(no subject)
This is a (lulzy) essay I wrote in Year 12 because I was going insane.
How does The Well explore the significance of family as a social institution?
By Christine
“Family is really important”. This quote, by my Mum, shows that family is really important. And Oh my God family is so significant and a social institution is like something that serves a purpose in society and shapes the people so they can fulfil that purpose that it serves yeah you know what I’m saying. In THE WELL all the families are totally messed up like Kathy lives with Hester who is like an old woman and totally not her mum or even her grandma and she doesn’t have any sisters or brother and so it’s really not a family like you would expect a family to be and it’s not like (8)The Harper buuunch, the Harper buuunch, that’s the waaaay we becaaame the Haaarper buuunch(8) or anything. Also it’s like Hester’s relationship with the German chick. But then you have like The Borden Family with that woman who’s dropping babies all over the joint and they are sort of more like a proper family like socioeconomics today is like ‘this is what a family is’ and there’s a mum and a dad and kids and stuff and I think they even have a dog which is cool too. So the borden family is more powerful than HesterAndKathy because they’re like a normal family and they do normal things and they’re in the normal social institution where you have sex and make babies so the country can have a population and then you teach your kids to have sex (not with each other lol ew) and then your family is fulfilling that social role. Institution. So yeah family is important as a social institution because it makes sure there’s another generation that’s not too messed up and when you’re a normal family you have a higher social rank but when you’re not you end up all messed up and nobody likes you like the family that is Hester and Katherine who are a family because they live together and do things together even though they’re not related.
Marriage was invented to make a man and a lady have kids A) To make a bigger population and B) to raise them to be normal people and eventually have their own kids. So it fulfils a role and that’s what makes it a social institution. But when families are all mix-matched and lumped together, it messes everything up and that’s why Katherine doesn’t know much about sex lol because Hester is like “sex doesn’t exist sex doesn’t exist sex doesn’t exist and Katherine is twelve”. So a unconventional family like that one significantly messes up what family is supposed to be as a social institution. What’s interesting but is that Hester didn’t have a functional conventiony family either because her dad totally screwed her governess who Hester liked more than her Mum and so what that family did was shape Hester to act like she does now which is all messed up and stuff and she passes that on to Kathy and it shows how family as a social institution is meant to pass the current social values on to the next generation but when the family is wack it makes the social values that get passed down wack and then people are seen as weird and stuff and something to do with peter pan but I totally don’t know what the well has to do with johnny depp.
And then you’ve got like the Bordens which are more family-like and so they’re fulfilling the role of the family as a social institution better. Hester is all like “Mrs Borden has babies a lot” I don’t know if that quote is right but it’s something like that I’m pretty sure. And because Mrs Borden has a lot of babies she gets Hester’s house and stuff and society likes her better because her family is a more functional social institution and she’s all “lol Hester, Family: You’re doing it wrong”. And she totally is doing it wrong because she and Katherine can’t have babies and be a proper institution at least not with the science at the time but maybe something in the future???
So the Bordens are socially powerful because they represent the function of family in terms of the future- having babies, like Whitney Houston said- “I believe the children are the future, teach them well and let them lead the way”. But Hester before she met Katherine was powerful too because of the function of her family in the past. As in her family had been in that house and farming the farm for like ages and so she’d sort of inherited all of her social status because of what her family had passed down to her when they were actually a functional institution doing what they were meant to do (like, before her dad bonked the german). And that’s also why hester doesn’t like the new people- because their families haven’t been in the society for years and years and years. But then because Hester was all like there is no such thing as sex because she was traumatised because her Dad’s a wanker, she was unable to continue the proper institutiony things that a family is meant to do after her Dad died and then she met Katherine and embarked on her ‘let’s not be a normal family’ expedition and she lost her social status to a real family and that shows the importance of family to the individual in the way it represents them in society like. But it’s sort of because she’s a woman and she got messed up because of a man like how the man in the well messes everything up and Elizabeth Jolley is a woman and so that means that THE WELL is about how women suffer but are cool.
Also Katherine represents what happens to a person in society when their family is messed up from the beginning. Like Hester was in a normal family until her dad did that thing and she shows how your social status can change based on how your family changes, but Katherine never even had a proper family so she never had any chance lol. So yeah because kathy isn’t in a proper family she doesn’t get taught the proper values of society because her family isn’t a proper social institution and so she never got the birds and the bees talk and she’s like hehehehesexhehehehehe based on like movies. And she’s all naïve and mrs borden is like omg peter pan. And then she has like fantasies about having sex with the guy in the well but he’s abusive even though he’s imaginary but she’l like lol that’s okay but IT’S NOT OKAY. AUSTRALIA SAYS NO. BUT BECAUSE KATHY NEVER LEARNT WHAT A REAL FAMILY IS SHE THINKS IT’S OKAY BUT IT’S NOT which is really sad. And Kathy probably won’t have a proper family when she grows up either because of the way her orphanage and hester have shaped her to behave and think in society but I dunno I guess that might change if she starts watching better movies.
Family is a totally significant social institution because it makes the next generation and teaches them social values and how to behave, and the way a family works impacts on the individual as a good or crappy member of society. So Kathy and Hester are a crappy family and their institution is crappy and so they’re not useful in society and so no-one likes them.