Continuing the adventures of the family which was taking a bath together when incest taboos were being handed out, the sequel to the bestselling Flowers in the Attic begins with the teenaged Chris and Cathy escaping on a bus along with their eight-year-old sister Carrie. Carrie is thin and undersized due to their three years of imprisonment in the attic, and she begins to vomit on the bus. I know exactly how you feel, Carrie. Expect to see more unpleasant discharges in the novel, by the way. The irate bus driver threatens to put them off the bus, but a large black woman takes their side and insists that the bus driver take them to her “doctor-son”.
We pause for a moment to marvel at the first non-white person to be seen in a V. C. Andrews novel; this author was not known for her political correctness. And since the black lady happens to be the doctor’s housekeeper, we rest assured that he will indeed be white, so that Cathy will have no qualms about falling in love with him. Incest is one thing, but inter-racial dating is quite another. Cathy, Chris and Carrie arrive at Dr. Paul Sheffield’s house, where he gazes with appreciation at Cathy (he looks at her face, breasts and legs, in that order). After they explain Carrie’s ill health to him, he asks them to remove all of Carrie’s clothes except her underpants, and while this might indeed be necessary for a doctor to conduct a proper examination, in Andrewsworld I fear for the poor child. Paul tells Chris and Cathy that their sister is dangerously ill, and they are forced to confess the truth about their past. With nowhere else to go, they take him up on his generous offer to stay in his house, and he has soon endeared himself to all of them, especially the girls.
“I love you too, Carrie. I’ve always wanted a little girl with blonde curls and big blue eyes, just like yours.”
Wow, lucky she wasn’t one of them colored folks. Paul goes on to make the three of them his legal wards, and supports Chris’s plans to go to medical school. Cathy is very upset about this, since she wants Chris to stay glued to her like a more fun version of a Siamese twin (like the Reverend James Dobson, Cathy’s motto is “Focus on the Family”). How can she persuade him to change his mind?
You didn’t really think it would be a, did you? It gets to the point where Paul, even though he’s befuddled with desire for this nubile jailbait, picks up on the undercurrents of sibling revelry. Not that that deters him, of course. Perhaps he feels that what Cathy needs is the Love of a Good Man, and preferably one who’s only legally related to her, as opposed to biologically.
Now that there's conflict, it’s time to up the stakes by giving Chris a little competition for his little sister. Cathy auditions at a ballet school, where the instructors comment that it’s a pity Chris doesn’t dance too, since people would come from far and wide to see the beauty that he and his sister possess. Yes, and I’m sure the sexual chemistry between them would set the stage afire, but there are some things the world was not meant to see. And one of those things would be Cathy’s miscarriage, which occurs as she’s dancing; we are treated to a brief but unpleasant description of the blood streaming down Cathy’s pink tights to stain her pink toe shoes. Baking soda should get the marks out of the clothes, but nothing will remove this book’s bizarre smears from my mind. Despite this tragic hemorrhagic performance, the instructors are so impressed with her that they sign her on while she’s still in the hospital. Man, if only she’d had an epileptic fit in front of them; they might have turned the entire school over to her.
The instructors’ son, Julian Marquet, takes an interest in Cathy to the extent that she has to fight off his advances as well. Being about as emotionally stable as she is, Julian is most peeved. Cathy goes off to ballet school and rooms with a woman called Yolanda, who turns out to be a version of the Slut Sister. This unfortunate character is a staple of any Andrews novel; always the heroine’s sister, she is an inept floozy (as opposed to the talented, ethereally beautiful heroine) who always makes moves on the heroine’s true love. In this case, Yolanda chases both Chris and Julian for sloppy seconds, but Paul remains faithful to Cathy. Since he’s kind, protective, loving and about thirty years her senior, he’s just like her dear departed Daddy, and what better mate could there be? Like any teenager, Cathy reveals her feelings for Paul by shouting at him like a fishwife when he comes home late because he was on call, or when he forgets to buy her favorite brand of shampoo. But the magic of mixed messages works, since her worst-PMS-ever displays are carried out while wearing a filmy aqua peignoir and then a rose-colored, baby-doll nightie. Paul tells her to put a robe on.
