aunt sharon

Amy Pond, Aunt Sharon, mental health, and child neglect

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sarah531:

sarah531:

Okay, so: Amy Pond realises halfway through her wedding that there’s someone missing, that while she has gained her parents back she has lost something else. With two different timelines playing through her head, she stands up and calls, begs, for the Doctor. Reactions are…mixed. “The psychiarists we sent her to!” wails her mother. Aunt Sharon, Amy’s sole guardian in the previous version of her childhood, does this:

Which is not a look of sympathy.

If you’re anything like me, you may actually wince a little at that gif. My mental health can usually optimistically be described as ‘fragile’, but I’ve had the verbal version of Aunt Sharon’s facepalm hundreds of time. The reactions of both Sharon and Amy’s mother rather indicate that though they tried to help Amy – sending her to psychiarists and the like – they started to flail as soon as the going got rough.

We don’t know much about Amy’s mother, but we actually do know a bit about Aunt Sharon, and unfortunately none of it is positive. When the Doctor first meets seven-year-old Amelia, he’s surprised to realise she’s been left all alone in the middle of the night, but Amelia herself doesn’t seem too bothered, indicating that it’s not an uncommon occurrence. The laws on leaving a child alone at night are iffy about whether it’s an actual offence to leave a seven-year-old home alone, but it’s clearly not a million miles off. And the clock on the wall in the scene in question shows that Sharon was absent from at least 8:30 to 11:20 – god knows what she was up to, but she’s clearly well-off enough to afford a babysitter, or at the very least someone to check in on her very young niece, and she didn’t do those things.

What I’m getting at here is that Amy Pond, in the first version of her childhood, was pretty clearly neglected. There’s the above, but there’s more: she’s been living with Sharon for presumably quite a while, but doesn’t seem to have particularly warm feelings towards her – “I don’t even have an aunt” “You’re lucky”. When we actually meet Aunt Sharon, she seems nice enough, and has hired a psychiarist for Amy, but as soon as Amy says something she doesn’t like she crossly grouches ‘Oh, Amelia!’ Which, for a seven-year-old, would probably just reenforce ideas like ‘positive attention from adults is dependent on whether or not I fit in with their ideas about the world’. It’s no wonder she grows up to push everyone’s boundaries and behave immaturely.

You can debate til the cows come home about whether Amy is “really” mentally ill in a world where the Doctor actually does exist and it’s the people who don’t believe in him who are wrong (at the moment, I’m not gonna talk about that, I’ll just mention that yes, I think she’s got a similar brain to me), but – Amy’s family react to her, in the scenes we see, as if she’s a problem. That rings…

…awfully true, for people living with mental illness.

There’s one line that’s so important to Amy’s characterisation, and it comes right at the beginning. “Give me five minutes, I’ll be right back” says the Doctor. “People always say that,” says seven-year-old Amy. And she’s right: her parents have abandoned her by circumstance, and her aunt by choice. The Doctor then accidentally contributes to this cycle, making the adult Amy even more deeply mistrustful – but I think, all things considered, it wasn’t actually him who stole her childhood.

Reblogging this because today I learned that Aunt Sharon’s actress, Susan Vidler, played another (more fatally) neglectful parent at the start of her career: the mother of the baby in Trainspotting.

……….Also because I still very much stand by this 100%

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Based on what we already know of Aunt Sharon, it’s… kind of obvious she neglected seven-year-old Amy to the point of what most people would call child abuse? And I hate that that goes so ignored by fandom, so I really wish this scene (detailed in the latest Doctor Who Magazine) had been left in.

Amy Pond, Aunt Sharon, mental health, and child neglect

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sarah531:

Okay, so: Amy Pond realises halfway through her wedding that there’s someone missing, that while she has gained her parents back she has lost something else. With two different timelines playing through her head, she stands up and calls, begs, for the Doctor. Reactions are…mixed. “The psychiarists we sent her to!” wails her mother. Aunt Sharon, Amy’s sole guardian in the previous version of her childhood, does this:

Which is not a look of sympathy.

