Creelby is the key to Byler Endgame... just not in the way you're thinking (what I'm calling #BobGate)
Part 26: "Tonight You Belong To Me" (2/3)
PART 1 HERE | PART 2 HERE | PART 3 HERE | PART 4 HERE
PART 5 HERE | PART 6 HERE | PART 7 HERE | PART 8 HERE
PART 9 HERE | PART 10 HERE | PART 11 HERE | PART 12 HERE
PART 13 HERE | PART 14 HERE | PART 15 HERE | PART 16 HERE
PART 17 HERE | PART 18 HERE | PART 19 HERE | PART 20 HERE
PART 21 HERE | PART 22 HERE | PART 23 HERE | PART 24 HERE
PART 25 (1/3) HERE
Disclaimer: This post is directly picking up from Part 25, where I laid out the theoretical framework for this analysis. That was a long post, as is this one. Apologies in advance.
Dedicating this one to all the complicated mothers and children.
Without further ado, let's dive into TFS [Broadway Version]:
When we first meet the Creels in ST S4 via Victor's recollections, we see a picture-perfect, sweet-as-apple-pie, all-American family, excited for a new beginning in Hawkins.
TFS' introduction to the Creels is no different: When they first enter their new house, the 1956 Patience & Prudence song "Tonight You Belong To Me" plays on Henry's radio.
The song -- which you'll see becomes emblematic of Henry and Virginia's relationship -- strikes a Pollyanna chord the first time we hear it, with Victor telling his wife, "Honey, this is gonna be a fresh start."
But the play is a lot quicker than the show about revealing the cracks in the family's happy facade.
Right after the words have left Victor's lips, he snaps at Henry, telling him to turn off his radio before he breaks it. Despite Victor's bark, there is no bite -- the first show of Victor's ineffectiveness, one way (toward violence) or the other (actually parenting).
Instead, it's Virginia who is attentive to their son, gently offering Henry solutions to needs she's already anticipated. One of those solutions is a mantra she's come up with to ground him:
Virginia: "If you start to feel confused, don't get upset. Just take a deep breath and say to yourself, 'It's not real. I'm normal. I'm Henry Creel'."
Immediately we see the Shavian mother's "veneration of conformity" -- of normalcy -- which she projects onto her child (Lenker, 45).
Her advice is not too dissimilar from Bob's to Will in S2 re: Mr. Baldo. Well-intentioned, but ultimately a means to suppress or otherwise deny the real, unspoken issue -- Henry's trauma and the reason the family moved to begin with (his attack on the neighbor's kid).
We are also introduced to the Shavian theme of creation of the individual identity, which is not only central to the pre-Oedipal crisis and resolution, but has underscored Henry / One / Vecna / Peter's character from the very beginning.
A character with so many personas, but no singular identity. Yet here his mother reminds him (and states herself, as if she were him):
Because Henry Creel is *Virginia's* creation: The "sweet little boy" she birthed, raised, named.
Alas, the mantra doesn't really help. Henry repeats it back to Virginia, and gives a jarring, visceral reaction to his mother's touch.
Her response: "See? You're totally normal." She delivers the line cheerfully enough, even though a slight tremor in her voice betrays her.
Repeat a lie enough times and maybe, maybe, it'll become the truth.
Henry, though, follows up with a surprising move (especially if you were only familiar with the Henry from ST S4). He hugs his mom.
Unfortunately, Virginia seems more weirded out by the hug than by the earlier twitching. She does not return the gesture with the same level of affection, barely wrapping her arms around him (though perhaps not wanting to trigger another spasm).
What can we assume Henry was looking for when hugging his mother? Some better comfort than false words? Something real and grounding in her embrace? Love, not necessarily normalcy?
What can we assume Virginia thinks about her boy (between twelve and sixteen at this point) rushing to hug Mommy? Despite the blasé front she puts up before then, Virginia's reaction to Henry's hug also shows the audience (who can actually see her face, unlike Henry) that Virginia is scared of her son.
Unlike Victor, who wants this to be a "fresh start", Virginia cannot forget what led them here; she can hope, but it doesn't mean she's not vigilant.
Virginia: "Don't worry, darling. You worry too much."
Henry: "You worry too much."
Given the fears of "Momism" at the time, this moment calls to mind the delicate balance described by Kate Jones in "It's always the mother's fault.": Not too distant, not too smothering, lest Mom be accused by her community of raising a "wayward" child. Especially a male child.
The level of physical affection Virginia first shows Henry is a stark contrast to the way Joyce Byers is with her sons (one of whom went through a similar experience to Henry's) --
-- and how Karen Wheeler is with Mike. Mike, who is shown to actively seek out and receive comfort from his mother throughout the show.
