Feed the Family or Feed the Addiction: The Act of Enabling as it Relates to The Glass Castle, Society Today, and My Life
In Jeannette Walls’s memoir The Glass Castle, we see quite a bit of unruly, selfish, and addictive behavior. Jeannette and her siblings Lori, Brian, and eventually Maureen, are often left to their own devices. Their parents, Rex and Rose Mary, were riddled with selfishness, addiction, and quite possibly, even though not specifically conveyed, mental illness. Rex’s and Rose Mary’s issues were stifled by the children’s inability to see that by not reaching out for help, they were actually enabling their parents. Although we see quite a bit of enabling throughout the entire book, from not just the children, but the parents and the people around all of them, it is most obviously displayed towards the end of the book when Rose Mary and Lori were both away for the summer, and Jeannette was left in charge of the money. Jeannette had a strict budget planned out and thought it was going to work. Then along comes Rex, “Hon, I need some money,” he said (209). When Jeannette asks why, he has no qualm in letting her know it is for beer and cigarettes. Even though she tells him that she is on a tight budget, he still manages to get the money from her. Not only is this a terrible act on his part, Jeannette does not yet realize that she is enabling her father, just as he has been enable her entire life thus far.
It is at this time that her father asks for, and gets the money from her, that Jeannette realizes that her soft spot for her father is just too soft. “He simply waited for me to fork over the cash, as if he knew I didn’t have it in me to say no” (209). She finally recognized that he was taking advantage of her. Rex had taken advantage of her, her mother, and her siblings quite often, and although it had been brought to her attention previously, she had just never accepted it. “Do you like always moving around?” Lori asked Jeannette (29). At that...