If you’re anything like me, you may actually wince a little at that gif. My mental health can usually optimistically be described as ‘fragile’, but I’ve had the verbal version of Aunt Sharon’s facepalm hundreds of time. The reactions of both Sharon and Amy’s mother rather indicate that though they tried to help Amy – sending her to psychiarists and the like – they started to flail as soon as the going got rough.

We don’t know much about Amy’s mother, but we actually do know a bit about Aunt Sharon, and unfortunately none of it is positive. When the Doctor first meets seven-year-old Amelia, he’s surprised to realise she’s been left all alone in the middle of the night, but Amelia herself doesn’t seem too bothered, indicating that it’s not an uncommon occurrence. The laws on leaving a child alone at night are iffy about whether it’s an actual offence to leave a seven-year-old home alone, but it’s clearly not a million miles off. And the clock on the wall in the scene in question shows that Sharon was absent from at least 8:30 to 11:20 – god knows what she was up to, but she’s clearly well-off enough to afford a babysitter, or at the very least someone to check in on her very young niece, and she didn’t do those things.

What I’m getting at here is that Amy Pond, in the first version of her childhood, was pretty clearly neglected. There’s the above, but there’s more: she’s been living with Sharon for presumably quite a while, but doesn’t seem to have particularly warm feelings towards her – “I don’t even have an aunt” “You’re lucky”. When we actually meet Aunt Sharon, she seems nice enough, and has hired a psychiarist for Amy, but as soon as Amy says something she doesn’t like she crossly grouches ‘Oh, Amelia!’ Which, for a seven-year-old, would probably just reenforce ideas like ‘positive attention from adults is dependent on whether or not I fit in with their ideas about the world’. It’s no wonder she grows up to push everyone’s boundaries and behave immaturely.

You can debate til the cows come home about whether Amy is “really” mentally ill in a world where the Doctor actually does exist and it’s the people who don’t believe in him who are wrong (at the moment, I’m not gonna talk about that, I’ll just mention that yes, I think she’s got a similar brain to me), but – Amy’s family react to her, in the scenes we see, as if she’s a problem. That rings…

…awfully true, for people living with mental illness.

There’s one line that’s so important to Amy’s characterisation, and it comes right at the beginning. “Give me five minutes, I’ll be right back” says the Doctor. “People always say that,” says seven-year-old Amy. And she’s right: her parents have abandoned her by circumstance, and her aunt by choice. The Doctor then accidentally contributes to this cycle, making the adult Amy even more deeply mistrustful – but I think, all things considered, it wasn’t actually him who stole her childhood.

Reblogging this because today I learned that Aunt Sharon’s actress, Susan Vidler, played another (more fatally) neglectful parent at the start of her career: the mother of the baby in Trainspotting.

……….Also because I still very much stand by this 100%

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taiey:

I really like the idea that Tabetha and Sharon are sisters.

Me too, and I sort of like the idea that they were estranged sisters, for whatever reason. That one day, in one universe, in one timeline, Sharon is suddenly the legal guardian of a niece whom she’s never met, the child of a sister she didn’t like, a strange little girl sprouting rubbish about cracks in walls and impossible things-

-you know, we never see Sharon showing any sort of affection to little Amy at all? The most she does is hold her hand whilst walking. But that’s it, no hugs, no kisses, no hands on shoulders, no bothering to stay in the house while she’s sleeping…nothing. And that was, for a long time, the only parent she had. No wonder she latched onto the Doctor so quickly.

Amy Pond, Aunt Sharon, mental health, and child neglect

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Okay, so: Amy Pond realises halfway through her wedding that there’s someone missing, that while she has gained her parents back she has lost something else. With two different timelines playing through her head, she stands up and calls, begs, for the Doctor. Reactions are…mixed. “The psychiarists we sent her to!” wails her mother. Aunt Sharon, Amy’s sole guardian in the previous version of her childhood, does this:

image

Which is not a look of sympathy.