While Joyce is a very different type of mother compared to Virginia (single working mom, non-conformist by nature), Karen is a fellow housewife (albeit of the 80s) and shown to be one of ST's biggest conformers, at least on the surface.
Yet we see Karen check in on her kids often: not casting judgment, letting them know they can talk to her, and most importantly, showing them that she's here for them --
In fact, the only time we see Karen really mad (at her elder daughter, Nancy), it's over Nancy lying to the police about what really happened the night Barbara disappeared, not about the fact that she slept with Steve.
Three different moms, with different home situations and parenting styles, and yet they all managed to raise huge liars, apparently. Which just goes to show you really can't blame the mother for what their children get up to!
But you can be there for your children when they're ready to open up, as we see with Joyce and Karen.
From "Pre-Oedipal Shaw: 'It's Always the Mother'":
"Detrimental Shavian mothers, even when depicted as passive, are usually obsessed with respectability -- they are righteous members of the community intent on doing the 'correct' thing, which Mangan in Heartbreak House calls a 'mothering tyranny' (5:157). This veneration of conformity, even when the mother is a whorehouse madam, as is the case of Mrs. Warren, almost always causes trouble between mothers and daughters." (45)
["Mothers and daughters"... hold onto that.]
Unlike Joyce and Karen, Virginia is in the thick of the hysteria around "Momism" and -- striving for "normalcy" -- complies with the culture and steps back from being direct with her child. Rather than simply talking to him truthfully, she parrots meaningless platitudes or needles him with questions. And when those attempts at acquiring information don't work, like the Shavian mother, Virginia feigns passivity and employs subterfuge to find out what Henry's up to without his knowing.
Unfortunately for Virginia, she has a "spy" son who spies right back. He's aware of her attempts to read his private thoughts, which is what prompts Henry to write them all down in code. And when it comes to her legitimate concerns in the first quarter of the play, Virginia talks about Henry rather than to him, unaware he's listening in through the radio. And when she is finally honest about her fears regarding Henry, she asks Victor to talk to him, rather than doing it herself.
On that last point, I will give this one to Virginia: Why should she have to be the one bearing all the parental responsibility? That is one of the main Shavian dilemmas after all. She shouldn't have to be alone in trying to understand and help the son she shares with Victor.
However, it's what she's trying to "suss out" about Henry that leans into something more uncomfortable (for Henry and the audience). The unspoken reason for why America feared Momism: Queerness.
Given all the queer coding we've explored through #Bobgate, it seems evident why Henry felt the need to express his private thoughts and feelings in code; why Virginia seems overly concerned about the amount of time Henry is spending with "Patty" --
Virginia: "Do you really think he should be hanging around a girl?"
Victor: "This is completely different."
-- why upstanding Christian Virginia, who makes her family go to church on Sundays to show face to the community, goes as far as to organize an exorcism* for Henry, a tool that's historically been used as a form of conversion therapy, even as recently as 2014.
*The character Barbara Allen goes through a similar experience with her church in Dark of the Moon, where she's forced to renounce her queer Witch Boy.
Virginia, like Karen, is aware her child is likely queer, but she isn't willing to talk to him about it. She only wants the "demon" to go away. For her child to be "normal".
To grow into a "normal" adult male who becomes another cog in the Machine: Make money for the Man; fight, kill, and die in wars for the empire; pair up (with a woman) and multiply in service of the Life Force. Even if those creations are less "Superman" and more "faded, lesser copies of the ones before."
In other words: "Wake, eat, work, sleep, reproduce, and die!"
Of course, Virginia's obsession with normalcy says more about her than it does about Henry. After all, we eventually discover she didn't have an easy, "normal" upbringing either. We already know how aware she's always been of Victor's inability to cope with reality, but perhaps it's something she envies about her husband.
Although it's only referenced twice, we learn Virginia also self-medicates via tranquilizers. She "pop[s] those pills like they're candy", according to Victor. Likely to soothe her own fear and paranoia that her son might hurt someone else. Another mother's child.
We learn through adult Henry in S4 that Virginia's actions only made him feel more isolated. More misunderstood. That her attempts to "fix" Henry by society-approved means -- forced conformity, physical and emotional distance, but simultaneous intense scrutiny, and silence rather than communication -- was more suffocating than if she'd just fucking hugged him back.
We see Virginia running ragged going back and forth between the refrigerator and Momism ("mothering tyranny"), all the while driving Henry away and toward somewhere he feels understood. Where he can imagine, will, and create a better world where he fits.
She sends Henry running from her arms right into the Spider's*.
Patty's. The Mind Flayer's.
