Eudoria Holmes vs Asian Parents
My moral view of this movie : How to be an independent woman as Enola, a free soul as Tewkesbury, and (as always) a sharp thinker like Sherlock.
It sure is a wonderful thing to have parents like Eudoria, who leads her kids to find who they truly are. As a single mother who raised a daughter that has quite an age gap from her other kids, Mycroft and Sherlock, Eudoria is a very unique mother. We cannot relate her ‘peculiar’ parenting style at the setting of the movie, which is in late 1800s, with the present parenting style. But if we look further to it, Eudoria is indeed unique. With lots of historical moments happening in England on 1800s until 1900s, Eudoria taught Enola to be independent. She taught her academic lessons like history, martial arts like Jiujitsu, and even fancy brain game like chess. Eudoria taught her stuffs that most England women didn’t do at the time. With the stereotype of women during those years, women are only taught to be proper ladies, who then only live to serve men and continuing posterity. It is pictured in the movie when Enola’s older brother, Mycroft forced her to enter a finishing school, where the major lessons are focused on social graces and upper class cultural rites.
To some extent, it seems that Asian kids cannot relate to the freedom souls of Enola and Tewksbury. Even in this 21st century, where injustice between men and women are mostly vanished, lots of Asian parents strict their kids to strive the future that they want them to be. They are already burdened by responsibilities and expectations their parents give them for most of their lives. Enola is taught to find her true self, getting out from streotypes of women where adult woman should prepare themselves to be a wife. This movie encourages us to find who we truly are. Yet, Asian parents would not do the same. All they could think about is their kids’ prosperity, wealth, and social status. It seems that all Asian parents concern about their kids wealth and survival from misery in living poor. Instead of leaving traces and how to solve it like Eudoria, Asian parents would just say ‘you do A, you will enter school B, and be a good C’.
Even though it looks very different, Eudoria and Asian parents have one same way of parenting : enforcement. We all agree that Enola was forced by Eudoria to read history books, learning Jiujitsu, or making explosive materials. But what makes it different is that, Eudoria leaves Enola to be what she wanted to be since young age. At 16, Eudoria leaves Enola to work, while Enola is completely confused by her mother’s disappearance. Every years of life she has spent with her mother, and not even a second her mother is away from her sight. But suddenly, at the very first day of her 16 age, her mother implicitly taught Enola to not always depend on her. Luckily, by her knowledge and skills that her mother has taught for 16 years, she find her true self by helping Tewksbury from his political issues.
This precious lessons of ‘finding who you truly are’ from Eudoria to Enola makes it different with Asian parents’ parenting style. Asian kids are ‘dictated’ to do everything, even choosing a partner for life. This surely is related to the cultural norms and the similar conditions of Asian countries, but this point also makes a huge difference with Asian kids’ definition of life. Asian parents guide and ‘dictate’ their kids until the moment when they have reach the point of success (which is commonly defined as being someone in the society and having a great amount of wealth). Asian parents don’t have the concept of ‘success is not only determined by wealth, but happiness’. Their kids are forced to make more money, to survive from this so called hard world. This psychological fact is indeed related to the status of Asian countries which are mostly categorized into developing countries, but to think of another matter, what about Asian kids’ dreams, true souls, and mental state?
To summarize my thoughts, Eudoria leaves Enola to find what she wants and who she truly is from a young age. Meanwhile, Asian kids are locked up in their parents’ dreams until they are well known success.
Anyway, I captured this great quote from Eudoria Vernet Holmes :
Try to make excited, rather than disappointed at the possibilities of something new
— aishaqi. October 2020.















