Journal #3

When I first saw this statement I thought to myself: “what a caring mother” and “well that daughter must have really done something bad!” However upon further analysis of “Wilhelm” and my own views, I thought to myself, “What right does that mother have to interfere in her daughter’s life like that.” That’s because it sounds to me that the mother intervened in her daughter’s life in an inappropriate way. The quote suggests that the mother interfered in her daughter’s life in a unique way as it says “as she did.” Clearly, this mother-daughter relationship has a lack of three things in which are needed for a healthy relationship amongst them. They are trust, responsibility and care. By providing personal reasons and reasons from “Wilhelm”, these traits will help prove why the statement is not fair.
First of all, trust is an essential part of any relationship. In my opinion, without it, there can be no relationship. If you do not trust a person, how can you build a bond between the two parties? In the story of “Wilhelm” trust is a very scarce thing. There is no example of the mother and her daughter bonding or “trusting” each other with anything. There is always deceit behind everything they do. In the story, the daughter has to “secretly” and “quietly” speak to Wilhelm as he plays her music over the phone. Therefore, for these two reasons, the basis of their relationship is not even there. There is no bond or in this case trust! Secondley, it is the mother’s responsibility to look after her daughter like in every relationship fact or fiction. However, to interfere in one’s life is something different. In my opinion, there is no accurate reason for a mother to interfere in her daughter’s life except if they are engaging in something dangerous or harmful. Clearly, in the story “Wilhelm” there is no evidence of the daughter being harmed. Moreover though, there is a fact that in the story, Maman wanted nothing to do with Wilhelm. So in the story when Gervais starts to imitate the “Hollander” or the “Netherlander” Maman begins to “laugh a little” as quoted in the story. Also, as stated before, Maman’s responsibility is to intervene in her daughter’s life only if she is being harmed. The daughter is not however and therefore Maman contradicts herself by letting her son imitate a man that she despises and wants nothing to do with while laughing at it, even if it is a little. Therefore, Maman needs to have responsibilities in disciplining her children equally and not just punish her daughter from seeing someone she loves. Lastly, caring is what makes the relationship between people complete. The mother to me in the quote does not care for her child if she interferes in her life. To me, if the mother cared for her child, Maman, would have let her daughter be happy as she was not in any harm. Instead, Maman kept laying down the line on her daughter’s relationship with Wilhelm as she “forbade me to see him.” Maman even takes extreme measures to ensure that Wilhelm and her daughter stay away as much as possible from each other as she enforces the rule that “if he takes the same sidewalk, as you, mind you, cross right over to the other.” Therefore, the mother does not care about her own daughter’s well being, she only cares about herself.

So in conclusion, due to the lack of trust in their relationship, the limited responsibility the mother has on one child and not the other and the limited care Maman has for her daughter, the statement of “It was the mother's responsibility to intervene in her daughter's life as she did” renders false because the mother is only looking out for her wants and not her daughter’s needs.