*Although the symbol for the Mind Flayer (aka Patty) in ST is spiders, I find she aligns with the Serpent archetype found in Shaw's Back to Methuselah. An archetype that, according to Shakespearean scholar Murray Schwartz, represents the "sexually-threatening mother, contact with whom symbolizes incest. On a deeper level, it signifies the horror of maternal engulfment."
Cain to his father Adam: "Stay with the woman who gives you children: I will go with the woman who gives me dreams." (Act II)
From "Pre-Oedipal Shaw: 'It's Always the Mother'":
"The son must individuate from the mother in order to mature fully, while the daughter is expected to identify with the mother."
It seems, at this point in the play, that Henry's pre-Oedipal crisis has seemingly resolved. Rather than merging with his mother by continuing to identify with her, Henry has extricated his identity from Virginia's; cut the umbilical cord strangling him.
Henry is now an "individual".
He begins to flex his new independence by joining the school play, and by spending more time with Bob Patty. Through his connection with the Mind Flayer, he (unwillingly) tests the boundaries of his abilities and learns they are only as limitless as he allows them to be (what and how much is he willing to kill?), yet the power he attains with each kill is undeniable.
Now liberated and empowered by his differences, the Henry we see in ST S4 begins to turn those abilities on his own family -- the easiest targets in part due to the physical proximity and in part due to the new emotional detachment that allows him to see them through new eyes. As if they were the spiders, or frogs to be dissected.
Henry turns his mother's scrutiny back on the Creels and, with his powers of illusion, begins to taunt them with visions of their worst fears -- starting with his mother and sister. The downside of the "male" pre-Oedipal resolution? Lenker writes, "Men, while achieving independence and autonomy, also develop strong feelings of separation and alienation that lead them to devalue women and fear intimate relationships." (42)
From ST S4 Ep 7: "Chapter Seven: The Massacre at Hawkins Lab":
Henry: "But my mother somehow knew. Knew it was I who was holding up that mirror, and she despised me for it."
Hard as Virginia might try to hold the pieces together, the appearance of the Creels as "good and normal people" starts to crumble when the hauntings begin.
And she knows exactly who's responsible for them.
Eve to Cain: "I know you. I am your mother."
Virginia's response to Henry's rebellion is to finally take off the mask of docility and openly assert her dominance as the authority figure in his life.
She waits up for him in the attic in a scene that feels ripped right out of a coming of age melodrama -- her teen having come home late after a night out at Melvald's.
Immediately she is hammering him with questions on his whereabouts, revealing her maternal anxiety: He is no longer a little kid that needs to be glued to her side. His autonomy leaves too much to Virginia's imagination of what her child, the extension herself, has been doing out in the world in her stead.
And Henry, in turn, almost mocks her -- implying that as a mother, she has nothing better to do than to wait for her child to come home. He has a life outside her now. She does not have a life outside him.
Virginia's reply -- which doesn't answer his question -- is something she should've said long ago, but now comes too little too late:
Henry instead replies to her earlier question with an evasive, "Nowhere."
Rather than practicing what she preaches, Virginia only continues the interrogation by making an accusation: "You were with that girl, weren't you?"
Henry: "Go to bed, Virginia."
The use of his mother's first name alone denotes how Henry has stripped Virginia of the title "Mother". The line itself reads like Hamlet's "Get thee to a nunnery" speech to Ophelia, where he projects his grievances with his mother Gertrude onto his girlfriend. It's fitting: With the pre-Oedipal crisis "resolved", things start to get slightly Oedipal in the attic.
Virginia tries to regain the upper hand by drawing a line in the sand:
Virginia: "Do not take that tone with me. You are not to see her!"
Henry: "Not to see her? Why not, Mommy? Are you jealous?"
To her own horror, she slaps him. One of the few times she makes physical contact with him in the play. A gut reaction to an ugly insinuation.
Virginia immediately tries to soothe the hurt she's just inflicted, yet she's still hesitant to touch him. Fear taking over.
We all know the cliche of the mother who's jealous of their son's girlfriend(s) because they fear being replaced as the primary caregiver (and love-object). In strict, patriarchal societies, the transfer of caregiving responsibilities from mother to wife is very real. However, the audience already knows Patty isn't *technically* the one taking up Virginia's role in Henry's life (though she has taken Bob's "burger").
But maybe Virginia does have reason to feel threatened:
Virginia: "I can't let you hurt anyone else."
Henry: "You can't tell us what to do anymore."
Virginia: "Us?"
Because maybe Henry hasn't separated from his "mother" after all... he just found a new one to replace her with.
*Who, unbeknownst to the audience, is Patty's true self. So there *is* some pseudo-incestuous stuff going on...
