best12bars, I think it's more complex than Margaret resenting Carrie because she was the product of sex with her husband, since the Catholic church supports sex solely as a catalos for reproduction. In the book, Margaret gets pregnant initially after she and Carrie's father have sex prior to their marriage. Because of her religious rigidity, she believes this cannot happen and throws herself down the stairs, which facilitates a miscarriage. That experience makes her believe sex is a sin itself, and Carrie is only conceived after her father drunkenly rapes Margaret. Years later, Margaret catches Carrie floating a bottle in the air when she's young and almost kills her then (thinking her a witch) before her husband ultimately intervenes, though he dies shortly thereafter.
To just say Margaret doesn't love Carrie is far too simple, but not because of some onus from society to delve the depth of villains- because Stephen King made it that way from the very beginning. To me, the key to the complex feelings she has for her lies in the fact that, when the rape that conceived her occurred, the book makes it a point to say Margaret simultaneously hated it and enjoyed it. In a way, she let herself indulge in manner that goes against the very core of her beliefs, and she feels Carrie is a punishment for
that sin. Because she "slipped up" once and it resulted in Carrie, on some level, she feels allowing herself to purely love her daughter will result in similar "punishment" yet again. But, just like the rape itself, she still finds herself loving Carrie in spite of the awareness of sin, and that makes her rigid and abusive all the more. She's constantly fighting a battle of hatred, self-loathing, love, and awareness of evil, and I think you can argue that Margaret's attempts to control Carrie are some twisted maternal attempt to prevent her from the "punishment" that ultimately befell Margaret herself. That is where I think the most heightened drama of the story presents itself.
I disagree with Owen in saying the musical "made Margaret three dimensional." She always was, even from the very beginnings of the source material. It was only natural that the musical would want to make her an equally complex character in reflecting the way she'd been portrayed previously, and I think, in going back to the novel for a lot of it's inspiration, this incarnation of the show is taking a huge step in the right direction.
Tonya Pinkins: Then we had a "Lot's Wife" last June that was my personal favorite. I'm still trying to get them to let me sing it at some performance where we get to sing an excerpt that's gone.
Tony Kushner: You can sing it at my funeral.
Updated On: 1/19/12 at 05:43 PM