If you’re anything like me, you may actually wince a little at that gif. My mental health can usually optimistically be described as ‘fragile’, but I’ve had the verbal version of Aunt Sharon’s facepalm hundreds of time. The reactions of both Sharon and Amy’s mother rather indicate that though they tried to help Amy – sending her to psychiarists and the like – they started to flail as soon as the going got rough.

We don’t know much about Amy’s mother, but we actually do know a bit about Aunt Sharon, and unfortunately none of it is positive. When the Doctor first meets seven-year-old Amelia, he’s surprised to realise she’s been left all alone in the middle of the night, but Amelia herself doesn’t seem too bothered, indicating that it’s not an uncommon occurrence. The laws on leaving a child alone at night are iffy about whether it’s an actual offence to leave a seven-year-old home alone, but it’s clearly not a million miles off. And the clock on the wall in the scene in question shows that Sharon was absent from at least 8:30 to 11:20 – god knows what she was up to, but she’s clearly well-off enough to afford a babysitter, or at the very least someone to check in on her very young niece, and she didn’t do those things.

What I’m getting at here is that Amy Pond, in the first version of her childhood, was pretty clearly neglected. There’s the above, but there’s more: she’s been living with Sharon for presumably quite a while, but doesn’t seem to have particularly warm feelings towards her – “I don’t even have an aunt” “You’re lucky”. When we actually meet Aunt Sharon, she seems nice enough, and has hired a psychiarist for Amy, but as soon as Amy says something she doesn’t like she crossly grouches ‘Oh, Amelia!’ Which, for a seven-year-old, would probably just reenforce ideas like ‘positive attention from adults is dependent on whether or not I fit in with their ideas about the world’. It’s no wonder she grows up to push everyone’s boundaries and behave immaturely.

You can debate til the cows come home about whether Amy is “really” mentally ill in a world where the Doctor actually does exist and it’s the people who don’t believe in him who are wrong (at the moment, I’m not gonna talk about that, I’ll just mention that yes, I think she’s got a similar brain to me), but – Amy’s family react to her, in the scenes we see, as if she’s a problem. That rings…

…awfully true, for people living with mental illness.

There’s one line that’s so important to Amy’s characterisation, and it comes right at the beginning. “Give me five minutes, I’ll be right back” says the Doctor. “People always say that,” says seven-year-old Amy. And she’s right: her parents have abandoned her by circumstance, and her aunt by choice. The Doctor then accidentally contributes to this cycle, making the adult Amy even more deeply mistrustful – but I think, all things considered, it wasn’t actually him who stole her childhood.

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This headcanon post of mine made me wonder again about the relationship between Amy and her aunt, and not for the first time I’m coming to some not-so-great conclusions…

Leaving a seven-year-old alone at night (no babysitter, no-one to check on them, nothing) for seemingly no good reason is…not great parenting, let’s face it. According to the clock on the wall in The Eleventh Hour, Aunt Sharon was absent from about 8:30 pm to about 11:20pm- I dunno what was going on for four hours at night that was more important to her than her niece, but there you go. And the fact that Amy doesn’t seem too bothered about this kinda implies it’s a pretty regular occurence, too. Not great. I know Doctor Who isn’t remotely set in the real world, and the absence of parental authority figures adds to the fairytale feel, but I think in the real world people would be asking Sharon questions before too long. Or I hope so.

There’s that, and then there’s The Big Bang, where we actually meet Aunt Sharon. She doesn’t seem particularly approving of Amelia’s flights of fantasy, and has hired a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist seems perfectly nice and gentle when questioning Amelia about her ‘stars’, but Sharon’s frustrated sigh of “Oh, Amelia!” when Amelia talks about it implies to me that Sharon has no patience at all with what she probably sees as her niece’s mental issues. Her facepalm at the wedding when grown-up Amy makes her “imaginary friend” speech says the exact same thing. That’s not a look of concern, more a look of “oh god not this again.”

image

So yeah. I don’t think Aunt Sharon was abusive, not that at all, but based on what we know about her I don’t think she was a very good parent, and it’s not really surprising that Amy (in Series Five, before she gets her parents back) is a bit abrasive and afraid of abandonment. And that she took the Doctor accidentally leaving her behind for so long so badly- she’s used to being let down by adults.