Henry then asks the question that will hit many a mother where it hurts:
Henry: "Why do you hate me?"
[I've forgotten how the action in the moment plays out in TFS: Broadway, but in the West End Version, this is when Virginia finally hugs Henry, having dropped her guard. Bringing her baby into her embrace, in an attempt to repair the mother-child bond.]
Virginia: "I don't hate you. I love you. Oh, my sweet little boy. I'm not doing this to punish you. It's to protect you. To protect everyone."
If the story of TFS had been framed through her perspective rather than Henry's, it would play a lot like We Need to Talk About Kevin. A mother scared of what horrors her baby is capable of -- of what he might unleash on the world.
In that version of the story, it might seem clear that Virginia's intentions are good. However, like in Shaw's plays, TFS "recognize[s] that sometimes despite the mother's best efforts, her relationships with her children so often prove negative." (Lenker, 36)
Henry begins to cry. Crying -- a sound that's ingrained in humans to react to with sympathy, especially a mother's when it's their own child. We have evolved to react this way: An instinct that emerged and remained to guarantee the species' survival. The crying morphs into eerie laughter.
Henry: To protect everyone -- from me? You can't even protect yourself. Just like when you were little and your father used to lock you in the closet. And the spiders would come. You're not gonna protect anyone because you're too afraid.
Virginia : (defiantly) No, I'm not afraid of you!
Unfortunately I can't embed the video here because of age-restriction rules, but this scene reminded me so much of the fight between Rue and her mother, Leslie in S2 of Euphoria when Leslie finds Rue's pill stash and gets rid of it.
Leslie: "You will not attack me in my own home!"
Rue: "I'll do whatever the fuck I want in your own home!"
Leslie: "I raised you! Alright? I raised you! And you do not fucking scare me!"
But Leslie is scared. Horrified. Like Virginia, Leslie is also witnessing an outside force (in Rue's case, drugs) consuming her child and turning her into something monstrous.
Both mothers feel helpless in the face of it, not knowing how to bring their child back from perdition. Like Leslie, Virginia offers to get her child help, tries to stand up to him, re-establish her authority as his parent, but witnesses the situation spirals beyond her control. A phantasmagoria worse than anything she could imagine unfurling --
The mother's worst nightmare.
"Can you feel it? The fear?"
Henry is literally engulfed by the Spider, the sexually-threatening mother. Though in Henry's case what's sexually threatening is not an attraction to his mother, but rather his lack of attraction (to women). The threat (in Virginia's eyes) is his queerness and his embracing of it. His identification with this Shadow mother-figure.
That Henry in both show and play turns to spiders -- his mother's worst fear and the symbol of her own trauma -- is telling. Both how he specifically sought kinship and understanding in the spiders, and how he then turns them back against his mother.
It is here where I want to say that, more than any other relationship in The First Shadow, it's this mother-child relationship between Virginia and Henry, that truly tests the dramatic question of the play: "Can love defeat fear?"
If one were to extrapolate, perhaps in a different world, love could have won. Henry might have felt safe enough to confide in Virginia, and she to be emotionally open with him, without worrying about society's judgment. They might have found solidarity in their parallel wounds, rather than met with shame and silence. Perhaps Virginia and Henry might have even had Victor's support so as to carry some of the weight. They might have all found a way to forge a new beginning as a family, healed and that much stronger for it.
However, in *this* world, we are literally witnessing a "silly, terrible play" (per Henry in ST). And Henry, who is no longer willing to perform, resents Virginia for her own awareness of the stage and determination to stay in character as the meddlesome Shavian "nightmare mother". Virginia has prioritized normalcy and respectability above all else -- including what's best for her and her child.
So, as punishment, Henry (via the Mind Flayer)* shines the spotlight away from the stage and into the closet where her secrets and traumas lie. In other words, her fears.
*Or is it perhaps the other way around? With the Mind Flayer using Henry to call out Virginia the way Morgan le Fay uses her magic to torment Guinevere?
The truth of how deep the rot goes comes spilling out, but it's less like water and more like dark, slippery oil that further pollutes.
Henry doesn't just remind Virginia of the spiders in the closet, he embodies them. Becomes it.
Her worst fears and memories in the vessel that was supposed to hold her hopes and dreams for the future.
It's an ugly reminder that *she* as a mother has failed: Failed to channel her energies the "right" way; willed the "wrong" parts of herself into being.
How strange: On one side to feel seen and rejected by your creator for what you are and know exactly why. On the other, to bear witness to your creation and recognize the most secret, shameful, terrifying skeletons in your closet in them.
Each finding a reflection of themselves in the other, looking through a glass, darkly.
