Sylvia Fraser's My Father's House

A child who experiences molestation has every ounce of her being compromised and her womanhood robbed of her. Sylvia was no different. The detective and the murder victim are one and the same. Sylvia Fraser had to go within herself to find out what really happened to her as a child and found that a piece of her had been murdered.

She describes the moments that she recalls and you can not help but visualize the horror that she felt as a child. She recalls that each abominable act experienced with her father is followed by her falling into convulsions. These convulsions were seen as Sylvia misbehaving (Page 487) I am amazed that her mother never thought once to take her child to the doctor to investigate why these episodes happened.

I also see a close reference with the given quote and the “twin” that Sylvia created in her youth. “From then on I would have two selves – the child who knows (the “twin”) and that child that dares not know any longer...” (Page 490) The child who dares not know becomes the detective in her later years and the child that knows dies daily at with each terrible act. I am very surprised that she is able to forgive her father after being robbed of protection in her youth and a chance at motherhood in her later years.

Sylvia’s recalling of dreams in which there were mirrors also relates closely with what Margaret Atwood wrote. Sylvia realizes that her “twin” or “other self” repressed memories. “Imagine this: imagine you discover that for many years another person intimately shared your life without you knowing it...but during all that time you never actually saw the person.” She continues by writing, “She monitored my every thought, manipulated my actions, aided my survival and sabotaged my dreams, for she was I and I was she. (Page 496) Again you see that Sylvia digs deep into her memory, learns of suppressed memory and of her “other self” that would help her remember protected her from those memories.

This was a particularly hard reading for me as I had a friend in middle school who along with her other 5 sisters was raped repeatedly by their father. Sadly we know that not everyone who experiences childhood abuse comes through it with forgiveness and pity for the perpetrator.