Analysing The Ponds #4: Naming The Ponds

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Yeeeees…I know I said I’d be doing The Timeline Of River Song next. But because a) it’s taking longer than I expected and b) it’s not really analysis, I’ve decided to make that a whole seperate project and finish Analysing The Ponds first. (I’ve gone back and edited some of the previous posts with new observations, too) So here we have…names!

Names in Doctor Who are chosen well. Sure, a lot of this probably wasn’t intentional…but I don’t care!

Amy– you know already that it means ‘beloved’. But Amy’s full name is Amelia, which means ‘Industrious and striving’. A very fitting name for a woman who later a) started her own perfume business and b) saved the world several times.

Amy’s middle name is Jessica, and this is quite interesting- it means ‘God is watching’. If you consider that Amy basically holds the Doctor up as a god, that name becomes a very suitable one. The Doctor has watched her throughout her entire life, from childhood to adulthood…

And of course, Amy’s last name is Pond– she’s named after water. Water is very much Amy’s element, associated as it is with intuition, imagination, emotion, and the feminine. Plus, well, water brings life. If not for the Ponds and the Rivers, life on Earth would simply not exist as we know it…

There may also be something to be said about the fact that a Pond stands still while a River flows, but our Ponds have travelled the universe and have not really stood still even back on Earth, so I’m not sure that bit quite stands up…

Rory, as I may have mentioned, means ‘red’- ‘red king’ to be specific (see icon!). Red like Amy’s hair. The name has both Irish and Scottish roots, apparently- Scottish, like Amy herself! And I like the ‘king’ part, as Rory very much grows into a (symbolic) King- one with a red cape, as well.

I also like that ‘Rory’ can be a male or a female name, as Rory himself has a few feminine qualities.

Williams next- Wikipedia has a whole page on the name. “Derived from an Old French given name with Germanic elements; will = desire, will; and helm = helmet, protection.” Desire, will, protection and helmet- ah, those words are very much Rory-related. Desire for Amy, will to do the right thing, protection of Amy/Doctor/Melody, and helmet- he had a Roman helmet as the Last Centurion.

Melody means- you guessed it- music and song. Alas, there’s not a lot else to be got there! But…what can always break the Silence? A Song.

Mels in Leadworth takes the name Zucker. When we first heard Mels’ surname- I think it was on a trading card or something- people pointed out that it sounded like ‘Sucker!’ Which is a very, very Moffat thing to do, considering that Mels herself is a walking plot twist. But it is also a German name meaning ‘sugar’…now, “sugar” is often used as the pet name for a partner or lover, and of course sugar is the primary ingredient of sweets. Hello, sweetie…

Ah…and then there’s Mrs Robinson, the Doctor’s occasional name for River. Mrs Robinson is the quissential name for ‘the older woman’ after the film The Graduate, which showed a young man (played by Dustin Hoffman) falling in love with an older woman. But interestingly, in the end Dustin Hoffman leaves with the woman’s daughter instead. Maybe the Doctor should have called Amy Mrs Robinson…

Let’s move on to the elder Ponds, as they are of course important figures in Amy, Rory and Melody’s lives…

Amy’s mother is called Tabitha. There’s a famous Tabitha in the Bible who was raised from the dead by by Saint Peter…and Tabitha herself, along with her husband, is (technically speaking) raised from the dead. Neat!

Augustus was the name of the first Roman Emperor. Amy, of course, was fascinated by Roman history, to the extenct that the Alliance built a whole army of Auton Romans from her mind- was Amy’s love of this era a subconcious connection to the father she never had? (I like to think so.)

