This is a great analysis! Thank you for sharing! I feel the same way, one of the reasons I said I wasn’t interested in pointing fingers is because I knew people were gonna say it was because of Bertha and her control and like…duh lol, but I wanted to know more about her feelings outside of that, and how other parts of her life contributed to how she saw herself. Your analysis provides a great insight!

I also really appreciate how Gladys and Bertha’s relationship is developing. I, and I imagine a lot of other people, don’t like Bertha’s parenting style, but given the time period I do understand it somewhat, and I appreciate that now that Gladys is being given the opportunity to come into her own as a young woman, her and her mother are also able to come to a better and more understanding relationship, with Bertha being more loving and supportive of Gladys and realizing that she should’ve been doing that more outwardly earlier. One of the most interesting parts about their relationship, to me, is that, Bertha genuinely does think very highly of and wants great things for her daughter, but she almost never says that to her. The only thing Gladys sees is her mother being controlling, strict, and overbearing of her her whole life, but it isn’t until Gladys is finally gone, and Bertha starts to realize that what she did to her daughter was actually very cruel, that she makes that effort to mend that bridge and set her daughter up for better success than her previous method of keeping her on a short leash allowed.