As Violet grows into a toddler, Blythe resents that the girl appears to love her father much more than her mother. In addition, Blythe begins writing again, and some days she puts on headphones and ignores Violet’s cries, letting her scream for up to two hours. However, Blythe also takes perverse enjoyment in making “decisions other mothers would not make because they weren’t supposed to” (42), like refusing to wipe off the top of a bottle after it falls on a dirty floor. Within a couple months, Violet starts sleeping more regularly, and the mother and daughter fall into a manageable routine. The only mother who looked down at her daughter and thought, Please. She writes, “I felt like the only mother in the world who wouldn’t survive it. For her first five days at home, Violet cries incessantly, causing sleeplessness and severe anxiety for Blythe.
In a difficult labor, Blythe gives birth to baby Violet. Nevertheless, Blythe agrees to have a child, largely because she hopes to end the cycle of maternal trauma in her family: “I wanted to be anyone other than the mother I came from.
Blythe is more anxious about parenthood her neglectful mother, Cecilia, abandoned her when she was 11, and Cecilia’s mother, Etta, abused her daughter physically and emotionally. They soon marry, and Fox is eager to have a child. After they graduate, Fox becomes a successful architect, and Blythe is a struggling writer. Fox now lives with his new partner, Gemma their toddler son, Jet and Violet, the teenage daughter of Blythe and Fox.īlythe narrates the idyllic early days of her relationship with Fox, whom she met in college. Most of the book’s chapters are presented as letters from Blythe to her estranged husband, Fox. It’s a story about the anxieties and expectations of motherhood, whether we can ever really know the people we hold closest, and what happens when we don’t listen to women’s truths.This study guide refers to the 2021 edition published by Viking. But when everything Blythe fears is crystalized into one tragic moment, they all must reckon with the repercussions, and the unsettling notion that she might have been right. Her husband can’t see what Blythe sees-he thinks her concerns about Violet are all in her head. Not long after Violet is born, though, Blythe begins to suspect something isn’t right-she’s different than other children her age and acts in malicious ways. “Blythe Connor comes from a long history of women who have struggled with motherhood, but she’s determined to break the cycle with her own daughter, Violet. Instead of just describing the plot, I’m going to use the author’s own words in a recent interview to give you her view. Today’s Belle Curve Book Club Episode is T he Push by Audrey Audrain . – find HigherEchelon at and on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. Belle Curve is brought to you by HigherEchelon, Inc.
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