And rather than facing Henry, herself -- Virginia tries to run from the Monster, but the Monster won't let her. He keeps her trapped in the attic with him and makes her watch what her baby's become, ignoring her screams for help.
We don't see Virginia again until the end of Act 1 -- as if the intensity of the scene has forced her to step off stage to recover.
Instead, Victor becomes her mouthpiece out in Hawkins society while Virginia remains at home. But boy, does he make a poor showing: Stumbling drunk into the PTA meeting to seek Principal Newby's counsel on his family situation. Airing out their dirty laundry in public, which I doubt Virginia approved of.
Victor: "It's Virginia. She's seeing things -- spiders! And she thinks it's Henry. But Henry's a good kid."
How many times have we seen this? In ST, in media, in life
A man downplaying a woman's concerns and implying she's crazy (bonus points if they uplift another man in the same breath).
She may seem "crazy" but, like Joyce, Virginia* is right.
Unfortunately, because her warnings go unheeded by the men around her (the only people who have the "authority" to take action in their world), there are disastrous consequences --
The most obvious is the blinding of Robert Newby, Sr.
However, prior to that moment, Henry has been looking for Patty's mother using his powers. He eventually comes upon her -- a mysterious songstress singing "The Nearness of You":
We see a boy, desperate to please the substitute for both his mother and lover, being used by her to make her "wildest dreams come true": To find her own mother -- Mother Goose, Tharizdun, Lilith.
"The quintessential pre-Oedipal mother": A powerful figure, the spark of creation, the primary caregiver and nurturer to all.
And just when he reaches toward Patty's Mom, she lunges for Henry and -- in a truly terrifying moment -- screams, "Hello, Henry. LET ME IN!"
[I don't remember how this plays out in the Broadway version, but the West End version has Patty's Mom basically taking Henry hostage while he tells Patty to run (in Will Byers fashion)]
A unification with the Mother that Henry comes into, thinking it will be celebratory, only to get caught in a trap.
As Henry tries to warn Patty* off so she can get to safety, Principal Newby barges in, demanding answers to what his child is doing there. Henry, now fully under the Mind Flayer's hold, takes hold of Newby Sr.
*Mind you, I believe Bob is the person actually with him in this scene.
As I discussed in Part 16, in attempting to break Henry out of the bad dream, Patty gets Henry to confess his love for her and in doing so, sign a secret contract, sealing the bond between "mother" and "child."
Unfortunately, it looks like Henry didn't read the fine print.
The "woman of dreams" -- who Henry thought would provide him the love and acceptance he needed -- reveals herself as the real "nightmare mother".
Is that Bob standing below Henry? Why yes, yes it is.
At the end of Act 1, as the dust is settling on the Newby incident, we see Virginia with Henry (in the most childlike state we've seen him in), singing "Tonight You Belong to Me":
Compared to the cheery mood the song set at the beginning of TFS, the lyrics now tell a heartbreaking story of a mother who knows her baby is gone. That he now "belong[s] to somebody new."
But, as Virginia holds Henry's teddy, she savors one final moment with *her* son, where she can pretend they're a "normal" family. In all fairness to Virginia, we can't begrudge her for wanting that.
Virginia: "You may not understand this now, but there is no greater pain than to see your child suffer. I would do anything to end it."
With her emotional and spiritual role in Henry's life officially recast, we learn Virginia has decided to cede her parental responsibility too.
Virginia: "We just want you to get better, sweetie."
Perhaps Virginia had hoped a stronger, more "masculine" presence in Henry's life might "cure" him of his queerness better than she or impotent Victor could.
Henry: "You can't fix me."
Brenner: "What makes you think I want to fix you?"
Little does she know she's handed the baby she bore over to a real-life Dr. Frankenstein who will soon turn her Creation into his Monster.
"Like other object relations scholars, [Nancy] Chodorow examines humankind's fear of the powerful mother, which has permeated patriarchal societies and literature since classical and biblical times and which keeps the woman in her inferior position [...] Many writers, Shaw included, suggest that the fantastic weapons and power that mothers have developed in dealing with the formidable power of the patriarchy have resulted in a hidden matriarchy, in which less-gifted men lamely counter females with lethal restrictions and brute strength." (Lenker, 42-3)
Act Two begins with a video montage of Henry on his 8th birthday. The reel plays over a music box arrangement of "Tonight You Belong To Me" that leans into childhood innocence (as opposed to maternal angst or howdy-doody optimism).
We watch a happy boy -- Virginia's "sweet little boy" blowing out his candles and receiving birthday gifts (#birthdaygate).
Gradually government reports and medical notes begin to appear onscreen, with descriptions of Henry's disappearance that very day, and subsequent symptoms he acquired after the incident: Dramatic mood change, fits of rage, narcissism, delusions of grandeur. Symptoms on par with narcissistic personality (NPD) or schizophrenia.
