Undone" by Wally Lamb Dolores Term Paper

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From these three individuals, she is able to understand herself more as an individual, eventually realizing that she cannot be Dolores without these individuals. In effect, each individual acts as an inevitable part of Dolores's whole personality.

Dolores as the victim: Projections of victimization from her mother

In the novel, Dolores's mother became the embodiment of the female victim: she was not only abused by her husband, but was portrayed as constantly taken advantage of and victimized by other men in her life. It is through these voluntary and involuntary forms of victimization that Dolores grew up having the psyche of a victim as well. This belief projected itself when Dolores was raped by a "family friend," Jack.

As a battered wife, Dolores's mother went through a cycle of assertiveness-subservience-rebellion behavior. This is illustrated in one fight she had with her husband, wherein she accused him of being "an old lady's whore." Accusing him of this, Dolores's mother showed assertiveness and voiced out her feelings after years of suspecting that her husband was earning money by maintaining a relationship with a wealthy, old woman. However, her assertiveness dissolved into subservience when her husband used physical abuse, proving to her who is in control of the family and the relationship. Her eventual decision to divorce her husband later became the act of rebellion that, as the novel progressed, did not alleviate her victimization, but just transformed it (26):

She spun around and faced him, suds flying away from her hand..

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."It means what you think it means...That you're an old lady's whore." Inside I heard him slapping her, kitchen chairs knocking over...The back door banged open and Daddy was rushing into the backyard...Ma was running after him...He let his hands go. The small fluttering silhouette he released was Petey...I hated both of them.

Dolores's thought during this pivotal event in her life as a child in an abusive marriage foreshadows her eventual victimization. While one might think that it is unfair for her to hate not only her father, but also her mother, Dolores's thoughts during the fight were understandable. She hated her father for abusing her mother, and possibly, there is truth in her mother's accusation that her father is indeed "an old lady's whore." She also hated her mother because she was not able to defend her assertiveness to her husband, and eventually recoiled once she was abused physically.

This kind of relations within the Price family is a result of projections, wherein all three of them (Dolores, her father, and her mother) experienced victimization in different forms. Dolores's.....

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