Mortaine’s Blog

Well, believe it or not, I’m actually working on an outline for hte “Griselde” story I dreamed the other night. Certainly, it’s got to be better than what I dreamed last night. *shudder*

I. Both kids are college-age. One is in her senior year, about to graduate and is leaving the family influence. The other is about to go off to university.
They’re home for a vacation, which makes the parting even more sorrowful. Also, it heightens the old man’s anger/control issues.

II. The daughter confronts her mother about why she doesn’t leave.

III. After both kids are gone, the old man takes it out on Griselde, more and more. She didn’t realize how much, even though the kids were in boarding school, he felt he still could control them.
She’s trying to find ways to fill the “empty nest” syndrom. This is driving him crazy.

IV. Attempt to leave #1 - tries to join some sort of class at the community center. He forbids it.

V. Attempt to leave #2 - tries to jump the backyard fence, not really even consciously thinking about it.

VI. Attempt #3 - She jumps off the roof. By this point, the control-freak aspect should be firmly and unbearably established. If more is needed before this, then so be it. The reader should have a similar feeling as from watching Gattaca, where there’s a constant sense of surveillance, and a meticulous attention to detail that’s required to “fit in” to the established and acceptable behavior.

VII. Hospitalized with injuries, she does not return home, but rather is put into a mental hospital– the kind that still does electro-shock (”But only on very extreme cases, sir.” “See to it that she’s extreme, then.”)

VIII. I don’t know at this point if it’s necessary to detail life in the mental hospital, or if it’s OK to skip forward a few years. It’s hard to say. On the one hand, it would certainly be good to firmly establish her state of mind as it transitions, along with hospital policy, into the strong person she eventually becomes. On the other hand, this could become a tedious “life-in-the-looney-bin” section of the story.

IX. She comes home, to the House, the Husband, etc. Her daughter has a kid or two by now. Her son is in grad school– and she has missed all of his college life. She gets released because she is deemed to be no longer a threat to herself or others, and her husband has requested her release, in order that she may come home and nurse-maid him. This chapter is the train ride home, the emotions, the mental conversations, and the real ones she has with her attorney and friend, who is accompanying her on the trip.

X. She arrives home, and is torn between reaching out to the old man, and doing what she set out to do. Her friend helps her face him, however, and she tell him she’s suing for divorce, and that she wants everything– house, money, etc. It comes out that he has over $10 million, and she does not back down, threatening a civil lawsuit for his treatment of her, if he does not comply. He crumbles in the face of her opposition, being ultimately just a big bully anyway.

XI. He is taken to a state hospital for care, away from her and her concerns.

XII. Epilogue: The children come home for a holiday, or she goes to her son’s graduation from grad school. Either way, she mentally notes the trust funds that have been set up for them and their kids, upon her death. She returns home to paint, or otherwise express her creative self in all her many ways.

Hmmm. I wonder if I’ll ever get this written.