Animal instinct. The will to survive. We all have it. In the film “Dolores Claiborne”, the three key female characters express self-preservation instincts as means to preserve their respective existence in response to domestic violence victimization.
Dolores Claiborne is the title and central character of the film and a victim of physical and emotional abuse inflicted by her husband, Joe St. George. Like many women, Dolores is unable to see an alternative to her miserable situation and is only able to imagine escape after learning Joe is sexually abusing their daughter. Daily, she seeks refuge through her work as a maid in the beautiful home of a wealthy family. Eventually, and at the insinuation of her employer, Dolores stages a fatal accident, luring her husband into an invisible abandoned well in their yard.
Dolores’ childhood is not a part of the story. However because Dolores withstands her husband’s abuse for so long, it’s plausible that she may have witnessed or been a victim of abuse in her childhood. Further supporting this theory is the fact that after the death of her husband, Dolores’ relationship with Vera, her demanding and faultfinding employer, intensifies. Dolores has traded up, putting her husband out to pasture, in favor of a relationship with a less hurtful significant other.
The smallest of the three roles is that of Vera Donovan, employer, confidant, friend, and upon her death, benefactor of Dolores. Vera has her own marital issues to contend with and ultimately quashes her husband’s infidelity by arranging for his brakes to go out upon his return from a visit with his mistress. The product is a happier, lighter, freer Vera but a Vera with resulting issues nonetheless, deftly managed by micromanaging her domestic staff, almost to the point of perpetuating abuse herself.
As a child, Selena St. George witnessed her father’s abuse of her mother and was herself a victim of abuse by the same man. Selena has her issues – drug and alcohol abuse and a combative temperament – but is high functioning given her past. She is smart (graduated from Vassar), independent and holds down a job as a reporter.
Selena has learned to live with the events of her childhood by forgetting about them and by cutting off contact with her mother and the small town in which she grew up. The climax of the film occurs in a series of flashbacks as Selena remembers the period of time when as a young teenager, she was molested by her father. Her immediate recourse is to attempt to repair the strained relationship with her mother by intervening in an inquisition of Dolores’ involvement in Vera’s death. The film concludes without revealing if Selena will choose to process her past with a therapist, but certainly the viewer hopes this is the case.
The means, motivations and actions of Dolores, Vera and Selena differ to the point that when combined, they are representative of personal histories of actual women who are victims of domestic violence. Like the three key female characters the film “Dolores Claiborne”, self-preservation is a major force by which we preserve our existence. Our lives are conditioned by it.
References
“Dolores Claiborne” (1995)
Shots in the Mirror: Crime Films and Society by Nicole Rafter
Class discussion on domestic violence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolores_Claiborne_%28film%29
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109642/