to split yourself in two/is the most radical thing you can do
So I'm posting this early because (a) it's ready and I'm bored and (b) it's quite timely for this week's episode. I could wait until after, but it might get jossed and I really hate editing (LOL CAN YOU TELL BY MY SPELINGG?), so. happy early Galentine's Day, eowyn_315.
TVD lady-meta: Kat, Isobel, Abby, and birth mother trauma
SO ANYWAY, note going into this: look, I’m not going to insult anyone with a trigger warning on this? Adoption, forced or not, can clearly touch any number of upsetting chords. I don’t claim any particular expertise on this subject, though I’ve tried to use non-judgmental, non-pejorative language about all parties involved, but ~please let me know if I’ve dropped the ball there.
As with the most excellent werewolf curse, it is difficult not to see the women’s transformations as some cohesive metaphor. Though Katherine and Isobel later became killers, and Abby Bennett left herself behind as surely as human Caroline Forbes, none of these women seem to have been dangerous to their children; none of TVD’s examples of birth mother trauma is among the small number of circumstances where adoption is really necessary for the child’s rights. Isobel was as good a mother as she could be, in her own way. And Abby Bennett has formed another family and looks poised to have the opportunity to integrate old and new selves. Isobel and Katherine do terrible things, but none of them to their children.
It’s not particularly groundbreaking to utilize vampires as an arrested development metaphor, granted, but I think the show is doing something so exceptionally resonant with this particular metaphor for both Katherine and Isobel, I almost can’t believe it could be intentional. (Almost. Katherine is one of the show’s best-developed characters, and certainly at least Mia Kirchner’s performance suggests she put a great deal of thought into Isobel.)
Katerina, my precious Kat. Setting aside the general horror that’s usually implied by pregnancy in young teenagers (cycle of abuse, goes around and around), that scene where her father whisks off her baby is such a desperate violation. You can tell exactly where Katherine picked up her ruthless, self-sufficient attitude. But the total loss of agency is almost freeing in a terrible way, because without choice, there is no responsibility; Katherine doesn’t seem to suffer from self-blame over any of it. When she becomes a vampire, it’s her own choice, and do I ever love her for it, but she’s very much backed into a corner by being the doppelganger.
By contrast, Isobel, though she’s clearly no less damaged by having given up Elena, clearly suffers from a tremendous amount of self-blame. Isobel, while risking everything to protect Elena at the end of S1, tells Elena she doesn’t have any redeeming qualities. None. She thinks that having given up custody of Elena is so bad that a person with any decency at all wouldn’t have been able to do it; therefore, she will ensure that she is as terrible as possible. She tries to escape everything - physically leaving Virginia, then mentally escaping into folklore, and then finally giving up on her humanity. It’s unclear how much choice Isobel had during her last few episodes - she looks to have sought out Katherine on her own, but to have been compelled by Klaus when she finally burns to death in the graveyard. And I’m uncomfortable with picking through what someone did or didn’t have coming to them after Magic Roofie X, for obvious reasons, but if we step back and look at the metaphor, it’s pretty poignant - Isobel doesn’t think she gets to make decisions, she falls in line with more confident, powerful parties.
The show does something interesting with both of them - though they’re extremely dangerous when we meet them, they’re never once implied to have been dangers to their daughters. As far as we know, the reasoning was the simple, cruel presumption that teenage girls can’t be trusted with shit. There is the chance that both girls’ families knew the Petrova doppelganger legend and were trying to hide baby Moses from the pharaoh. I’m kind of hoping that’s the case for both of them, because it further reinforces the doppelganger metaphor, the utter brutality with which some (arbitrarily judged to be worthy) young women’s bodies are objectified, fetishized, protected not because they deserve it but because they are useful. Either way, Isobel and Katherine didn’t lose their babies because of what they did or might do, but because of what they are. It’s a rare thing for a narrative to both have that be true and make it so clear.
Both of them, crucially, weren’t turned immediately after giving birth. They tried, for a couple of years, but they both fell out of their normal lives and into the paranormal ones. Before they were fully formed as people, they went through this huge traumatic experience, and they tried to finish growing up normally, but they couldn’t. They drifted. They became high-achieving, by the standards of their day - Katherine pushed her way into high society; Isobel became a respected scholar at an extremely young age. But the dissonance they feel between who they are and what they do becomes too great for them. And I think that’s the fragmentation in them both, that they’ve been told to pretend this whole thing didn’t happen, they tried to go on with their normal lives.
