Let's define our terms, Gaveston. Because I don't know if you are saying:
1) there's an insidious sexual component to all possessive parents' resentment and sabotage of their children's love lives. "Sexual" as in the complexity of human sexuality including the Oedipal dynamic. "Sexual" as in psychosexual longings to be wanted, joined with, cared for, not abandoned by, loved, accepted and desired (as a human being, not as a piece of &*()).
In which case we all agree with you, or at least understand what Freud would say about it (even if we don't agree with Freud).
2) that when the Witch asks Rapunzel if she would have her be "handsome as a Prince" that she is revealing a sexual attraction to Rapunzel in the common sense of the phrase. As in an unquenchable and marked (as in driving her crazy hot) longing - conscious or subconscious - to make love to her daughter.
In which case I, and it seems the majority of people posting here, don't agree with you.
Sometimes in this thread, I thought you were suggesting 1) and other times it seems you are suggesting 2). And because of that I have the profound and aggravating sense that we are going around in circles.
Put more simply, is ITW more like "Bewitched" or "Lolita'? Which character does the Witch resemble more?
I realize you agree that there is no actual sex between the Witch and Rapunzel, but that's not what I'm asking. I'm asking if you think the Witch more closely resembles Nikolai Bolkonsky (who's neediness keeps Princess Marya unmarried, and I'm sure Freud would have a psychosexual field day with that), or Nicole Diver's father who wanted to (and, as it happens did, &*()) his daughter), which eventually leads to her nervous breakdown.
In thought rather than in deed, Is she more like Jessica Tandy in The Birds or John Huston in Chinatown? And, anticipating how you might respond, if your answer be that considering their thoughts and or desires (conscious or un) concerning, respectively, their son and daughter, Tandy in The Birds and Huston in Chinatown are exactly the same. I beg to differ.
Updated On: 8/10/12 at 07:02 PM
She's an over protective mother who was watching over her daughter in a erm...unconventional way. 
