Crafted jealousy

A fine morning had my daughter prod me to read Amelie Nothomb’s Strike your Heart. A book that never enticed me and hence had probably not reached my reading list, got me thinking at various levels of the complexity of relationships in human lives. A simple story that begins with an over-anxious and ambitious daughter needling thereafter into her life instances and relationships. What perplexed me the most was the mother-daughter relationship complexity at one level and the sibling relationship at the other level. Extreme contrast to these levels of complexity in relationships is the relationship between a mentor and a mentee. A genius child, Diane is able to sense and empathise with all the emotions of her mother. The spectrum of empathy is stretched to her relationships with her siblings and that of her father and later her mentor, Olivia. Layers of trust that are turbulent rapids, as lined in the plots and the subplots of the novel. To a mother of the contemporary world, wherein the streak of the guilt of not having given the best to the child constantly haunts her; here is a story that unravels a very different emotional complexity between the most sacred and trusted relationship between the mother and the daughter. Revelations that are tough for a mother to accept and thoughts that one would not want the daughter to think about.

Of all the emotions, jealousy is one emotion that is connected with rivals. Probing further into the relationship of Diane and her mother, Marie, one does not have too many traces of distrust in the mother’s life. Secured by her husband Olivier in her life, there are no incidents of betrayal or loss in her life. In fact, in him is seen a husband who is willing to oversee all the flaw lines of the wife. Were selfishness and a narcissistic tendency in Marie make her jealous of her daughter? A powerful emotion like jealousy makes Marie a criminal in the life of her daughter. While Olivia, who is the perfect epitome of a Mentor, to begin with, is protective and compassionate in her relationship with Diane, ends up being jealous of her Mentee, of one who looked up to her. Was this a sign of love between them or was it a sign of insecurity between them? The mind is hijacked by this powerful emotion, relationships are ruined, a happy family destroyed leaving the reader with the feeling of distrust and exposing the most haloed bond between a mother and a daughter, a sense of contempt, loss, and betrayal. An unconventional piece of writing leaves the reader pensive and shocked. What begins as a fairy tale reading ends up in a ghastly story of a girl whose heart has been struck and jabbed by the very dagger of jealousy.