We enter on Henry and Brenner at Hawkins Lab. It's established this meeting was at Virginia's urging, as she's noticed his "condition deteriorating." Brenner gives Henry the rundown: "Your mother tells me..."
Brenner and Henry go back and forth with each other, with the former trying to get Henry to come clean while Henry evades and obfuscates. Although Brenner says he's not a psychiatrist, he begins to "psychoanalyze" Henry.
We get to the moment that started this whole thing (this post, I mean):
Brenner: "Let's talk about your mother."
Henry: "Oh God, okay."
Brenner: "Your mother seems to think you have some kind of ability. Some power."
Henry: "Then maybe she's the one who should be committed."
Brenner: "So you're saying you don't?"
Henry: "I'm saying she's confused."
Brenner: "Probably. It certainly wouldn't be the first time. It's typical actually. It's the mother -- it's always the mother. The mother comes and claims her child can do things. Impossible things. Magic, curses... spiders. And so I come out to investigate and I usually find something like this: A socially maladjusted child -- that's you -- who presents psychologically poorly -- also you -- but not nearly as poorly as the mother, who's invariably 'confused', like you said."
Henry: "I don't want to talk about her."
Brenner: "But we are talking about her."
In classic, Shavian mother-blaming fashion, Brenner presents himself as an ally by throwing Virginia under the bus. He tells Henry that Virginia told him that Henry's done "terrible things. Violent things." Baiting him.
Then, after having lured Henry in, Brenner pulls a Henry/MF move and turns things back around on him:
Brenner: "[Your mother] feels responsible, so she's seeking an excuse. But there's no excuse. A child is violent because they crave power. They crave power because they are weak."
Henry: "I'm not weak."
Brenner: "Why is that?"
Brenner has Henry right where he wants him, the entire time having played into Henry/the MF's narcissistic tendencies to get him to reassign the credit for his powers from his mother to himself. Knowing Henry will be unable to take the idea of someone else thinking his conventional mother -- the one who went to great lengths to make him "normal" -- was the one who willed his extraordinary abilities into being.
However, we the audience know that his powers really did come from his mother -- his Spider mother.
Brenner: "I almost feel sorry for you. Mommy said it for so long that you almost started to believe it for yourself that you're "special". You think you can scare me? You don't scare me [...] You're a weak, sniveling mama's boy!"
He's hoping to provoke a reaction out of Henry, to manipulate him into using his powers by asserting it over his (mortal) mother. And he succeeds. It seems "mama's boy" are the magic words that get Henry to explode a lab rat in its cage.
In the beat of silence after the killing, it looks like Henry awaits the rebuke and condemnation he's come to expect for his displays of "otherness". However, like Henry surprised his mother at the top of the play by hugging her, Brenner surprises Henry by praising him.
It's the first time we see Henry receive genuine positive reinforcement from an authority figure, rather than rejection for something he can't help. It's a gesture of "love" so great in the eyes of Henry, who's been deprived of it for so long (and from a male figure to boot), that he jumps into Brenner's arms. Brenner, who carries him like a father would a child; pets him in a way that's disquieting.
While it's a moment of whiplash for the audience -- it's also a classic abuse tactic: Idealize (love bomb), Devalue (criticize/demean), Discard (suddenly abandon). Brenner started with the devalue stage, but now has Henry in the literal palms of his hands. In one scene, he's accomplished more in gaining Henry's trust than his parents ever have by showing Henry that he sees and accepts him, even thinks he's special.
However, the abuser will always cycle back to abuse. When Brenner tries to get Henry to kill an inmate on death row and he refuses, Brenner begins with the insults again. And once again, he gets Henry to break by bringing up his mother:
Brenner: "Even your own mother hates you, Henry! She told me herself. She tells me everything. Her biggest regret. Ask her, Henry. Ask her! She hates you!"
Henry's powers begin leave his control, as the inmate's eyes begin to bleed, Brenner levitates, and the other guards and lab techs are incapacitated. Henry doesn't kill any of them.
Instead, he makes his escape. He goes home.
Brenner: "No. Let him go home to his mother."
Did Brenner suspect what would transpire if he let Henry go home?
Or was that what he'd planned all along when he put a target on Virginia's back?
Henry returns home and has his only one-on-one interaction with his sister Alice (who has been markedly absent from the play up until now). She, with all a child's innocence, is the one who spills that Brenner came by earlier and spoke to Virginia.
Upon learning this, Henry plays the spy one last time -- sneaking into Virginia's memories to find out what their conversation was:
Virginia: "I'm afraid."
Brenner: "That's normal."
