so i think i’d like to talk about my current understanding of the... “collaboration” between margarethe’s mother and brother, in terms of their abuse of margarethe. i’m going to be building on this headcanon.
my understanding of margarethe’s family has come a really long way since the beginning of this blog, when i initially headcanoned her as coming from an emotionally distant, but not necessarily abusive situation. obviously, that really changed. it moved from there to a belief that her brother was the primary aggressor, with both of margarethe’s parents as his enablers, and then to a recognition that margarethe’s mother, helena, played an enormous role in the abusive home life--and the pairing up of helena and margarethe’s brother, willem, as “co-conspirators” against margarethe’s happiness, became important on a psychological level when margarethe perceived a recurrence of their “conspiracy” in the private conversation she witnessed between ella and ella’s dad.
why am i putting all these words--”collaboration,” “co-conspirators,” “conspiracy”--in quotes, rather than letting them stand unquestioned? well, i’m not completely sure that the collaboration between helena and willem was deliberate--not at first. while they shared a mentality in terms of making margarethe the victim in order to reify their own power, initially there was no explicit agreement between them to do so.
their abuse of margarethe did become collaborative on certain levels. probably never on the level of outright, “we are going to do X to margarethe, so that the result will be Y,” but certainly on other, more subtle levels. for example, each of them benefited from the other’s abuse of margarethe: willem’s brutality gave helena a tool with which to gaslight margarethe and make her distrust her own perceptions. helena’s emotional abuse of margarethe gave willem a vulnerable person who he knew was the household scapegoat--an acceptable, readily available victim.
however, as i describe in the hc linked at the top of this post, there is a pivot in the nature of their collaboration when margarethe is a young teen. the three vital circumstances of this pivot are as follows:
papa ten broek’s business collapses. there is a steep decline in lifestyle and circumstances for the whole family, obviously a very jarring and insecurity-causing experience, which leads to...
helena taking willem and margarethe to live with her sister’s family in [country where movie takes place], while papa ten broek remains in the netherlands and struggles to rebuild his business. this marks a further jarring experience--that of culture shock and the sudden absence of a family member.
margarethe gets her first period and experiences the emotional turbulence that surrounds menarche. this plucks her from the relatively androgynous position of child and places her in the position of woman, with its implicit marital, sexual, romantic potential, and all of the confining strictures of femininity attendant on that position.
while i have talked about these experiences affecting margarethe in the past, these experiences also affected helena and willem. both of them also experienced the fear that comes with the sudden loss of financial security. both of them also experienced the linguistic divide and culture shock involved with a move to a new country. and both of them also had to reorganize themselves around margarethe’s movement from child to young adult.
where margarethe felt intensely isolated and trapped by her family’s move, willem and helena, having always been allies on some level, were able to band together more closely and support each other. as margarethe entered young adulthood, began to look like an adult, began to assume the marital/sexual/romantic potential of an adult, both of them were equally threatened by such and, having grown closer, were able to formalize, in some sense, the collaborative terms of their abuse of margarethe.
more than ever, helena’s abuse became about controlling margarethe on every level. in the guise of grooming her daughter into the ideal of womanhood, helena controlled margarethe’s social life, her interests, her wardrobe, her time, her words. especially important was curbing margarethe’s incipient sexuality (having already made an effort toward such when margarethe was presexual and a child) and redirecting it in a “useful” way toward a husband that would benefit the ten broek family and who could, potentially, become another arm of helena’s control.
willem’s violence, instead of merely satisfying his own desire to victimize and control, became about reinforcing helena’s power over margarethe. again, willem benefited from supporting helena’s abuse. he got a victim no one would punish him for hurting, while also reaping the benefits of being the favorite child. he also felt threatened by margarethe’s potential sexuality, although his anxiety rested on a particularly patriarchal level, and so “punishing” her for inappropriate behavior around men became a fixture of his behavior.
i describe their collaboration as becoming “formalized” because helena and willem began to act, together, against margarethe, in order to enforce specific lessons about her behavior. this incident, involving a flight of stairs and an apparent mutual understanding between willem and helena, is an example. (although the drabble takes place in modern verse, the incident is canon for all verses, with a few details tweaked as necessary.) i don’t believe that they ever sat down over coffee and drew up point-by-point plans about what they were going to do, but they did speak about it, if obliquely, and did act in mutual understanding and agreement, not working out the finer details, but acting in accordance with one another.