Dora’s reluctance to see Alan cannot be interpreted any other way than selfishness (and resentment, of course). Dora is more worried about her own pain, more worried about the feelings that seeing Alan would evoke in her (presumably shame, anger and more guilt) than about Alan’s pain. She is evasive when Dysart asks her about seeing Alan
Dysart: Did you want to see Alan?
Dora [uncomfortably]: No, no...Not just at the moment
and later tries to blame Frank for her abnormal behaviour, insinuating that Frank isn’t fond of her coming to see Alan or Dysart, “Perhaps if I could come one afternoon without Mr. Strang. He and Alan don’t exactly get on at the moment, as you can imagine” when in fact, Frank “not getting on with” something has never been a problem for her, much as in the matter of the television, she simply does whatever she wishes behind his back. Dora does, however, ask “how is he, by the way?” Although this may be interpreted as a sign of love and care, it is odd that it has only just crossed her mind, when she could have asked at the beginning of the scene. That she doesn’t require a detailed answer (she simply replies to Dysart’s ominous “bearing up” with a curt “Please give him my love”) makes the reader wonder whether or not the question was simple courtesy, and another example of Dora trying to save face by pretending to act like a normal parent (as in her outburst later in act II, scene 23). Dysart asks her several times (though all the while being his compassionate, understanding self) and mentions that “[she] can see him any time you want, you know”, to which he only gets evasive answers and the indefinite “I’ll come and see him one day very soon Doctor.” Later on, after the visit and the “terrible scene”, the following exchange scene takes place:
Dysart: Mrs. Strang, what on earth has got into you? Can’t you see the boy is highly distressed?
Dora [ironic]: Really?
Dysart: Of course He’s at the most delicate stage of treatment. He’s totally exposed. Ashamed. Everything you can imagine!
Dora [exploding]: And me? What about me?...What do you think I am?...I’m a parent of course-so it doesn’t count. Thats a dirty word in here, isn’t it, ‘parent’?
Dora clearly views her pain and discomfort above Alan’s and seems more worried about herself, her image, than Alan’s pain and his grief. It seems, indeed, that as long as Alan is in her manipulative clutches she’ll do anything “just as long as he’s happy”, but once he has broken through that bond of normalcy and religion that kept the two of them together, he isn’t her son anymore, but evil. “I only know he was my little Alan, and then the Devil came”. Dora has finally viewed her son as subversive, weird, perhaps even crazy, and she cannot seem to love him the way she used to when he was pliable and subservient to her. This is demonstrated by the slap, it is Dora’s frustration at finding out that (much like Frank), her authority (or own personal brand of it) no longer holds any sway with Alan, and hence he “stares” at her, and perhaps hidden within the stare is the blame that Dora cannot bring herself to face.
It is Dora’s indulgence of both Frank and Alan that causes such disruption with the Strang household. She believes in letting them both have their way. She allows Alan’s love for the gruesome picture he has bought, even though “In all fairness I must admit it was a little extreme”, because of its religious nature (Frank tells Dysart that Dora is religious and “some might say excessively so”) and describes it as “a reproduction of Our Lord to Calvary”, and later admits to its graphic nature “The Christ was loaded down with chains and the centurions were really laying on the stripes.”. Although she later defends herself “I know about privacy-not invading a child’s privacy” and tells Dysart that “[the picture] would not have been my first choice, but I don’t believe in interfering too much with children, so I said nothing”. Dora cannot seem to draw the line between the right amounts of leniency and strictness (it seems that, wherever Alan and Frank are concerned, her former training as a schoolteacher simply evaporates), and where a normal parent would have been disgusted by the picture and would have explained to Alan why it was not appropriate (but not fly into a violent rage, like Frank), Dora allows him to keep it. Dora’s excessively religious upbringing and beliefs play a large part in Alan’s life and religion, particularly as many of his rituals are influenced by Christianity (his flagellating, and the terms he uses to describe his religious paraphernalia e.g. “the Ark of the Manbit”). Dora’s uncontrollable leniency extends to Frank as well, who was “very displeased” with the picture. Dora’s statement that “[Mr. Strang] stood it for a while, but one day we had our usual tiffs about religion, and he went upstairs, tore it off the boy’s wall, and threw into the dustbin” is much more revealing than she would probably allow. It introduces the idea of her indulging her husband, as she lets him fly into a violent rage and rip the picture off the wall (much as she watches, helpless, as Frank flies into a rage against the “college chap” in the beach scene). The phrase “usual tiff” indicates to the audience that religion is a common source of conflict within the household (Frank describes it as “insuperable”) and places Alan in a climate where religion and spirituality are causes of anger, frustration and, to a little boy, fear. It is therefore not a hard link to make between his mother’s blatant religiousness and Alan’s crime. Had Dora been more relaxed about her views and her need to inculcate them in her son, Alan would have grown up a (more or less) normal teenager. Dora’s indulging love for her son shows through when she describes emotional tantrums he threw after Frank threw away his picture (and odd that a 12 year old would be so emotional) “He cried for days without stopping-and he was not a crier you know”, whereas in other places she describes Alan as a “gentle boy” and a “sensitive boy”.
Dora also seems to be a typical housewife, whose main duty in life is to care for her husband and her son. She tells Dysart that “I can’t stay more than a moment. I’m late as it is. Mr. Strang will be wanting his dinner”, a plausible excuse for staying away from Dysart’s office, where she feels most uncomfortable. Dora and Frank are presented as a unit, even physically, they sit together on the bench, and as Dora leaves the office, she “leaves, and resumes her place by her husband”. In light of Alan’s defection, she shifts her loyalty back to Frank from Alan, and conspires with Frank against Alan (quite the reverse of her taking Alan’s side in the TV argument). In telling Dysart about the picture (and slapping Alan) she cuts the last of her ties with her son and sides with her husband, even her phrasing indicative of this new allegiance “You see, there’s something Mr. Strang and I thought you ought to know. We discussed it, and it might just be important”. It is odd to note, though, that she stills holds on to hope for her son, as her visit indicates. She is still willing to sneak behind Frank’s back to visit Alan, “Perhaps if I could come one afternoon without Mr. Strang”. Dora’s tendency to sneak behind her husband’s back with Alan leaves a formidable impression on him. Frank describes the pair as being “thick as thieves”, and tells Dysart that Dora whispers stories and religion to her son in his room ”hour after hour”, with the door closed, and Dora “conspiratorially” sneaks Alan over to a neighbour’s to watch television. Dora’s sneakiness and leniency foster Alan’s hatred and deification of the repressive Frank, delaying his revelation that dad was “nothing special”, a revelation which empowered him to have sex with Jill and consequently blind the six horses.
Though Alan’s crime is supposed to seem a strange concoction of linked events, emotions and stories, along with a hint of something completely unique, the motivations behind his crime seem to stem from Dora, who, despite her arguments against such a claim, is really not a good mother at all.
