What if what an antagonist wants causes them to lose everything truly important? This narrative is explored in The Dutch House by Ann Patchett. Her antagonist, Andrea Smith, is obsessed with living in the Dutch House, owned by Cyril Conroy. She’s a single mother of two young daughters, and you get an impression she’s lower middle class. She’s younger than her Cyril; yet, she seems to have power over him. After they get married, he seems to be afraid of her, strange for a self-made man who’s emotionally vacant to those he loves.
When she sees the inside of the mansion for the first time, you get the impression she wanted to live in this house for a while, at least had admired it from afar. Her love for the Dutch House is in stark contrast to Cyril’s first wife, Elna, who loathed it the first time he took her on a tour.
Throughout the novel, Andrea maneuvers her way to possessing it, first through marriage, then getting Cyril to sign legal papers giving her full possession of the house and his real-estate conglomerate. (His two children be damned!) When the father dies, his two children are left with nothing, except an educational trust for Danny.
Fittingly, several years later, Andrea dies in the house, as she suffers from dementia or aphasia (her daughter Norma isn’t sure which). From Danny and Mauve’s vantage point, Andrea got her comeuppance in the end. Ironically, it’s Danny’s movie star daughter, May, who buys the house in an ironic twist of fate. (Neither Norma nor Bright, Andrea’s two adult children, want the Dutch House.)
Andrea’s Jezebel-like grip on Cyril and the family is almost haunting. One glance, one statement, everyone in the Dutch House complies (except Mauve). And after Cyril’s untimely death, she banishes Cyril’s children and their staff who worked for Cyril for years. After all, Andrea’s desire was to possess this house for herself.
The story is narrated through Danny, the youngest child of Cyril and Elna Conroy. He’s in grade school when his father dates Andrea. During the course of their dating relationship, especially when she first gets acquainted with the Dutch House, she seems more intrigued with the house than with his two children.
“Andrea was well. Of course, she was. It had been Andrea’s goal for years to get inside the house, to loop her arm through our father’s arm when going up the wide stone steps and across the red-tiled terrace.”
From the time Andrea meets the children to after she marries their father, she’s cold to his children. It’s unclear if that’s her personality she feels like they were in the way.
Yet, her character is well developed with dimension and you get peeks into her vulnerability especially once her husband dies. Then, through unfortunate circumstances, the relationship between Andrea and her stepchildren become irreparable. First, she’s not directly informed of her husband’s death but overhears.
Mrs. Kennedy from the father’s office calls Mauve at school. Then, the two children go to the hospital to pay their respects to their recently deceased father. When they arrived home, they informed the staff, then Andrea walks in.
“The look of terror that came over Andrea then – that look has stayed with me all these years. Long after I could no longer see my father’s on the hospital bed, I could still see the fear on Andrea’s face….the truth was we had come this far and had never given Andrea a thought. Our cruelty became the story: not our father’s death but how we had excluded her from it.”
As the reader, I felt a small semblance of pity for Andrea, realizing she should’ve been notified and able to give her respects to her husband before they moved him to the morgue. This piece of narrative along with the cemetery drama increases Andrea’s dislike for Cyril’s kids.
When Andrea announces she’ll have Cyril buried in a Protestant cemetery, where she’d be next to him one day, Mauve calls the Catholic priest, Father Brewer. He comes to the house and meets privately with Andrea. Somehow he convinces Andrea to have Cyril buried at the Catholic cemetery.
When Andrea passes Danny in the hall, she says, “He’ll be alone now, just the way you want it. Well good for you. I’ll be damned if I’m going to spend eternity with a bunch of Catholics!”
Danny feels Andrea’s resentment. “Andrea’s hurt was her prize blue ribbon, and in return what I felt in those blinded days just after my father’s death was not the grief for who I had lost but the shame over what I had done.”
Shortly, Andrea kicks Danny out (Mauve has her own apartment). “When your father died, that’s when you showed yourself. Both of you. He left this house to me. He wanted me to have it. He wanted me to be happy here, me and my girls. I need you to take him [Danny]- go upstairs and get his things and leave. This isn’t easy for me.”
Andrea justifies her hateful actions as if she’s reacting normal, instead of as a vindictive narcissist. Yes, you realize she’s a villain, but the author provides enough dimension to realize she’s not being hateful for enjoyment, but out of her own belief of injustice.
After they leave, she maintains the house well through the years; after all, it’s her love. And might her greatest love, because her children grow up to loathe her.
In the end, it’s Danny she shows affection and adoration to. In her mental decline, she has mistaken adult Danny for her late husband. “Andrea was smiling if such a thing could be called a smile. She was glad to see my father again.” And the depth of her adoration is felt as she nudges her small head into Danny’s chest. Strange but poignant. She loved Cyril and the Dutch House even though neither were able to really provide love and comfort.
The only one who treats her with the utmost dignity is Elna Conroy, Cyril’s first wife and mother of Mauve and Danny, who later reunites with her children as adults. In a strange twist, Elna nurses Andrea to the end, someone the Dutch House didn’t possess.
Yes, the villain received her greatest desire, but it became her greatest downfall. In the end, it doesn’t seem like she understands this, at least, not like everyone else connected to the house and her life could.
How about you? What villain had a misplaced desire? Please share in Comments below. Thank you.
Featured Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash.