Movies - Flowers in the Attic

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	Movies - Flowers in the Attic

Flowers in the Attic is a 1979 novel by V.C. Andrews, deeply controversial because of its themes of incest, child abuse, neglect, and other taboo subjects. In 1987 it was made into a film starring Louise Fletcher, Victoria Tennant, Kristy Swanson, and Jeb Stuart Adams.

Plot

General Synopsis Spoiler Warning!!!

12 year old Cathy Dollanganger narrates the story as a 12 year old girl. The Dollangangers live a picturesque suburban life in Gladstone PA in the 1950s. Christopher and Corrine Dollanganger have four children, Chris 14, Cathy 12, and twins Cory and Carrie age 5. They are called the “Dresden Dolls” because of their outstanding beauty.

Their lives are thrown into turmoil when Christopher is killed on his 37th birthday in a car accident while returning from a business trip. Corrine falls into a depression and soon the family is penniless. Corrine tells the children they will go and live with their wealthy grandparents the Foxworths in Charlottesville VA. Her father Malcolm is on his death bed and she hopes to be written back into his will and inherit his estate. She was disowned by her family for something she did when she was 18.

On their journey Corrine fills the children’s minds with fantasies of how rich they are going to become. However their arrival at Foxworth Hall is frightening in that they take a train to the remote countryside at 3:00am and walk miles in the dark to Foxworth Hall, a gargantuan mansion. They are let in by their cold hearted grandmother Olivia and locked in a bedroom in the North Wing. Corrine says goodnight to her children as if this is the last time she will ever see them.

The children remain locked in the one bedroom with a bath. When Corrine returns she has been savagely whipped by Olivia whom explains to the children that their parents were half-uncle and niece. (It is later revealed in the series that Christopher and Corrine were actually brother and sister.) As a result of incest, Olivia accuses the children of being “Devil’s spawn.” She will never love them and their mere existence must be kept secret forever, especially from their grandfather Malcolm.

The children are to be locked in the North Wing and will be brought food once a day. Olivia also has a list of 22 rules they must follow, many of which involve not “sinning” by “touching or thinking” about their “private parts,” and Olivia enforces that God will always be watching them and the sins they commit. Being young and innocent the children do not understand what sins they could possibly commit.

Their single bedroom is connected to an enormous attic filled with antiques, and an adjoining room styled as a school classroom with children’s carvings dating back to the Civil War, suggesting the Dollangangers are not the first children held prisoner at Foxworth Hall. Over the next 3 ½ years the children find ways of entertaining themselves by reading the large number of books in the attic and elaborately decorating their dreary prison as a garden in bloom with paper flowers. They use the old Civil War clothing as costumes to perform plays such as ‘Gone With The Wind’

At first Corrine comforts the frightened children in their imprisonment, assuring them they will only be locked away a short time until she wins back Malcolm’s love enough to tell him of his grandchildren. Until then she is enrolled at a secretarial school so she can work and provide for them. But all of this is a lie. Corrine has no intention of ever freeing them, as she must keep their mere existence a secret if she is to inherit a fortune. The children remain imprisoned for 3 ½ years. Corrine visits her children less and less and enthusiastically tells them of her fabulous vacations and socialite parties while they are suffering. She showers them with expensive gifts from Europe when they need food and sunlight. She remarries to a rich lawyer Bart Winslow.

Over the 3 ½ years the children’s treatment becomes worse and worse. They wither emaciated from malnutrition and lack of sunlight, fresh air, and medical treatment. Olivia’s physical tortures also increase on the children from violent rages to beatings, whipping, burnings, and worse. She deprives the children of food for so long they resort to drinking each others blood and eating raw the rodents they are able to capture.

In the hellish misery of their existence the children attempt to survive and better themselves as much as possible and a new family unit is formed with Cory and Carrie as the children and Cathy and Chris as parents. They study by reading books in the attic. Chris plans to become a doctor and Cathy practices dancing, hoping to one day become a ballerina. They also educate Cory and Carrie teaching them to read.

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Movies - Flowers in the Attic

Plot

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