The One Thing We Miss When We Condemn the Vengeful Woman
Did we forget why she wanted revenge in the first place?
In 1999, Janet Fitch burst onto the literary scene with her stunning, tragic debut novel, White Oleander, a story that follows the heartbreaking journey of teenager Astrid Magnussen who is forced to endure a series of horrific experiences in foster homes after her mother, Ingrid, is imprisoned for murdering her ex-lover. It’s a chilling examination of the scope of damage a mother can inflict upon her daughter.
Two years later, the movie adaptation hit the big screen, forcing us to meet Ingrid, quite literally, face to face, in the dispassionate, cold, blue-eyed gaze of Michelle Pfeiffer. In some ways, it makes what she did all the more real when, at the end of the movie, Astrid asks her why she killed her ex-lover, only to have Ingrid answer in an indifferent tone, “Self defense. He was killing me.”
As I re-watched this movie for the first time since it premiered, I had a very different reaction to this scene. I understood that the audience was meant to interpret this as cold-hearted narcissism, or even psychopathy. That we are meant to see Ingrid as dangerous and predatory. At the time, that’s exactly how I felt about her. And that interpretation of her character still stands today.
