Rosa would be less stressed and less prone to get violent but would really be that simple?
Regardless of Maria, Rosa’s life is stressfull. Probably even if Maria weren’t to give her stress she would still accumulate stress that she would vent on Maria. When Maria asks to see again a photo Rosa showed her in which there was her father Rosa denied the existence of such photo and ripped Maria’s attempt to redraw the photo. When Maria, who is bullied at kindergarden because she hasn’t a father, asks her about it, she gets scolded and hit. When Maria pics up a receipt that Rosa dropped and that prove that Rosa went to Atami instead that at work as she said her, Rosa gets angry at Maria.
So probably even if Maria weren’t to say ‘uhhh uhhh’ she’ll get beaten when Rosa would feel the need to vent. And being Maria a child, she would probably be unable to perform as perfectly as it would be required for her to never be a ‘stress factor’ for Rosa, who’s a traumatized woman with an inferiority and abandonement complex and lot of anger inside.
And who’s really to blame if Maria says ‘uhhh uhhh’ by the way? Her own mother who first beats her up for saying ‘uhhh uhhh’ then hugs her crying and tells her it was all the bad witch’s fault and tolerates her ‘uhhh uhhh’ sound… giving Maria the idea that Rosa was wrong in beating her and in telling her to stop and that her ‘uhhh uhhh’ magic actually worked… only slower than planned.
But deep down it seems if people feel the need to point out that if Maria were more obedient her life would be better isn’t even due to Maria being annoying.
Similarly to how Maria is a ‘stress reliever’ for Rosa, this sort of sentence is a ‘safe mechanism’ for many people.
You heard it everywhere, not just with fictional characters like Maria or Ange (Ange wouldn’t be bullied if she studied) but also in real life, with women that wouldn’t get raped if they had dressed/behaved differently, people who wouldn’t get robbed or killed or else and so on.
We want to delude ourself that if we keep a certain behavior we’ll be safe. We’re following the rules so bad things won’t happen to us. If bad things happen to someone it must surely be because he didn’t follow the rules.
And, as we believe we can control on the unpredictable according to a system of our own construction and that isn’t really failproof but just gives us less chances of something bad happening to us but still exposes us to dangers, many of us feel justified into looking down at who got the unlucky ticket and pointing out his mistakes, real or imaginary, just making things worse for someone who’s already suffering.
Maria might be annoying as hell but not only she doesn’t deserve what’s happening to her, she’s not even taught clearly by Rosa what she shouldn’t do and shouldn’t be expected to be mature enough or psychologically competent enough to figure it out on her own.
Maria is abandoned to herself so, before thinking she’s, even partially, the cause of her own misfortune, think at all the people that are just standing there, watching as she suffers and doing nothing to help, just judging her. Do you really want to be among them? Because one day you could meet a real Maria… or, even worse, regardless of how well you followed the rules, you could end up in Maria’s place and then… do you really want people to stay there, enjoy the show and look down at you?
And… *sigh* I fear this turned out to be a rant, so I apologize if it had gotten personal but really, really, I can’t take any longer looking through Umineko post and having my eyes fall on a sentence that blames Maria for what Rosa’s doing to her. Rosa is an adult doing something awful to her own daughter. She really doesn’t need to be excused at Maria’s expense. She can be understood as a person with traumatic experiences… and for her behavior we can blame what she suffered but… tossing the blame on Maria is really something no one should do. Despite Maria being the most annoying character in Umineko. She really doesn’t deserve this.
I understand that part of the claim comes from Maria’s behavior being VERY annoying but the only way to justify Rosa’s reaction to it is to assume Rosa is a good mother who’s beating her daughter for educative purpose who’s however following outdated disciplinarian methods who actually included beating and such.
Rosa though, isn’t merely following some old educative method. She’s an emotionally scarred person that tends to take out her stress and her sense of failure on the closest and helpless thing she can find, in this case Maria. Here and there she realizes she’s doing wrong, she would like to be a better person, a better mother, she regrets she can’t be but… in the end she knows what she’s doing to Maria is wrong but… can’t stop. She won’t stop.
Sure, maybe, and I’m saying maybe, if Maria were to act better, Rosa would be less stressed and less prone to get violent but would really be that simple?
Regardless of Maria, Rosa’s life is stressfull. Probably even if Maria weren’t to give her stress she would still accumulate stress that she would vent on Maria. When Maria asks to see again a photo Rosa showed her in which there was her father Rosa denied the existence of such photo and ripped Maria’s attempt to redraw the photo. When Maria, who is bullied at kindergarden because she hasn’t a father, asks her about it, she gets scolded and hit. When Maria pics up a receipt that Rosa dropped and that prove that Rosa went to Atami instead that at work as she said her, Rosa gets angry at Maria.
So probably even if Maria weren’t to say ‘uhhh uhhh’ she’ll get beaten when Rosa would feel the need to vent. And being Maria a child, she would probably be unable to perform as perfectly as it would be required for her to never be a ‘stress factor’ for Rosa, who’s a traumatized woman with an inferiority and abandonement complex and lot of anger inside.
And who’s really to blame if Maria says ‘uhhh uhhh’ by the way? Her own mother who first beats her up for saying ‘uhhh uhhh’ then hugs her crying and tells her it was all the bad witch’s fault and tolerates her ‘uhhh uhhh’ sound… giving Maria the idea that Rosa was wrong in beating her and in telling her to stop and that her ‘uhhh uhhh’ magic actually worked… only slower than planned.
But deep down it seems if people feel the need to point out that if Maria were more obedient her life would be better isn’t even due to Maria being annoying.
Similarly to how Maria is a ‘stress reliever’ for Rosa, this sort of sentence is a ‘safe mechanism’ for many people.
You heard it everywhere, not just with fictional characters like Maria or Ange (Ange wouldn’t be bullied if she studied) but also in real life, with women that wouldn’t get raped if they had dressed/behaved differently, people who wouldn’t get robbed or killed or else and so on.
We want to delude ourself that if we keep a certain behavior we’ll be safe. We’re following the rules so bad things won’t happen to us. If bad things happen to someone it must surely be because he didn’t follow the rules.
And, as we believe we can control on the unpredictable according to a system of our own construction and that isn’t really failproof but just gives us less chances of something bad happening to us but still exposes us to dangers, many of us feel justified into looking down at who got the unlucky ticket and pointing out his mistakes, real or imaginary, just making things worse for someone who’s already suffering.
Maria might be annoying as hell but not only she doesn’t deserve what’s happening to her, she’s not even taught clearly by Rosa what she shouldn’t do and shouldn’t be expected to be mature enough or psychologically competent enough to figure it out on her own.
Maria is abandoned to herself so, before thinking she’s, even partially, the cause of her own misfortune, think at all the people that are just standing there, watching as she suffers and doing nothing to help, just judging her. Do you really want to be among them? Because one day you could meet a real Maria… or, even worse, regardless of how well you followed the rules, you could end up in Maria’s place and then… do you really want people to stay there, enjoy the show and look down at you?
And… *sigh* I fear this turned out to be a rant, so I apologize if it had gotten personal but really, really, I can’t take any longer looking through Umineko post and having my eyes fall on a sentence that blames Maria for what Rosa’s doing to her. Rosa is an adult doing something awful to her own daughter. She really doesn’t need to be excused at Maria’s expense. She can be understood as a person with traumatic experiences… and for her behavior we can blame what she suffered but… tossing the blame on Maria is really something no one should do. Despite Maria being the most annoying character in Umineko. She really doesn’t deserve this.