THE BAD SEED

I never entirely swallowed my adopters’ story about my parents being killed in the war. In fact I jumped straight to the conclusion that I was a bastard “from the gutter”. That is what I told my best friend the very next day. Later I really tried to believe my adoptive parents’ story, but seeing the film “The Bad Seed” when I was in my late teens, brought up a whole lot of new thoughts about the matter.




Outline of the plot:


Christine Penmark comes to believe that her young daughter Rhoda is responsible for the death of Claude Daigle, a boy at school who won the penmanship medal that Rhoda felt that she deserved. Christine's suspicions are magnified when she discovers the medal in Rhoda's possession. Next the handyman Le Roy is "accidentally" set on fire after taunting Rhoda with accusations about the murder of Claude.

Gradually Christine becomes certain in the belief that she, an orphan, is the daughter of a convicted murderess and has managed to transmit an hereditary "bad seed" to Rhoda.


I began to wonder about my mother – was she a murderer?  A prostitute?  A lunatic?  I was once again working on the premise that I was illegitimate, in itself evidence enough of being a Bad Seed: and my supposedly terrible behaviour confirmed me in the belief. No wonder I had been told never to talk about it.

This is what Anita says about bad seeds:

‘Adopted people were [almost] all given away once. No matter what the situations surrounding our births, one thing was for certain. Our mothers gave us away.

Did we want to be given away again? Not a chance. So we tried and we try and we try some more. We grateful ones want to do whatever our adoptive parents tell us to do because we don’t want to get thrown out again. Grateful adoptees take the safe route through life. They buy safety, paying for it with guilt. They buy safety by saying, "Look how good I am. Don’t ever throw me out."

The Bad Seeds go down another road, possibly more risky physically but emotionally just as harrowing. They buy safety by saying, "Look how bad I am. Show me you really love me with all my badness. Show me that you won’t throw me out."

Grateful adoptees are always trying to prove something about themselves. Bad Seed adoptees are trying to prove something about their adoptive parents.’
Taken from a posting on BastardGrannyAnnie’s blog. Click here to read it all.







Of course, if I had been a good little girl and performed according to my adopters’ hopes and expectations, my fantasies about my real parentage might have been a lot less unpleasant.

Perhaps I would have been the daughter of a noble young lord, tragically in love with the kitchen maid, but forbidden to marry her by his tyrannical Papa . . . maybe at the age of twenty-one I would inherit a grand estate . . . Oops! I forgot! Grand estates are only for first born legitimate male offspring . . .

I don’t think I took my worries all that seriously, anyway. It didn’t make much difference. I already knew I was no good.