Our first glimpse of Bonnie’s mother seems to stand in contrast, and though we haven’t seen much of her yet, what there has been is rife with potential. Abby is an exploration of birth mother trauma from, in a lot of ways, an opposite direction. Her total shift in identity jolted out of her role as biological mother, rather than the other way around; the change made her more human, not less. The option to leave Bonnie with her own family gives her - closure might be a cruel myth in this context, but she doesn’t have to wonder about her daughter. Of the three birth mothers we’ve met so far, Abby’s story is the most forgiving of her. She forms another family; she seems poised to regain her powers/relationship with Bonnie.
The depiction of birth mother trauma bleeds into the other metaphoric systems in which all the women participate. All of them have experienced some major transition in their lives, soon after they gave birth. It’s not becoming a mother that changes you, but becoming no-longer-a-mother that is brutal. (Esther has a fascinating story we have not yet heard.) Katherine the doppelganger, her own body an object in service of Klaus’ power, was given no claim to her daughter, as she was given no choice in the circumstance of her own birth. Isobel seems to have felt that giving custody of Elena to John’s family was for the best, but the factors influencing that decision seem to have been painfully out of her control - the Council is an authority cloaked in secrecy, but their power as the gatekeepers of supernatural knowledge puts the proles at shocking disadvantage to make decisions.
And in fleshing out the biological parents, usually the birth mother, adoptive parents become more complex, even if no less good. Adoption is a story involving several parties, of motives obvious and not. Finding out about Isobel catapults Elena into her identity crisis in part because the parents she was grieving were keeping a secret so huge, she could no longer idealize them entirely; as we learn more about John and Isobel we learn that the Gilberts were keeping the children in ignorance of the town’s dark past. None of which necessarily makes the Gilberts bad people, but it emphasizes the frequently-damaging vortex of silence that surrounds closed adoptions.
One thing I really appreciate about this show is how important women are to other women’s stories, even in unexpected ways. Case in point, in the most recent episode, Abby tells us that Elena’s parents in fact knew she was the Petrova doppelganger, and, Dursley-style, saw fit to withhold this from her at least until her late teen years. This, in turn, implies that at least some people in Mystic Falls knew Isobel was some kind of wacky supernatural shit-magnet, and didn’t see fit to step in and help her out - it’s almost as if elitist, mystically-justified hierarchies don’t give much of a crap about objectified women. Taken in isolation, Abby’s story is still compelling on its own terms, but it amplifies Kat’s and Isobel’s tragedies as well as her own pain.
As ever with an open canon, there’s always the chance that this will fall apart. But these motherhood narratives - as a source of drama and cause for psychological development for the mothers as well as their daughters - are among the more thoughtful, nonjudgmental representations of birth mothers I’ve seen. These women, they’re brittle and brave and such survivors, even in death. Regardless of where it all goes, they really are quite something.
TVD lady-meta: Kat, Isobel, Abby, and birth mother trauma
SO ANYWAY, note going into this: look, I’m not going to insult anyone with a trigger warning on this? Adoption, forced or not, can clearly touch any number of upsetting chords. I don’t claim any particular expertise on this subject, though I’ve tried to use non-judgmental, non-pejorative language about all parties involved, but ~please let me know if I’ve dropped the ball there.
As with the most excellent werewolf curse, it is difficult not to see the women’s transformations as some cohesive metaphor. Though Katherine and Isobel later became killers, and Abby Bennett left herself behind as surely as human Caroline Forbes, none of these women seem to have been dangerous to their children; none of TVD’s examples of birth mother trauma is among the small number of circumstances where adoption is really necessary for the child’s rights. Isobel was as good a mother as she could be, in her own way. And Abby Bennett has formed another family and looks poised to have the opportunity to integrate old and new selves. Isobel and Katherine do terrible things, but none of them to their children.
It’s not particularly groundbreaking to utilize vampires as an arrested development metaphor, granted, but I think the show is doing something so exceptionally resonant with this particular metaphor for both Katherine and Isobel, I almost can’t believe it could be intentional. (Almost. Katherine is one of the show’s best-developed characters, and certainly at least Mia Kirchner’s performance suggests she put a great deal of thought into Isobel.)
Katerina, my precious Kat. Setting aside the general horror that’s usually implied by pregnancy in young teenagers (cycle of abuse, goes around and around), that scene where her father whisks off her baby is such a desperate violation. You can tell exactly where Katherine picked up her ruthless, self-sufficient attitude. But the total loss of agency is almost freeing in a terrible way, because without choice, there is no responsibility; Katherine doesn’t seem to suffer from self-blame over any of it. When she becomes a vampire, it’s her own choice, and do I ever love her for it, but she’s very much backed into a corner by being the doppelganger.
