The Woman Who Walked into Doors (Doyle)

VIOLENCE and LOVE

It seems that there is a special kind of connection between violence and love when kids enter the age of adolescence – according to the world of Roddy Doyle's “The woman who walk into doors”. Especially boys appear in general to be more menacing versus girls and consider themselves having the right to do so, to speak to or make comment on girls in indecent manners. As if girls in someway or another had treated them bad or deliberately sexually attracted them in a promiscuous way. And the boys have to keep distance by being rough and rude to not fall in the trap and become bewitched and lost for ever. As if it was the girls' fault.

It looks like that these boys' behavior is social and cultural inherited because their way of acting and speaking seem to have a touch of experience they probably yet do not possess; they are talking as they were grown up men – but they are imitating and socializing themselves to adult men's life.

The problem is just that the adult men doesn't seem to protect their daughter's – on the contrary they actively harm them, “My father called me a slut the first time I put on mascara” (45) and they even blame them for being treated bad! Men are absent but they directly define the world of women and indirectly that of boys. It seems to be a bad environment for both boys and girls to grow up in. A world were their fathers cannot be trusted emotionally.

When love is out of sight depravity and violence reign.


PARENTS and CHILDREN

One day Paula understands that Charlo has something in mind regarding their teenage daughter. He looks at her with hatred in his eyes and starts humming. Paula suspects he intends to violate her physically or sexually. Of what she has bad experiences. There is something going on, she does'nt know what, but perceives the situation very intimidating.

She gets completely crazy.

And as I understand, in that moment she would be able to die for her child. Nothing else than survival matters in that instant. It's just a question of pure instincts to survive. It's a mother who acts with the reptilian brain to defend her child.

It is true that she has long experiences of his incredible violence which has made her watch every move he makes.

His humming awakens a primal force within her giving terrible power - and she doesn't a moment think of the consequences of her actions. She could kill just to save her daughter's honor. The awful punches she distributes at the man's head with the skillet just confirms that her will to defend do not put up any limits. She wants the best for her child; she does it out of plain love.


READING LIST

Doyle, Roddy (1997). The woman who walked into doors. London: Minerva


PS

THIS WORLD of MEN

Of course I agree with your interpretation of the environment of men Paula is depicting, about men's harassment of women.

The author Roddy Doyle is a man. I'm a man. Does this by nature make us evil towards women?

Of course I've experienced bad behaviour in relation to women, but not at that extent Doyle pictures it as you describe. Even so, I understand nevertheless that it could happen. How come? It's really scary to know that this world of men's violence against women I have next to me – and within myself.

I figure there are circumstances in life or society that degenerate men to the kind I have come about in the novel. What are these conditions? Something tells me it has to do with the economic welfare of a society. Maybe it's a naive view and to abstract, but I think it's a good topic of conversation, to begin with, in order to improve a woman's life among men.