“But, Doctor, you gave me this. I thought you liked to see me wearing it.”
“You think too much.”
Once the roars of laughter have died down, Paul gives in to Cathy's many charms before revealing that they have something in common – an ex-love in the background. Apparently he was married before, to a woman called Julia who was extremely frigid. Right away you can tell that Cathy will never have that problem. Paul asserted his marital rights anyway, which eventually drove Julia mad, and she drowned herself. Right away you can tell that Cathy will never have that problem either, since she seems crazy to begin with. Being a closet masochist, Paul proposes to Cathy, which leaves Julian Marquet livid and doesn’t make Chris too happy either. Cathy is ecstatic until she gets a visit from a diabolus ex machina called Amanda, who turns out to be Paul’s sister. Thankfully, she’s not Paul’s sister like Cathy is Chris’s sister, but she throws a spanner into the works anyway by saying that Julia didn’t actually die, but is in an asylum. Is the opera not soapy enough? Well then, Cathy actually miscarried a grotesquely deformed fetus which is swimming in a jar of formaldehyde in Paul’s office. Her author-given assignment completed, Amanda departs from the series, never to return. Lucky duck. Cathy is horrified. Does she
I’m sure you were able to tell which answer provided the maximum angst and required the minimum brainpower. Julian and Cathy marry and return to Paul’s house to break the good news to him. Carrie does what is normal for her and throws a screaming fit, since she was hoping Cathy would marry Paul and be her mother. Since Cathy wasn’t so forthcoming, she says in exclamation-point-enhanced italics, she will marry Paul herself. Only V. C. Andrews could make dysfunction so dysfunny. Oh, and Cathy finds out that Amanda lied. You'd think Paul's take-home message from all this would be that his Lolita is a immature nincompoop, but once you've slept with Cathy, you're hers to manipulate forever.
Marriage to Julian turns out to be… well, under any other circumstances, I’d call it an abusive relationship, but Cathy takes everything in her fluffy, breezy stride, even when Julian has adulterous affairs with very young girls, then returns to her saying she’s all he wants. It’s as though nothing really registers with her. The climax of the marriage, what should be a burning bed and is instead a singed cushion, occurs when Cathy and Julian are on holiday and Chris asks her to come to his graduation. The jealous Julian refuses to let her leave, and then goes on to be even more of a jerk.
He forced on me what should only be given in love… And now I’d have not just one black eye, but two, and maybe worse.
The next day, Cathy’s cooking breakfast as if nothing happened, and Julian comes to the table naked (also as if nothing’s happened, I guess). He apologizes and says that he only used those girls to spare her. If giving her black eyes qualifies as sparing, I wonder what those girls looked like the morning after, but rather than bringing this up, Cathy opts for the passive-aggressive approach.
“If they don’t mind, then I don’t mind….”
She then goes on to “dump” sedatives in his coffee (sounds as though she didn’t exactly measure out the dosage) and while he’s unconscious, she runs to Chris’s graduation. Julian retaliates by having an affair with Yolanda and then jumping on Cathy’s feet, thereby breaking her toes. After she’s been treated, Chris carries her off to safety in his arms, but just as he’s kissing her, Cathy reveals that she’s pregnant. By Julian, one would hope, though one can never be too sure in Andrewsworld. This information has a somewhat dampening effect on Chris’s amorous approaches.
I could have slapped him from the way he moved backward, abandoning the ecstasy of kissing forbidden places that had aroused me.
Apparently broken bones, spousal abuse, adultery, pregnancy and incest are just what Cathy needs to be put in the mood. Chris, however, is sad, though not as sad as Julian, who was driving too fast after he toe-talled the toes, and who crashes his car. Yolanda is killed, this being the frequent fate of the Slut Sister. Julian has a broken neck, and when he realizes that he’ll never dance again (guilty feet have got no rhythm), he kills himself. Number of Cathy’s husbands/lovers who have died : 1.