By contrast, Isobel, though she’s clearly no less damaged by having given up Elena, clearly suffers from a tremendous amount of self-blame. Isobel, while risking everything to protect Elena at the end of S1, tells Elena she doesn’t have any redeeming qualities. None. She thinks that having given up custody of Elena is so bad that a person with any decency at all wouldn’t have been able to do it; therefore, she will ensure that she is as terrible as possible. She tries to escape everything - physically leaving Virginia, then mentally escaping into folklore, and then finally giving up on her humanity. It’s unclear how much choice Isobel had during her last few episodes - she looks to have sought out Katherine on her own, but to have been compelled by Klaus when she finally burns to death in the graveyard. And I’m uncomfortable with picking through what someone did or didn’t have coming to them after Magic Roofie X, for obvious reasons, but if we step back and look at the metaphor, it’s pretty poignant - Isobel doesn’t think she gets to make decisions, she falls in line with more confident, powerful parties.
The show does something interesting with both of them - though they’re extremely dangerous when we meet them, they’re never once implied to have been dangers to their daughters. As far as we know, the reasoning was the simple, cruel presumption that teenage girls can’t be trusted with shit. There is the chance that both girls’ families knew the Petrova doppelganger legend and were trying to hide baby Moses from the pharaoh. I’m kind of hoping that’s the case for both of them, because it further reinforces the doppelganger metaphor, the utter brutality with which some (arbitrarily judged to be worthy) young women’s bodies are objectified, fetishized, protected not because they deserve it but because they are useful. Either way, Isobel and Katherine didn’t lose their babies because of what they did or might do, but because of what they are. It’s a rare thing for a narrative to both have that be true and make it so clear.
Both of them, crucially, weren’t turned immediately after giving birth. They tried, for a couple of years, but they both fell out of their normal lives and into the paranormal ones. Before they were fully formed as people, they went through this huge traumatic experience, and they tried to finish growing up normally, but they couldn’t. They drifted. They became high-achieving, by the standards of their day - Katherine pushed her way into high society; Isobel became a respected scholar at an extremely young age. But the dissonance they feel between who they are and what they do becomes too great for them. And I think that’s the fragmentation in them both, that they’ve been told to pretend this whole thing didn’t happen, they tried to go on with their normal lives.
Our first glimpse of Bonnie’s mother seems to stand in contrast, and though we haven’t seen much of her yet, what there has been is rife with potential. Abby is an exploration of birth mother trauma from, in a lot of ways, an opposite direction. Her total shift in identity jolted out of her role as biological mother, rather than the other way around; the change made her more human, not less. The option to leave Bonnie with her own family gives her - closure might be a cruel myth in this context, but she doesn’t have to wonder about her daughter. Of the three birth mothers we’ve met so far, Abby’s story is the most forgiving of her. She forms another family; she seems poised to regain her powers/relationship with Bonnie.
The depiction of birth mother trauma bleeds into the other metaphoric systems in which all the women participate. All of them have experienced some major transition in their lives, soon after they gave birth. It’s not becoming a mother that changes you, but becoming no-longer-a-mother that is brutal. (Esther has a fascinating story we have not yet heard.) Katherine the doppelganger, her own body an object in service of Klaus’ power, was given no claim to her daughter, as she was given no choice in the circumstance of her own birth. Isobel seems to have felt that giving custody of Elena to John’s family was for the best, but the factors influencing that decision seem to have been painfully out of her control - the Council is an authority cloaked in secrecy, but their power as the gatekeepers of supernatural knowledge puts the proles at shocking disadvantage to make decisions.
And in fleshing out the biological parents, usually the birth mother, adoptive parents become more complex, even if no less good. Adoption is a story involving several parties, of motives obvious and not. Finding out about Isobel catapults Elena into her identity crisis in part because the parents she was grieving were keeping a secret so huge, she could no longer idealize them entirely; as we learn more about John and Isobel we learn that the Gilberts were keeping the children in ignorance of the town’s dark past. None of which necessarily makes the Gilberts bad people, but it emphasizes the frequently-damaging vortex of silence that surrounds closed adoptions.
One thing I really appreciate about this show is how important women are to other women’s stories, even in unexpected ways. Case in point, in the most recent episode, Abby tells us that Elena’s parents in fact knew she was the Petrova doppelganger, and, Dursley-style, saw fit to withhold this from her at least until her late teen years. This, in turn, implies that at least some people in Mystic Falls knew Isobel was some kind of wacky supernatural shit-magnet, and didn’t see fit to step in and help her out - it’s almost as if elitist, mystically-justified hierarchies don’t give much of a crap about objectified women. Taken in isolation, Abby’s story is still compelling on its own terms, but it amplifies Kat’s and Isobel’s tragedies as well as her own pain.
As ever with an open canon, there’s always the chance that this will fall apart. But these motherhood narratives - as a source of drama and cause for psychological development for the mothers as well as their daughters - are among the more thoughtful, nonjudgmental representations of birth mothers I’ve seen. These women, they’re brittle and brave and such survivors, even in death. Regardless of where it all goes, they really are quite something.