In Chelsea's blog and in class, the subject of keeping up appearances (to borrow from Chelsea) came up. Although His mother is undoubtedly trying to put on a good face for the neighbors, I definitely think that there is more to it. On the first read, it was obvious that the mother was worried about what everyone thought about her family and, consequently, nearly all her painstaking efforts to show how much she loved her disabled son were nothing more than an act. The second time I read this, though, I got a slightly different impression. Although she was, to a degree, attempting to please the neighbors, I think she was mostly just trying to convince herself that she had feelings for her son that she obviously did not really have. I'm sure that she desperately wanted to have genuine motherly feelings for Him, but she simply didn't. How hard would it be for a mother to have a child she loved less than the others? To compensate for her lack of motherly affection for Him, she tried to convince herself that "she loved her second son[...]better than she loved the other two children put together" (49). I don't know of any mother who would admit that she loved one child over the other, let alone announce it to anyone who would listen. She did love the other two, and perhaps even felt guilty about loving them but not Him, and maybe that is why she made such a shocking statement.
I feel bad for His mother. She wants so badly to be the kind of mother she claims to be. When the decision is ultimately made to put Him in the "Country Home," a huge pressure is removed from Mrs. Whipple, and she feels "almost happy" (57). She begins fantasizing about her other children coming home for the summer and fixing the farm, but He does not seem to be included in those plans. She is tired of living with the contradiction that she is a mother and should therefore love all her children, but in reality doesn't. He is not in her future plans because she cannot bear the pain He causes her.
Tags: He, Josie Stillman, response