Rose Mary: The Glass Castle

In the memoir the Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls her mother Rose Mary is characterized throughout the novel as an immature, neglectful, and very odd individual. While the family is in a real crunch for money Jeannette and Lauren eat a stick of butter because they're so hungry. When Rose Mary finds out she is furious and lists off reasons they needed to save the butter. When Jeannette tells her there's no bread to spread it on and no gas in the stove to make bread, Rose Mary’s defense is “We should have saved the margarine just in case the gas gets turned back on. Miracles do happen, you know”(Walls 69) This fight Rose Mary and Jeannette get into is senseless. Jeannette is about 6 and starving but her mother gets mad when she eats the butter, this leads the reader and Jeannette to think Rose Mary only wanted the butter for herself. Rose Mary wanting the butter for herself and not her children shows how selfish she is and how her children are not her top priority. Another instance where Rose Mary shows how she is selfish and indicates her children continuing to not be a top priority of hers is when she wants a piano. “Mom decided that we really needed a piano.” (Walls 52) Although her family is starving and her children have no the toys and raggedy old clothes, Rose Mary decides the family needs a piano, a selfish decision for her own benefits. When Rose Mary starts to teach Lori’s class at Battle Mountain, all the kids are acting up but rather than punish any of them she punishes Loir, “She had to punish someone, and she didn’t want to upset the other kids’ Lori said” (Walls 75) Although Lori says she wasn’t acting up her mother punishes her, which highlights her dishe other regard for her own children and cares more about what the other children think of her. Rose Mary cares what this class of elementary school kids think of her but she’s always telling her children not to care what others think of you. It’s also odd that she cares about these children’s opinion’s