I didn’t view any of it as anti-woman, FWIW.
If your aim is to make people sympathetic to Andy and the girl; you’ve succeeded. There must always be an likeable character anyway. Otherwise, the book would be boring, right?
Uhm… is that legal? The husband is presumed dead, but he hasn’t been declared dead. Different animal.
He’s been declared dead; the funeral happens (though is not shown) in Chapter One. His plane crashes in the Gulf of Mexico and the bodies are not recovered.
She must be a very persuasive mom, getting her teenagers to accpet her “visitors” as “uncles”. If my mom had tried bringing a man home to spend the night while my brother and I were home, we’d have spent a lot of time at friends’ houses. If she were bringing creeps home, even more so. A different man every month? We’d never be home.
I would have no sympathy or respect for this mom character. Depressed and leaving the upbringing of the son to the daughter? Is the son a sullen teenaged terror now? I’d have thought that daughter would’ve run and joined to Navy the minute she turned 18 or married the first man who asked her to get away from home.
I wouldn’t really call this mom slutty but desperate and selfish and weak and unworthy. I don’t know what she could do to redeem herself. IMHO.
My instinctive reaction to reading your passage was not “geez, what a slut,” but of a needy or weak woman who let herself be taken advantage of repeatedly.
The bit of that passage that most immediately suggests “slut” to me is that she wants her children to refer to these relative strangers as “uncles” so quickly. I’m not entirely sure why it strikes me that way, though. I suppose it’s threefold: First, she seems too eager to incorporate these gentlemen into her family – she’s being very familiar, very quickly. Second, her need to have her children refer to these men as uncles seems to indicate that she’s insecure, and seeks approval. Finally, refering to them as “uncles”, while too readily familiar, seems also to minimize the role that they’re playing in her life, and to suggest that she’s not really serious about them, which is compounded by the fact that none of them last long. I’m left with the impression of an overly familiar, insecure woman who is not serious about the men she brings home.
And, mind you, all of that is just based on the “uncle” thing. If it weren’t for that, I’d not judge her poorly at all.
Many thanks to all who’ve answered. If you don’t mind, I’d like to prevail upon your patience & brains to ask a related question.
In the chapter in question (which I am rewriting), it is Rosemary’s birthday, and the children are preparing to go to her birthday party, which was orchestrated by Beatrice. The passage quoted in my OP was first meant to lead up to the introduction of Beatrice’s latest boyfriend, George, who was also a friend of her late husband’s and of whom Andy (the story’s viewpoint character) is quite fond. In my original draft Rosemary was turning 16 (and Andy was 12), and George, an amateur magician, was going to be performing at the party. George is a mensch, at least more of one than the first three boyfriends mentioned; f’instance he tells the Andy and Rosemary they needn’t call him “Uncle.”
For various reasons, I’ve changed several things here. George is still an amateur magician but no longer going to be performing at the party.((I know that even 16 is a bit old for a magic act at a birthday party; the point was that the party was inappropriate.) Instead he’ll be dropping by to ask Beatrice for a favor. He’s an airline pilot and has had a sudden change in his schedule, necessitating that he fly out tonight; he won’t be back for over 24 hours. He has a ten-year-old son, somewhat sickly, whom both Rosemary and Andy like. For obvious reasons he wishes not to leave the son alone, so he wants to leave him with the Taliaferros in his absence. Beatrice is willing–but she also insists on driving George to the airport, even though he has other transportation, in essence bugging out on her daughter’s party, and leaving her and Andy (and Andy’s best friend, 13-year-old Hannah) with an unexpected guest to look after.
How does this change your estimation of Beatrice’s character?