The Brooch

It is quite possible that Howard suffers from the Oedipus complex in which he unconsciously dreamed of killing his father to marry his mother, however since his father went away after six months after his birth it is quite possible that his eccentric attachment to his mother is “the marriage”. With his competition gone (his father), Howard has claimed his mother as his woman and he has a weird and twisted relationship to his mother and toward other girls. It seemed as if Howard was not even really interested in women, by the angelic look he had on his face as he passed by these women without looking at them. “…hurried with averted head, even when his mother was not with him, past young girls in the streets…” (648). If he had already formed a solid “relationship” with his mother, there was no need for him to betray her messing with other women. Their strange relationship continued even when he went to college she moved with him. They had grown so dependent on each other with the absence of strong male figures in both of their lives (she being husbandless and fatherless) gravitate towards each other. They are filling that missing void with each other, esp. Howard’s mother. She reminds me of Narcissa in “There Was a Queen”, because Narcissa did the same thing after the death of her husband and all she had left was her little son. Getting stuck in the Oedipus complex is very unhealthy and will inevitably lead to unhealthy relationships with women in the future, thus with Howard, he went from one extreme to the next: He married a “loose” woman (who was doomed to have unhealthy relationships as well, because she was an orphan and had no one around to teach her how to build healthy relationships with men). The first signs that their relationship was doomed to be dysfunctional was when he was so eager to marry her so quickly and then his physical aggression towards her. “She fell back a little as he gripped her shoulder…he dragged her, screaming and struggling…across the dance floor…took her across his lap and spanked her.” (651). Howard is assuming a father role in spanking her. This is obviously not a typical husband-wife relationship. Being in a relationship with someone other than his mother was definitely hard for him that is why his relationship with his wife, Amy, was so messed up, because he really did not know how to balance his emotions and feelings in a relationship with a woman. Eventually the battle between his weird relationship with his mother and with his wife (with neither of them working out successfully) leads to his suicide.