Who Is Lily's Struggle In Jeannette Walls Half Broke Horses

Lily starts to feel that she has developed a bond with the Boatwright sisters. Lily does not have a good relationship with her father. He makes her feel unwanted and abuses her verbally and physically. Lily’s father comes to the Boatwright’s residence and demands that Lily returns home with him but she refuses. The sisters inform the father that Lily can stay with them and they pledge to take good care of her, “ I still remember telling myself that when he drove away that day he wasn’t saying good riddance; he was saying, Oh, Lily, you’re better off in that house of coloured women. You never would have flowered with me like you will with them” (Kidd 299-300). Lily came to the realization that her father was not fit to provide her with the love and nurturing that she deserved. The sisters provided her with a loving environment where she feels protected. Also, the Boatwright sisters, especially August, are strong female role models. Lily will model her ideals, values and morals after the Boatwright

Once Lily accepts what she has done and learns that her mother's death did not make her a bad person, her conflict can finally be resolved. As a result of resolving her conflict, she is able to mature because of the struggle, just like other people are able to grow and evolve from their own mistakes. This is evident when she admits "Before coming here, my whole life had been nothing but a hole where my mother should have been, and this hole had made me different, left me always aching for something, but never once did I think what he'd lost or how it might've changed him" (Kidd 293). Lily finally realizes that her mother's death has not only affected her, but also her father, T. Ray, and the calendar sisters. Through the course of Lily's struggle, Lily learns a lot about life and matures into a wiser

Lily starts off stuck living in an unloving, abusive household and decides to free herself from the negative atmosphere that she had been living in her whole life. Lily is perpetually abused by her father. He forces her to kneel on Martha White's, gets exasperated every time she speaks, and yells at her for no reason. Lily is not the only one noticing the terrible treatment, Rosaleen does too. Once after Lily had to kneel on the Martha White's Rosaleen said to her, “Look at you, child. Look what he’s done to you” (Kidd 25). Noticing the unloving treatment Lily gets, Rosaleen knew that their household was demoralizing place for Lily to be in, which is why she didn’t question when Lily when she later runs away. Lily one day realizes she needs to do something about her horrible life at home. While sitting in her room she hears a voice in her

When lily went to South Carolina she goes to a lady named August. August is very artifice. Lily stays at her honey house for several months with her aunt Rooselyn. As she lives there she goes through many adventures and meets a ton of new people. She meets her true love Zach and two sister of August named May and June. She finds out a lot about her mother. She finds out that her mother Deborah stayed at the same honey house. She also finds out that her mother ran away from T-Ray when he was abusive. At the end T-Ray finds Lily at Augusts house and he threatens her that she has to come back home with him. Lily fights and eventually convinces T-Ray that she is better off with August and forgives him.

When a parent dies, any child will cling to the other parent for emotional support and comfort for dealing with such a loss. In Lily’s case, she wanted her fathers support more than anything but he was cold, abusive, and stuck in the past, that he wasn’t able to give her anything except for take his anger out on her, when she disobeyed him. Although if someone does not get that support from the other parent, and if someone else is there that is understanding and kind, its amazing to see how much you can start to really rely on them and grow a close relationship. When Lily deals with the loss of her mother and the poor treatment of her father, she doesn’t know what to do with herself, she has a load of all different kind of emotions, and it really harms her well-being. Lily deals with guilt because she has visuals that she was the one that killed her mother, and on top of that she has her father telling her that her mother left her and she just abandoned her, making Lily feel unimportant and then at the same time guilt. Rosaleen is the closest role model that Lily has for a mother, Rosaleen cares and sticks up for Lily but Lily doesn’t really have the mother-daughter connection with her. Although Rosaleen provides comfort for Lily, she helps her with her father and in return Lily defends Rosaleen as well as save her life from the hospital after she got beaten.

However, with her alcoholic dad who rarely kept a job and her mother who suffered mood swings, they had to find food from her school garbage or eat expired food they had previously when they had the slightest bit of money. In addition, when bills and mortgage piled up, they would pack their bags and look for a new home to live in, if they could even call it a stable home, since they would be on the move so often. Jeanette needed a dad who wouldn’t disappear for days at a time, and a mom that was emotionally stable, but because she didn’t have that, she grew up in an environment where she would get teased or harassed for it. Jeanette suffered so much, that even at one point, she tried convincing her mother to leave her father because of the trouble he had caused the family already. A child should be able to depend on their parents for food and to be there for them when they need it, and when that part of a child’s security is taken away, it leaves them lost and on their own, free and confused about what to do next.