[....]
Virginia: "What are we going to do?"
Brenner: "We can get him back, but we need your help. He's hiding someone from us, a girlfriend. All I need from you is a name."
[Just like Canio demanding the name of Nedda's secret lover in Pagliacci.]
Virginia: "And then what?"
Brenner: "Then we'll take him in again, but this time we'll control him and you'll have your life back. A normal life. Don't you want that? You've been through so much, Mrs. Creel. Your whole family has."
Virginia: "What do you mean, 'control him'?"
Brenner: "No one blames you for wanting to protect your son. But we have to think about innocent lives here. You don't want anyone else to get hurt, do you?"
Brenner manipulates the mother this time, dangling her fears of being the monster's creator in one hand, and the temptation of finally achieving "normalcy" in the other.
All she has to do is betray her son by giving over the name of Henry's love -- for the purpose of extracting that love from his life. The love that has effectively replaced hers.
But when Virginia still shows hesitancy (at the idea of another person taking "control" over her child), Brenner slyly puts the onus on her for the potential harm Henry might inflict on others if she does not speak up.
And perhaps it's that reminder, that Henry is not the only child she needs to worry about, that finally pushes her over --
Henry sees this and begs his mom: "Please, Mom, don't."
Where Brenner presents Virginia with one final shot at maternal redemption in hers and society's eyes, Henry lays out one last chance for reconciliation between them -- for the mother-child bond to be restored.
Eve of Cain: "I thought for a moment that perhaps this strong brave son of mine, who could imagine something better, and could desire what he imagined, might also be able to will what he desired until he created it. And all that comes of it is that he wants to be a bear and eat children."
Unfortunately for Henry, his mother thinks he is too far gone to be saved:
Virginia: "Just promise me --"
Brenner: "We'll take care of him."
Virginia: "Promise me you'll lock him up and throw away the key."
In the battle between love and fear, we see *fear* win.
Even Brenner seems a little surprised at her callousness.
Still, she completes her end of the bargain, and in exchange, Brenner gives her pills to help her forget the sin she has committed: A mother abandoning her child.
It's meant to salve her pain and protect for her mind from her son. But, of course, it doesn't work.
In one final family dinner (the Last Supper, if you will), Virginia puts on the performance of a lifetime as Mrs. Virginia Creel:
The angel mother, who makes a mean aspic and has her family say grace at the table. Who dotes on her boy -- "the man of the hour."
It's too bad her scene is completely ensconced in shadow, as Henry takes center stage, holding his mother's dress to his body. [hold onto that]
He drops the dress when a cloud of smoke begins to encircle him, come out of him. Whether the Shadow enters him, or whether it comes from him -- it's hard to tell.
Henry can no longer be distinguished from his Spider Mother -- Henry's pre-Oedipal crisis resolves not simply through identification, but a complete merging with the mother. His identity now inextricable from hers.
The Mind Flayer forms above him in her spider form, then disappears as Henry blends back into the domestic scene behind him. Ella Fitzgerald croons "Dream a Little Dream of Me" on the radio. The lights flicker. And we know the rest.
Under a dark red lighting design that creates silhouettes and shadows we see Henry murder his mother and sister with a few flicks of his wrist. While we can't fully behold the horror with the eyes, the sounds of pops, snaps, and screams fill out the rest of the scene for us.
With the Spider Mother at the helm now, Henry is free to discard his Mortal Mother.
A real Shavian mother: Virginia, like Eve, is reprimanding but ultimately helpless to stop her son from going down a path of murder and violence for the sake of "dreams" whispered in his ear by the Serpent Spider.
Eve: "If you, Cain, had had the trouble of making Abel, or had had to make another man to replace him when he was gone, you would not have killed him [...] That is why there is enmity between Woman the creator and Man the destroyer. [...] It is long and hard and painful to create life: it is short and easy to steal the life others have made."
Freud's common adage was that "anatomy is destiny" when it came to the development of males and females: who they would grow up to be, what roles they would fill, what temperaments they would have. But Shaw said "the Golden Rule is there is no Golden Rule" -- what a person grew up to be was all dependent on the freedom and opportunities we allowed the youth, male or female (Lenker, 39).
In Shaw's case, he often explored what young women might achieve if they were given more guidance from the father figure. In fact, we have a shining example of the Shavian daughter in El, ST's very own "woman sculpted from clay". However, the men in Shaw's plays are either the guardians in question (taking on a more present role in their "daughters'" lives) or revolutionaries who challenge society's rigid ways, but don't necessarily apply that change on themselves.