Sharon means Forest. A word that plays an important part in Amy, Rory and Melody’s lives- the only water in the forest is the river.

And then there’s the people who play various roles, however tiny, in the lives of the Ponds-

Lorna is a popular name in Scotland, Amy’s land of origin. Her surname Bucket is more significant, though- a bucket is of course used to transfer water, and what does Lorna do? She makes a Pond (via her prayer leaf) a River, of course.

The name Renfrew means “Dwells near the still river”- and Dr Renfrew dwells with and looks after the girl who will grow to be River. (That one was definitely done on purpose.)

Kovarian, the woman charged with delivering Amy’s baby, very nearly has the word ‘ovary’ in her name. ‘Madame’ I think is a title given to women of high rank (and Kovarian does seem to be the only woman working for the Silence.)

I find it significant that the woman killed by the Silence in front of Amy was called Joy, as her death definitely symbolises the end of any real joy for Amy in Series Six. She’s already seen her best friend die, but things get even worse- she even loses her baby, which is most likely the most traumatic thing to ever happen to a Companion.

And then there’s places-

Leadworth as a name doesn’t seem to actually mean anything, but lead is a metal that soon turns to a dull greyish colour. And to Amy, Leadworth was often dull and grey. Not only that, but lead is poisonous- maybe the Amy we know would have ‘died’ had she stayed in Leadworth.

Stormcage contains the wife of “The Oncoming Storm”…

Byzantium was a city which became the imperial residence of- who else- the Romans. Romans are everywhere in Series Five! (The city is now the place called Istanbul, in Turkey.)

Lake Silencio is, of course, named after the Silence. (It doesn’t actually exist, by the way. I checked.)

And then, of course, there’s the Doctor’s name- the one great secret. But you know…he’s married into the Pond family, where the tradition so far is for the men to take the wife’s surname. (Although Amy has been called Williams from time to time, interviews, promo material and Amy herself have firmly labeled Rory as a Pond.) Could the Doctor maybe get around this whole thing by simply announcing to the Silence…

…”I am Mr Song?”

The Doctor Destroys, Amy Creates

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Been reading a lot about Amy’s journey in Series 6a, and the fact that in a way her main character arc there is ‘getting pregnant, getting kidnapped, getting rescued’. Which from a feminist perspective is somewhat of a problem. That essay I did about Amy and the Monomyth is still in my head, so I’m just considering where Amy’s been and where she’s going next…

I can see why people are annoyed at what happened to Amy’s story arc…she went from messed-up fairytale girl to dedicated wife and mother. But then again, that’s what happened to Wendy Darling, too. Also, I wonder if it’s not so much the ‘woman! gotta make her pregnant!’ thing as it is a ‘parenthood = adulthood’ thing in most stories. For men as well as women, sometimes. And Amy, like Wendy, had to grow up sometime…I think for most writers, probably me included, giving a character a baby is the fastest way to turn someone into a fully fledged adult.

I think the main problem with the pregnancy arc is that before it, we never got a hint of Amy actually wanting to be a mother (although she is good with the kids she comes across, like Toby) In Amy’s Choice it’s kind of hard to tell how Amy feels about being pregnant- she tells the Doctor off for calling her new life dull, but then she tells Rory she only got pregnant ‘so I don’t have to see the amateur dramatics society doing Oklahoma.’ (interestingly, if you watch Rory in the background, this is the only time he ever looks really angry with Amy. Because she’s admitting she wants a baby out of boredom?) But when Rory dies, the baby is quickly forgotten, and never brought up again. (Which I always thought was a huge flaw in the episode.)