T. Ray had not stopped at tearing her down physically, for he had the strong desire to hack away at what is left of her mental state. By painting such a scarring image of Deborah next to the one Lily made with optimism and fondness, T. Ray’s mirage overshadowed Lily’s impression. This causes her to leave him and start a new chapter in her life. T. Ray’s bestial actions were crucial reasons that influenced Lily’s decision to leave her father and begin her pathway through the perplexing road of her mother’s life.

everything changed for both her father and her. While Lily was living in Sylvan, South

Since her mother died she has had to put up with her abusive father who doesn't really care about Lily. Having to not only deal with this but the fact that she doesn't have any friends in school doesn't really help. “People who think dying is the worst thing don’t know a thing about life.” Lily says this in the beginning of the novel. This is an important quote showing Lily’s bravery because Lily’s life has been profoundly affected by her mother’s death. This statement suggests that living with someone else’s death can be more painful than dying. She grew up without a mother and the taunting guiltiness that she killed her own mother. In some ways I share this quality with Lily. At times I can be a brave person but like everybody else I'm not always so brave. One time when I was brave was when I was first coming into the high school. I was always so nervous at just the thought of high school so when the big day came I was very anxious. I was brave enough to get through it all and now I'm more comfortable in the

She is expressed as dealing with “teenage problems” if I do say so myself a lot of issues that most teenagers have: identity, popularity, self-consciousness, and parental issues. The 14-year-old throughout her story feels a deep sense of longing for her mother as she did not know her, because she died when Lily was only 4 years old. In Chapter 1, Lily talks about how she misses her mother, and how she feels completely responsible for the fact that she doesn't have her. This quote, "This is what I know about myself. She was all I wanted. And I took her away," is significant to the whole plot, because it helps us understand one of Lily's main concerns and desires. I myself have lost a parent at a very young age, and struggled to comprehend what happened, and how it would effect me through the course of my life. Lily Owens notices that she does not fit and is held back from that fact that her father does not care about Lily's life nor her needs. In Chapter 1, Lily indicates that she is “..worried so much about how I [she] looked and whether I [she] was doing things right, I [she] felt half the time I [she] was impersonating a girl instead of really being

Jeannette Walls is shaped by the independence of her entire childhood as she learned how to create her own future and fend for herself. For example, as Rosemary Walls throws another fit about her “horrible” life, Jeannette vows that she will never end up like her own mother and that she would never feel sorry for herself (248). Jeannette is tired of having to always pick up the messes that her parents constantly

Luckily for Lily, she comes upon the Boatwright sisters once she reaches Tiburon. Because of the fact Lily does not have anyone to share her love with, she is compelled to stay and live with the Boatwrights. At one point in the novel, Lily and August are having a conversation when August asks Lily “What else do you love Lily?”(Kidd 39). Lily then thinks to herself, “No one had ever asked me that before. What did I love? Right off the bat I wanted to say that I loved the picture of my mother…but I had to swallow that back”(39). Lily does not feel comfortable enough yet that she says, “ I love writing poems, just give me something to write, and I’ll love it” despite the fact that Lily really loves August (39). She loves August so much that she would rather stay in Tiburon with the Boatwrights than be with her own father T. Ray. The loss of Deborah results in Lily going to obtain love somewhere other than her own home. This is also why Lily takes Rosaleen with her. Rosaleen is a black nanny who used to work on T. Ray’s farm. She has been there for Lily in the past but she cannot always be there one hundred percent because of her race. Due to Deborah’s death, Lily does not have a mother figure, however, he journey to Tiburon with Rosaleen proves to be a success as she finds the Boatwrights and strengthens her relationship with her nanny, Rosaleen.

Mullen describes Lily’s situation as “Lily Bart has been predominantly framed as a tragic victim caught within the irresistible market forces of capitalism and the fatal contradictions of gender and class politics” (45). The novel, “The House of Mirth” filled with nuances of gender and class politics. Mullen points out a weakness in Lily’s character, her position in the forces of the capitalist circle. The females in the novel face the pressures from the social circle as well. Lily is a product of her culture and upbringing. Success is measured by the capital worth and how one would survive in their social class. Unfortunately, Lily didn’t have to chance to remain in her former social class circle, after trying to pay off her debts. She died the night that she received her

Her father is described as a neutral figure and her memory of him is hazy at best. This lack of a father figure led to Lily’s attitude towards men. Because of this Lily always denies herself suitable marriages because she always feels she can do better. Lily is conflicted between the man she loves and the man with money. She loves Seldon but she deems him too poor for her perfect marriage. After much thought, Lily decides to marry Peter Gryce who is exceedingly wealthy but is too late as he is already engaged at the time of her decision. Lily cannot decide between love and money both of which are important aspects of her life. She is unwilling to compromise between the two which eventually leads to her downfall. Lily needs to marry a man with wealth and a stable status in high New York society because she needs a source of income to supplement her own unstable wealth.

Lily’s past is an important aspect of her present as she has never had a loving and secure household growing up, resulting in a constant search of happiness in the present. Lily's past impacts her in a physical and emotional way as she desires for safety and love but the only way she thinks she can meet this is through seduction. In her present, she searches for what was missing in her past whether that be happiness or just safety and comfort. The quote describes her essentially needing Hazel to comfort her and help her forget her disturbing past and move on. Being a bastard child she has little knowledge of what a loving relationship or a comfortable, safe feeling is, and this results in her being destructive and damaged in the present.