Take Jack Tanner, who riots against the Life Force chasing him down in the form of Ann Whitefield. Tanner, who values his independence and believes women only see men as easily-discarded "instruments" to bring them children... Only to succumb to Ann's wishes of marriage (and theoretically, children as well).
Despite his personal beliefs, even Shaw concedes to the power of the Life Force, and its biological inevitability:
Eve [about to rise] "I will go and tell Adam to conceive."
The Serpent: [laughs]
Eve [jarred and startled] "What a hateful noise! What is the matter with you? No one has ever uttered such a sound before."
The Serpent: "Adam cannot conceive."
Eve: "Why?"
The Serpent: "Lilith did not imagine him so. He can imagine: he can will: he can desire: he can gather his life together for a great spring towards creation: he can create all things except one; and that one is his own kind."
It is this distinction between male and female that led to a fixation on *Man's* ability to create life -- the Promethean theme. The same concept that made Mary Shelley want to write Frankenstein as a cautionary tale of what creating life actually means, aimed at the men who viewed birth and the mother as monstrous.
We see a Promethean figure in Dr. Brenner who, once having Henry back under his control through soteria (the symbol of castration and conditional separation from the Shadow Mother) cannot access Henry's powers and therefore uses him as his instrument to commit an even great act of God.
From ST S4 Ep 7: "Chapter Seven: The Massacre at Hawkins Lab":
Henry: "The truth is he did not just want to study me. He wanted more. He wanted to control. When Papa finally realized he could not control me, he tried to recreate me."
Brenner defies the laws of nature to create the super-powered children, using Henry's blood. Children he and the government intend to use as weapons.
Man the Destroyer makes a mockery of Woman the Creator.
Now, Henry is definitively Man. He is Cain -- the first son and the first murderer. A Destroyer.
But perhaps he is not just Man.
It is here where I want to posit that, with so many symbols of the feminine attached to Henry -- the witch/mermaid/ princess/ cheating wife archetypes, castration and the making of El, "wearing" his mother's dress in the scene above, his merging with the sexually-threatening, feminine MF -- that perhaps Henry has been specifically and deliberately coded to be trans-femme (or at the very least, genderfluid).
Granted, there's several problematic implications there when you enter the realm of Norman Bates comparisons with Henry, who carries out murders under the influence of the Mother figure, the MF (not to mention Bates' real-life inspiration, Ed Gein). But look: I don't make the signs, I just read them.
But as much as Henry becomes the MF, he also becomes Virginia. After all, in killing her as Vecna, he consumed her, absorbed her into him. She now remains as much a part of him as the MF.
We see this in the final scene of the play, when he is introduced to his "sister" Eleven: "Hello Eleven. It's nice to meet you. I'm here to help."
Henry then takes her hand and they walk together. Henry, finally able to be a father to his daughter, even if it's under strict supervision.
Henry begins to sing to her the same song his mother sang to him: "Tonight You Belong to Me."
A symbol representing the loss of the mother-child bond due to outside forces keeping them apart.
Henry may not have understood his mother then, but he certainly does now: "There is no greater pain than to see your child suffer."
Perhaps now it's easier to understand Henry's desperation for Eleven to run away with him during the Massacre of Hawkins Lab.
And why the Mind Flayer is so desperate to use Henry to reunite with her mom, Mother Goose -- even if it costs Henry and so many others their life and freedom.
We see now that the bond between mother and child has always been as essential to the story of Stranger Things as queer love.
After all, it all began with a young (queer) boy who goes missing, and his "crazy" mother who stops at nothing to save her boy and bring him home.
But will this generation's Eve be able to save her son's soul? Or will he too receive the mark of Cain?
WOOF. If you read this whole thing, seriously, thank you. I know this post is not for everyone. No one may even read it except for me. But I wanted to write it anyway.
Virginia and Henry's story is just as much an important piece of the puzzle as Bob and Henry's. Another sad ending that perhaps might lead to a gay one in Vol. 4.
Anyway, here's a palate cleanser! Found it on my Twitter TL and it was strangely relevant??? Talk about if Virginia and Henry lived in a different world.
Given how close Lunar New Year is (fingers crossed!) I know I'm definitely not going to finish my Shavian analysis of ST before then.
But I do intend to finish it, Vol. 4 drop or not.
There's so much juicy stuff there I want to dive into with the Shaw of it all, but I think I'll make a post with the "abstract" (and my final ST predictions) sometime Monday night. Till then --
Disclaimer: I'm going to break my evidence for this theory into different posts under #BobGate (also #PuzzleGate), but if possible, let's keep this contained to Tumblr because I think there are folks who might care about being spoiled for what I think is going to be an amazing twist (if #conformitygate is in fact real.)
**I haven't come across a theory/analysis like this yet, but if there is, let me know in the comments!
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