So yeah, there’s nothing we can point at and say ‘Amy wanted this baby!’ but I think she did. (Okay, let’s face it, Doctor Who is a children’s show and there’s sort of…no way in-universe that she couldn’t have, because the writers would simply never go there- they’d never bring up the concepts of abortion or contraception. They had difficulty enough getting River conceieved in the TARDIS!) Regarding messed-up Amy- having the memories of growing up in a stable environment probably helped her decide what she wanted. Her parent’s relationship, what little we saw of it, is sort of like the Amy/Rory relationship- attractive woman, nerdy man, the occasional mild insult, but still love (you can see them dancing at the wedding, behind Amy and Rory). And it’s clear her parents loved her. I sort of make Aunt Sharon the bogeyman in a lot of my fanfiction, but I do think there’s a chance she was neglectful of her niece. You don’t leave a seven-year-old alone in a house at that time of night, you just don’t. (I think it’s illegal in Britain, actually.) And Amy, all through Series Five, she has this thing about being ‘clingy’- even in a near-lethal situation, she demands of the Doctor trying to save her, ‘How clingy do you think I am?’. She’s afraid of getting too attached, too clingy. That’s the legacy her childhood and her various abandonments left her, I suppose…and the Doctor fixed it. But then Amy fixed the world, bringing the Doctor back. With the sheer power of words!

She does that a lot- Amy creates things, I think she has since the beginning. Her bedroom is covered in drawings (not just of the Doctor, either- look at little Amelia’s room) and her and Rory’s flat is covered in photos and arty stuff too. Amy-as-artist isn’t explored much (well, ever, really) but it’s clear that she’s an art lover. She knows how to work emotions, does that girl- she sees what’s around her and channels it. The Doctor destroys bad things, Amy creates good things. (And Rory heals things. We’ve got a destroyer, a creator and a healer. Cool.) She recreated the whole world, via the cracks in time and her own memory- now that’s awesome.

And now she’s created River. I honestly don’t know how that works in terms of feminist theory, because it leaves me with the creepy feeling that she’s just sort of created the Doctor his perfect mate. But…well, I thought I’d bring it up anyway, that Amy’s been sort of the Maker since day one. Her memories save the day in The Eleventh Hour, too…

I know some people prefer the messed-up, reckless Amy, but me, I kinda love the badass-mother Amy as well. Cos she still is awesome, fierce and courageous- she tells her baby to be brave, she threatens to shoot both Lorna and River and she defends herself with just a toothbrush. Also, there’s this bit that no-one really picked up on (I thought those who didn’t like Amy would instantly use it to bash her with, but they didn’t) where she tells Rory, “Let the others die first.” She’s sort of half joking, but the point is- this is a woman willing to let other people die to protect her child. (Which is what most mothers would do, admittedly.) Amy Pond is a kickass role model and a kickass mother.

The marriage! I gotta bring up the marriage. It is a bit odd that Amy flirts with the Doctor on her wedding day (does Rory mind? I can’t tell. I’d mind) but then pretty much never does again. I think when she realised that Rory geniunely wasn’t sure if she preferred him or the Doctor, she decided to give it a rest. I do think the marriage changed her a bit- I think that everything leading up to it (Rory dying, returning, waiting 2000 years) turned off the fear of ‘clingyness’ and generally made all of Amy’s relationships healthier.

I don’t know where Amy will go next, but I like the idea of her, Rory, Melody/River and any future mini Ponds saving the world from a house in Leadworth. One big family defending Earth, just like The Sarah Jane Adventures. With the Doctor dropping in from time to time- I think it’ll be a shame if the Doctor/Amy relationship is over, because it really wasn’t his fault, the kidnapping- he couldn’t have prevented it. Also, Amy has got to get her baby back – if not, then the whole thing basically becomes a story of how an alien dropped into a girl’s life and fixed her childhood only to destroy her adulthood. And that’s just too sad.

So…in conclusion: Amy is awesome. I know this series hasn’t served her entirely well, but it doesn’t change her innate awesomeness. Also I think her current damsel-in-distressness will change in Series 6b and we’ll see her being more proactive. (Although she was still pretty proactive in Series 6a, sort of, it just wasn’t in her real body. She takes command of the pirate situation while the men stand around helplessly for example.) If you’ve seen the trailer, you’ve seen her in what looks like samurai armour, fighting robots. Yay!