During Cathy’s pregnancy, Paul and Chris compete for her favors, each driving out of their way to bring her her favorite ice cream. Who wouldn’t want to be Cathy – beautiful, talented, fecund and adored by men? Cathy gives birth to a boy, Jory, and Paul proposes again. Since there are no obstacles in the way of her marriage to Paul, one must be created to prolong the melodrama, and said obstacle conveniently arrives in the rather distorted shape of Carrie.
Carrie, as I’ve said earlier, is small and undersized. Being small and undersized myself, I know first-hand that this doesn’t necessarily make your life miserable, but she also lives in the shadow of her perfectly proportioned older sister, whose beauty shines like a sun illuminating the entire universe. When Carrie goes away to school, the other kids tie her up, gag her, blindfold her (this is, I assume, the author’s foray into kiddie bondage) and put her out on the roof. Carrie somehow finds her way through a skylight and drops inside, breaking her leg. And as if the angst wasn’t treacly-thick enough, Carrie falls in love with someone called Alex, who plans to become a preacher. Carrie is filled with horror at this; their evil grandmother was very religious, and Carrie feels she is now Devil’s spawn, too corrupted to be a preacher’s wife. Cathy tries to reassure her that this is not the case (and indeed it isn’t, considering some preachers), but Carrie reveals that Julian once made a pass at her (remember his fondness for very young girls?), and she enjoyed his attempt at sister-in-law-seduction (remember “If they don’t mind, then I don’t mind”?), which made her evil. This has got to be the most enmeshed family ever.
Since it’s not enough for her to be undersized, deprived of her father and twin brother, bullied at school, broken-legged and groped by her dead brother-in-law, Carrie reveals one last burden the author has dumped on her. She saw Momma one day and rushed up to her, but Momma didn’t even acknowledge her. Surely only the most vile of creatures would receive such treatment from Momma. Having finished her Goodbye-cruel-world speech, Carrie laces a doughnut with arsenic and chomps down. This would normally be a very painful death, but authorial fiat intervenes to give Carrie a peaceful sending-off where her surviving siblings clutch her hands and entreat her to stay as she does a Beth March impression and drifts off, her last words being that she’s now just as tall as she wants to be. If that was her goal in life, I’m not surprised she opted out eventually. Cathy vows vengeance on Momma for pounding the last nail into Carrie’s cigar-box-sized coffin. From now on, she’ll make Momma pay. Paul will just have to hang around until she’s done. Acquiescing to Cathy’s Crusade, Paul and Chris now fade into the background as the next man in Cathy’s life looms large on the horizon.
Bart Winslow (I cannot see that first name without thinking of The Simpsons) is married to Cathy’s Momma, so Cathy decides to seduce him. Because, you know, it’s not like he has feelings to consider or anything silly like that. He recognizes Cathy as the famous ballerina, Catherine Dahl, but notes her resemblance to his wife, who is conveniently away at a health spa. Cathy invites him to her house for dinner, where she parades around in her usual leave-nothing-to-the-imagination clothes; this inflames Bart’s desire, and… I’d say he raped her, but again, it’s difficult to tell from the narrative. Cathy struggles as he carries her into the bedroom and tears off her dress.
He entered, had his too-quick satisfaction, and pulled out before I’d had any!
Perhaps cross that she didn’t climax, Cathy screams at Bart to get out or she’ll call the police. Bart, however, smiles with post-coital smugness as he tells her he’ll be back tomorrow for more, er, dinner, and he leaves the house as all the noise wakes little Jory up. At dinner the next day, Cathy dresses as sloppily as she can (remember what I said about mixed messages?), and serves Bart a hot dog. In any other book, I suppose this might be Freudian in some way. This is the start of their relationship, which continues until Momma returns from the spa and Cathy calmly informs Bart that she’s pregnant. Bart is distressed, because he loves Cathy (he seems to want a girl just like the girl who married dear old him). However, leaving Momma is not an option, since she loves Bart. I’m not sure whether the kid will be more messed up in Cathy’s loving hands or in Momma’s; at least the two of them have that much in common.
