How the show ‘The Secrets She Keeps’ gets mental illness and rape all wrong
In the era of mental health awareness being the central theme of several shows, ‘The Secrets She Keeps’ too has a plot hinging on mental health. (Spoilers ahead). The show deals with a woman Agatha, who was raped by a Church priest and ends up getting pregnant. She is not only shamed and accused of being a liar, but is also forced to give up her child. This incident stays with her lifelong as she turns into a woman who is obsessed with having babies and being pregnant. So much so that she fakes a pregnancy and kidnaps a woman’s child who she feels is leading the perfect life.
This might seem like a plot from the 90s or the 70s Bollywood, where every second film had a brutal rape scene. The survivors then were shown to either kill themselves or lose their minds. The 90s showed rape survivors turn into vigilantes. The new millenium which was more woke and understanding towards the plight of sexual abuse victims showed them turn into vigilantes who wanted revenge at any cost. The recent film ‘Bulbbul’ pretty much showed the trope of rape turning a woman into a vigilante who kills rapists and abusive husbands.
‘The Secrets She Keeps’ and ‘Bulbbul clearly want to show how pedophilia and rape is wrong and what they do to women, especially when they grow up. We understand the sentiment here, that rape indeed is heinous and inhumane.
But should a man not rape a woman only cause she would turn into a vigilante or a child-kidnapper? No. A man should not rape a woman because it is inhumane and heinous.
The content in both talk about rape and mental health, yet they get it all wrong. The women in both the cases suffer from PTSD, while Bulbbul can get away on a technicality that it is set in an era where mental health awareness wasn’t available. ‘The Secret She Keeps’ on the other hand has all the material at hand to ensure that the lead Agatha, gets the much needed mental-health. The character development is so poorly done in the series, that one keeps wondering about what kind of parents Agatha must have had or how and why her first marriage ended and how did all those children end up being dead. The writer of ‘The Secrets She Keeps’ has lazily blamed a working class woman to turn into a child-kidnapper and be envious of a rich woman’s lifestyle. How easy it is to paint working class women as the perpetrators and being mentally depraved.
The show in its 6-episode run further widens the gap between the rich and the working-class. By the end of episode 6, you are forced to feel sorry for the poor rich woman who doesn’t have the perfect marriage and on the other hand you scorn at Agatha for being a child-kidnapper. The series based on the eponymous book talks of being a psychological thriller, but sadly it isn’t. It ends on an incomplete note where no backstory of Agatha is properly revealed.
