Classics Corner: Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews; Emotional Moving Gothic Novel Is More Than Its Titillating Controversial Reputation

Classics Corner: Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews; Emotional Moving Gothic Novel Is More Than Its Titillating Controversial Reputation

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews




Spoilers: If I were to ask people to name one thing about V.C. Andrews's Gothic novel, Flowers in the Attic, it would be “Brother and Sister Incest.” The answer would be “Well yes, technically.”




As though it were the Fifty Shades of its day, the first book in Andrews's Dollanganger Series raunchy reputation precedes itself. Though with E.L. James’ barely disguised Twilight fanfiction (and badly written Twilight fanfiction at that), the reputation is all that it has to offer Readers.

While Flowers in the Attic is attached to controversy and many read the books because of the controversy (I remember many girls in Middle and High School with a copy in their hands), the book is actually better than the reputation it has been given.

At least the writing in the first book. The rest of Andrews's Dollanganger series takes a definite nose dive and foregoes quality, theme, and characterization to introduce plot points in an attempt to provoke the Reader and bring controversy. It almost becomes cartoonish or soap opera-like the way that the sexual themes and melodramatic plot points pile up and repeat themselves in the later books. Characters that were once interesting become caricatures and Cathy Dollanganger, the series’ main protagonist, almost hits Mary Sue proportions by the third or fourth book.

However, the first book in the series, Flowers in the Attic, balances the rest out as a well-written modern Gothic novel about child abuse, survival instincts, religious hypocrisy, and the lengths people go through to get money.




In the beginning, the Dollanganger Family seems like the perfect 1950’s dollhouse family. (A family joke has many people describe the fair-haired siblings Chris, Cathy, Carrie, and Cory as “The Dresden Dolls.”) A father who is a well-to-do businessman, a mother who is very loving towards her husband and children, and four children who are bright and brimming with talent. Eldest son, Chris is a genius and budding medical doctor, middle daughter, Cathy is a future ballerina, while the twins, Carrie and Corey are talented prodigies in music and animal studies respectively.

Everything is perfect in their lives until their father, Christopher is killed in a car accident. The family is left destitute when their mother, Corrine, reveals that they have been living above their means and that she has no marketable or employable skills so she has no choice but to pack the kids to Virginia and live with her estranged parents.




When the Dollanganger Family arrives at Corrine’s childhood home, they are met by a very frosty stern grandmother who orders the children to live inside the third floor bedroom and gives several orders. The orders include that they can only go to the attic, they are to be never heard or seen by anyone, and that their dying grandfather is never to know that the children are in the house or even that they exist.

The reason for all these rules, the Grandmother (as the kids call her “The Grandmother.” There is no love lost in this family.), says is because their parents “lived in sin.”: Their father was their grandfather's half-brother and therefore their mother's half-uncle. Christopher and Corrine eloped, changed their last names from Foxworth to Dollanganger, and raised their children who were none the wiser. The overly religious grandmother keeps the children locked up partly because Corrine's father hasn't forgiven her and she doesn't want him to know any “unholy issue” came from their parent’s marriage. She also doesn't want the children of the same sex lying next to each other or seeing each other dressing for fear that the children will repeat the same pattern as their parent's.




Ironically, the barriers that The Grandmother puts around the children enable them to do the very thing that she was trying to prevent. Flowers in the Attic is a perfect example of a self-fulfilling prophecy like Oedipus Rex in which the character's attempts to stop something plunge them right into the very thing they are trying to stop. The Grandmother is blinded by religious intolerance and her narrow view of sin that she keeps the children locked up for three years deprived of any outside stimulation. Her desire to keep the adolescent Chris and Cathy (who age from 15-18 and 12-15 respectively in their captivity) from any friends or peers their own age, right when their bodies are developing and their sexuality is beginning to be explored, proves to be a detriment. Cathy and Chris are going through biological changes and have heightened drives and no one else with which to explore them. Is it any wonder that two teenage siblings would explore these drives with each other when they are cut off from any other outside stimulation? The incest between the two siblings is less of an attempt at arousal than it becomes an attempt to survive in a claustrophobic environment. Which is more than the later books have. They sacrifice paragraphs that develop the characters that just happened to contain sexual themes for sexy paragraphs that are written solely to titillate the Reader and provide cheap thrills.




