Haunted House Enthusiast

If Gabrielle can be accused of abusing Lestat in any way, she can be accused of the abuse of emotional neglect as his parent, and perhaps of educational abuse considering that she was a prolific reader yet never attempted to teach him how to read herself. That said, I’m not sure it was typical of the time in aristocratic families for a mother to be her son’s primary source of education, and given that Gabrielle basically hated the rest of her family and had never wanted to be a wife and mother bound by the confining role assigned to her sex in the first place, I think that the love and support that she did give Lestat in his youth regardless of her disdain for the role of mother is significant.

Beyond that, Gabrielle did explicitly say that she viewed Lestat as her male self, which could be a questionable sentiment to hold toward one’s child let alone to reveal to one’s child. But in the context of the statement, Gabrielle is expressing to Lestat that she feels guilty for “having kept him there” to “be the man in her,” and that she worries that in sending him away to live while she is going to die she might still be doing the same thing, but that she is going to “atone” anyway by giving in the last of her family’s money to establish himself in Paris. Gabrielle is speaking frankly to an adult Lestat and in a way that many parents do once their children are old enough to understand things, and Lestat does understand the frustration and misery of her life that she is conveying to him. Moreover, he is amazed by and appreciative of any moment where she opens up to him with such emotional honesty and vulnerability. One could of course argue that he might not be so amazed by those moments of openness from her had she not been so emotionally neglectful, but on the other hand, had she been emotionally closer to Lestat throughout his childhood and youth, there might be a case to be made for emotional enmeshment or incest. As is, Gabrielle is confessing to an imagined “selfishness” in having “kept Lestat there as surely as his father had,” which reads more like the guilt-ridden regrets of a dying mother than a valid confession of something she has done, because there simply isn’t anything that happened in the plot up to that point to indicate that Gabrielle actually did anything to try to prevent Lestat from leaving home. On the contrary, she was the one who fought with his father to let him go to the monastery when he was younger and sold her family jewels to pay for him to be there. She never once in the text did or said anything that could reasonably be construed as pressure, coercion, or manipulation by her in order to keep Lestat home. She provided his first opportunity to escape, the second attempt failed due to the intervention of his brothers, and she ultimately provides the means for the final escape to Paris. Gabrielle’s guilt seems to stem from a sense that she could or should have somehow done more to get him away from home earlier on rather than remorse for something she has actually done.

Back to the topic of emotional honesty and vulnerability, the most potentially shocking thing that mortal Gabrielle did is to say to Lestat that she had fantasized about going naked into the village and getting fucked by every man there. That’s not exactly a normal thing for a mother to be saying to her son regardless of his age, but this line frequently gets divorced from its context thus completely misconstrued. Gabrielle is not saying this to Lestat because she is attempting to entice, seduce, confuse, or shock him. Lestat is grown and has just been through his ordeal with the wolves, and he feels incredibly disconnected from the rest of his family in general but especially after this life-or-death experience and his older brother openly doubting that it had happened and calling him a liar. Speaking to him alone afterwards, Gabrielle understands what he is feeling and makes a bid for connection and comfort by describing the unutterable loneliness of childbirth to him, which Lestat feels that he understands what she is trying to convey. They are kindred spirits to an extent, at least within the confines of their shared family and how they feel about and relate to their positions in life. They both feel trapped, alone, and hopeless almost to the point of desperation. Lestat shares his nightmare and fears with Gabrielle, that he is a killer now and could only free himself by murdering his family. Gabrielle shares that what she imagines is not murder but “the abandon of total disregard of them” and goes on to share this fantasy of debauchery with Lestat. His reaction is to laugh because it’s so absurd but also delightful to imagine the reaction of his father and brothers to her doing such a shocking and outlandish thing. Absurdity aside, what Gabrielle is sharing with him is her desire for freedom from the constraints of her life and station and the expectations of her, a desire Lestat fully understands after his prior attempt to run away and join a troupe of Italian actors only to be dragged back home by his brothers and be beaten for it, because a man of his station is not allowed to go embarrassing the family like that. Gabrielle goes on to sell family heirlooms to buy rifles and a new horse and new dogs for Lestat so that he can continue hunting if that makes him happy, and she is the one who ultimately encourages him to leave for Paris with Nicholas when he can no longer abide home.