Cathy then lays the plans for the grand finale of her revenge. Learning that Momma will be throwing a Christmas Ball in the evil grandmother’s house (the evil grandmother had a stroke and is now bedridden), she wears a dress exactly like the one Momma wore on their first Christmas Ball in the house. Then she slips inside and descends the staircase at the height of the party, drawing all eyes because she looks exactly as Momma did all those years ago; considering the lack of diversity in this particular gene pool, that’s not surprising. Bart demands to know the truth, and Cathy presents him with the children’s birth certificates, which Momma had conveniently left with them. Question : if your money and marriage depended on no one ever knowing you had children, wouldn’t you get your hands on their birth certificates and burn them? Anyway, Momma tries to persuade Bart that she didn’t mean to hurt the children, but at that moment Chris arrives. Momma goes insane when she sees Chris, thinking he’s her first husband (run, Chris, run!), and she sets fire to the house, just like in Jane Eyre, Rebecca, and a host of lesser novels. No cliché of the genre goes unused. Everyone flees, but Momma screams that her mother is trapped in there, so Bart goes in to rescue her like the dead meat he is (just like Julian – now that he’s impregnated Cathy, is there any reason for him to live?). This human version of the male praying mantis is carried out feet first, along with the dead evil grandmother, and Momma is taken away to an institution. Number of Cathy’s husbands/lovers who have died : 2.
Chris tells Cathy that he came running to fetch her because the black housekeeper died of a stroke and Paul had a heart attack, so Cathy decides to marry Paul (hey, he’s not long for the world anyway). She has Bart’s son, and she and Paul live together with their kids while Chris hangs around, waiting for his rival to expire. There’s one final, rather bizarre scene where Cathy asks Chris’s advice on whether she and Paul can have sex. So either Chris is the most impersonal, detached, disinterested party ever, or she’s rubbing it in that she gets to have some but he doesn’t. Anyway, Paul finally succumbs to the Black Widow Syndrome; number of Cathy’s husbands/lovers who have died : 3. This leaves the field clear for the ever-patient, ever-horny Chris, and the book closes with him and Cathy living together and raising Cathy’s children to believe that their mother and their uncle are legally married. I predict a lot of therapy in the kids’ future. Unfortunately but inevitably, their future turned out to be far too screwed up for even electroshock treatments to fix, and you can read all about it in If there be Thorns and Seeds of Yesterday.
It’s impossible to take Petals on the Wind seriously. Not only is the melodrama factor off the scale, if you do read this book looking for plausibility or characterization, you will be sorely disappointed with the narcissistic nymphomaniac user that Cathy turns out to be. And the hyperactive style is worse here than it was in Flowers in the Attic.
I wanted something far more fanciful -- and a mountain of it! I wanted all my star-filled dreams of love and romance to be fulfilled -- on the stage, where I'd be the world's most famous prima ballerina; nothing less would do! That would show Momma!
The star-filled dreams of love and romance would be more palatable if they didn’t involve such prettified incest. You’d think that upon re-entering the world, Cathy and Chris would try their best to move beyond what happened in the attic. They don’t want to go to the police because they’re terrified of being split up, but don’t they realize that their furtive fondles could very well do the same thing? Perhaps Chris at least prefers his unhealthy obsession to a normal relationship. Cathy leads him on for a bit at the start of the book, then runs from him to man after man, though judging from the treatment her lovers get at her hands, death must come as a sweet release. And on that note, this book has an amazing kill rate, with no fewer than seven characters snuffing it; even Cathy’s herculean efforts to replenish the population don’t make up for that. Let’s not even count the broken bones, strokes, insanity, etc. Especially the insanity – living in this particular world would drive anyone raving mad.