Flowers in the Attic is less about sex than it is about survival. Like the passages that describe incest between Chris and Cathy, everything they do is a means of surviving their three year captivity. The two older children act as parents to the younger children becoming better parents than the narcissistic Corrine and unloving Grandmother. When Corey and Carrie first complain that they are bored, Chris and Cathy create various games and activities such as putting on plays and drawing flowers and animals to create a paper garden. They soothe the younger ones’ fears and nurse them through illnesses (which Chris is able to diagnose symptoms because of old medical books left in the Attic). They stand up for Corey in front of their grandmother and mother when he becomes fatally ill. In some of the more heartbreaking moments after the Grandmother starves them for a week, Chris cuts himself and gives the twins his blood to drink. They show deep love and self-sacrifice more than the adults around them.




If Cathy and Chris show love and self-sacrifice then their mother and grandmother show the opposite. Corrine and her mother vary in their motives and means of abusive behavior, but both contribute to the children's deprivation. The Grandmother is practically a character from a Grim fairy tale. She is bound by her interpretation of the Bible and God's retribution over his forgiveness and love. She is hypocritical in her dealings with her daughter and grandchildren constantly taunting them with “God sees everything you do” paying little attention to the abuse that she inflicts.

She is also a master at manipulating the children with emotional abuse. There are a few times when Cathy and Chris manage to sneak out to the roof and in one passage make it as far as the yard, but they are so weakened by The Grandmother's cruel treatment that they don't even attempt to run away. (In fact they don't run away until they realize that their lives are in danger.)




The Grandmother's behavior doesn't surprise Cathy and Chris at all because she hates them from the moment that they walk into her mansion. It's their mother’s behavior that surprises them. A woman who was once very loving and affectionate and visits her children every day decreases her visits and then stops them altogether. Originally, Corrine is forced to reveal marks on her back to show that she too is a victim of her parent's abuse. She claims that she is saving money and attending night school classes so she can leave her parents. She also claims that she has to obey her father so she can win back his love. However, she also appears dressed in fancy clothes, gives them expensive toys (using money that could have funded their get away), and reports going on trips, attending dances, and being courted by handsome rich men. Naturally, the children become suspicious that their mother is less concerned about them than she is about the bling.




It is purposely left unclear whether Corrine was always a narcissistic selfish person and the children were blinded by their youthful naivety and belief that “Mommy and Daddy were always perfect” (Chris certainly favors this as being close to their mother and defending her when she isn't around. Cathy, more cynical and closer to her late father, doesn't agree) or Corrine became that way since moving back in with her parents and succumbing to their views. (The movies like the 1987 film and the 2015 miniseries show earlier scenes of her suspicions and vanity to make her antagonistic character more obvious from the word, “go.”)

But definitely as they are held captive, Corrine cares less and less about them and more about the financial gain she will receive. Corrine's longing for money becomes so obsessive that she commits unthinkable acts towards her children.




Once they realize that their lives are in danger, Cathy and Chris make plans to escape. Though the Dollanganger Children escape their captivity physically, the emotional scars remain. One thing the other books in the series show us is how the abuse stays with the Dollangangers as they continue to have health problems caused by their imprisonment and undernourishment, still retain post-trauma and other disorders, and later exhibit unhealthy behaviors towards significant others and children.




If the writing in the later books could have kept that emotion and retained the thematic elements of abuse, trauma, hypocrisy, and greed the Flowers in the Attic had, The Dollanganger Series could have been very compelling reading. Unfortunately, the others don't measure up and only the original reigns supreme.