Things

A mother watches her daughter transform into a stranger, and the cure she seeks may be more unsettling than the disease. In 1914, the era when Freud was reshaping how we understand the mind, Alice Duer Miller wrote this compact psychological drama about Mrs. Royce, a woman so devoted to motherhood that she has lost sight of herself entirely. When her teenage daughter Celia develops opinions, attitudes, a voice Mrs. Royce cannot control, the mother does what women of her class were taught to do: she seeks expert help. Dr. Despard arrives to observe the family over a weekend, and what he finds hidden beneath the surface of this household is neither simple nor comfortable. Miller strips away the sentimental mythology of motherhood to reveal something darker and more honest: the resentments that fester in silence, the selflessness that becomes a form of control, and the terrifying possibility that a child's rebellion might be the sanest response to an insane situation. This is a novel for anyone who has ever felt that their parents' love was a cage, or that being a good mother meant disappearing entirely.