Abusive Parents/Literature: Difference between revisions

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* [[The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn|Huckleberry Finn]]'s [[The Alcoholic|alcoholic]] dad beats him, verbally abuses him, takes his money to buy whiskey, leaves him to live on the streets, and at one point kidnaps him and keeps him hidden in the woods. In ''[[The Adventures of Tom Sawyer]]'' it's implied that he also abused Huck's [[Missing Mom|late mother]]--"They used to fight all the time."

* In [[Gene Stratton Porter]]'s ''Literature/Freckles'', Freckles is horribly afraid that his parents were this, and otherwise disreputable, and so he comes of bad blood.

{{quote| ''Does it seem to you that anyone would take a newborn baby and row over it, until it was bruised black, cut off its hand, and [[Door Step Baby|leave it out in a bitter night on the steps of a charity home, to the care of strangers]]? That's what somebody did to me.''}}

{{quote|''Does it seem to you that anyone would take a newborn baby and row over it, until it was bruised black, cut off its hand, and [[Door Step Baby|leave it out in a bitter night on the steps of a charity home, to the care of strangers]]? That's what somebody did to me.''}}

* In [[The 39 Clues]], this is most certainly the case with Ian and Natalie Kabra. {{spoiler|Their mother Isabel is a [[Complete Monster]] who verbally degrades them on a regular basis, and it's left unclear whether their father treats them similarly or whether he simply doesn't notice or care about what Isabel does. Ian and Natalie love and fear Isabel simultaneously, while believing that they lead the perfect lives because of their family's extensive wealth.}} They'd be [[The Woobie|Woobies]] if they weren't so nasty themselves!

** Then Isabel takes it [[Up to Eleven]] in the final book of the first series, ''Into the Gauntlet'', when she {{spoiler|[[Moral Event Horizon|shoots Natalie in the foot.]]}}

* The people who raised Felix and Mildmay in ''[[Doctrine of Labyrinths]]'', who as close to parental figures that the brothers had after they were [[Parental Abandonment|sold]] at the ages of four and three, respectively. Both of them were raised as kept thieves, with Felix going on to be taken in by a pimp and blood wizard.

* [[Sherlock Holmes]] prefers the city to the countryside because this is more easily revealed.

{{quote| ''There is no lane so vile that the scream of a tortured child, or [[[Domestic Abuse]] the thud of a drunkard's blow]], does not beget sympathy and indignation among the neighbours, and then the whole machinery of justice is ever so close that a word of complaint can set it going, and there is but a step between the crime and the dock. But look at these lonely houses, each in its own fields, filled for the most part with poor ignorant folk who know little of the law. Think of the deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness which may go on, year in, year out, in such places, and none the wiser.''}}

{{quote|''There is no lane so vile that the scream of a tortured child, or [[[Domestic Abuse]] the thud of a drunkard's blow]], does not beget sympathy and indignation among the neighbours, and then the whole machinery of justice is ever so close that a word of complaint can set it going, and there is but a step between the crime and the dock. But look at these lonely houses, each in its own fields, filled for the most part with poor ignorant folk who know little of the law. Think of the deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness which may go on, year in, year out, in such places, and none the wiser.''}}