Lauren Slaters Metaphorical Memoir Lying - Essay Example

As the unhealthy mother-daughter relationships override the lack of solid father figures in their lives, both Slater and Harrison seek for attention in different ways to fill the emptiness from being neglected while growing up. The two women have to find alternative ways of coping with the emptiness in their lives that is because of both with the perennial absence of their fathers and their distant relationships with their mothers. From their autobiographical accounts, these two women have given a chronological account of how their unhealthy relationships with their mothers coupled with the absence of their fathers influenced their lives. For instance, Lauren Slater’s Metaphorical Memoir ‘Lying’, she chronicles her youth, how she struggled with epilepsy until she was cured through psychotherapy and medication; however, Slater also narrates how, when after being diagnosed with epilepsy, she developed the irresistible compulsion to lie. On the other hand, in her Autobiographical Memoir titled “The Kiss”, Kathryn Harrison reveals how, due toan unhealthy relationship with her mother, she became a victim of an incestuous relationship with her father. In this respect, we can posit that both Slater and Harrison had devised alternative ways of seeking attention to fill the emptiness from being neglected while growing up- compulsive lying and incestuous relationship respectively. Lauren Slater’s metaphorical memoir ‘Lying’ is an outright lie right from the title where she boldly and loudly announces that the contents of the book do not represent a true account of her life. As if that is not enough, Lauren Slater advertently imposes upon the reader a need to redraw the lines between factual truth and metaphorical truths; she achieves this by cunningly confusing facts and fiction throughout the book thus undermining the very essence of a memoir, which naturally is supposed to be a true account of events in one’s life. Lauren records that she had her first seizure at the age of ten and she spent a month at a special Catholic school in Topeka, Kansas (Slater 31); the nuns in this school taught epileptic children how to fall without hurting themselves, something that may or may not be metaphorical. During her adolescence, Lauren too begins lying, stealing and faking seizures as alternative ways of seeking attention from the people around her; this shows how neglected she was and how desperately she craved for the much needed attention. Later in her life, Slater begins an affair with a married man who was much older than she was but the relationship ends badly; Slater resorts to attending Alcoholics Anonymous sessions even though she was not alcoholic. However, Slater tells her story with so much conviction that even when she later confesses that she was not an alcoholic, everyone dismisses her true story as denial (Slater 207). The interplay between literal/factual with the Metaphorical/fictional is heightened even further when Slater suggests that epilepsy affects the memory thus, by confusing her emotional memory and factual memory, Slater raises concerns about the fundamental assumptions of the Memoir genre and all narrative self-disclosure. Kathryn Harrison develops an incestuous relationship with her father as a way of courting the much needed attention due to her being neglected by her mother while growing up. In her autobiographical novel, “The Kiss”, Harrison reveals how her distant father figure coupled with the unhealthy relationship with her mother translates into a four-year incestuous affair; growing up, Harrison had close to no clue of her father until she recreates him in her own mind as someone bigger, faster and stronger than all other dads do. Harrison is raised by her grandparents because her parents divorced when she was only six months old (Harrison 5); her father appears ghostly, almost mythical because she is not allowed to discuss or talk about him. This causes the young Harrison to become extremely curious about her absent father, the man she hardly knew anything about; naturally, and this curiosity eventually turns into a temptation of wanting to know everything there is to know about the absent father figure. Harrison yields into the incestuous affair with her father because she was afraid of losing her father’s love, and the much-needed attention that she had been deprived by her distant mother while growing up. Harrison’s mother is completely withdrawn and unresponsive to her daughter’s needs; despite all her desperate machinations to arouse her mother’s attention, her mother constantly refuses noticing of her presence (Harrison 8). Harrison narrates that she was prepared to give him whatever he asked for, and it is not surprising that when he first kisses her, she still wants to meet him again. She also reveals that when her father asked her to make love to him, she knew it was only a matter of time before she would succumb to the temptation. The relationship progresses for four years with her father gradually becoming domineering and controlling by threatening Harrison of dire consequences if she dared to quit the affair. Harrison later regrets that she had created a very perfect picture of her father that she did not realize who he really was until she was trapped and could not go back; she eventually realized how naive she had been that she for always being ready to please other people. In her case, Harrison sort attention by yielding into an incestuous affair with her father at that time, Harrison did not want to lose his father by declining her advances because her mother, while growing up, had long neglected her. Both Lauren Slater and Kathryn Harrison devise their own different ways of courting attention to fill up the emptiness in their lives because of the unhealthy relationships with their mothers and the lack of solid father figures. Both women experience profound emotional imbalances because they are deprived the attention as it should be in normal circumstances. The perennial absence of health mother-daughter relationships further aggravates the situation because the girls feel much neglected while growing up. The girls’ need of attention, support and care is so much the cause of the shift in the girls’ lives as both of them seek different ways of attracting attention to feel up the emptiness in their lives. Whereas for Slater, lying seems more gratifying, Harrison has to keep up with the incestuous relationship with her father whom she cannot afford to lose again; compliance with his demands is the only guarantee of her father’s continued attention. Ultimately, it is undoubtedly true that both Slater and Harrison seek for attention in different ways to fill the emptiness from being neglected while growing up; the two women’s need for attention is further heightened by the unhealthy mother-daughter relationships and the lack of solid father figures in their lives. Both Harrison and Lauren have been raised in unstable family setups with distant mothers and absent father figures; this upbringing has a profound impact on the two women’s youth, as each of them feels neglected and abandoned. However, as young teenagers, the craving for attention gets the better of them and they adopt different ways of attracting it. Lauren takes to lying, stealing and faking seizures to receive the much-needed attention, as chronicled in her Metaphorical Memoir; Kathryn Harrison’s four-year incestuous affair with her father is her strategy for maintaining her father’s attention. Eventually, both women achieve their end: For Lauren, the use of metaphorical truth elicits the attention in form of sympathy from people as they feel compelled to help her in her condition; readers of her Metaphorical Memoir also feel compelled to help her instead of judging her due to the same trick. For Harrison, the perfect, ghost-like and almost mystical picture of her absent father is what motivates her to seek his attention through the incestuous affair; as the relationship progresses, she later finds herself trapped because she cannot quit the affair without losing her father. Works Cited Slater, Lauren. Lying: A Metaphorical Memoir. London: Penguin. 2001. Print. Harrison, Kathryn. The Kiss: A Memoir. New York: Random House. 2011. 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