In her recent essay about Marilyn Monroe, “A Rumbling of Things Unknown,” Jacqueline Rose reminds us that Marilyn Monroe was with little question ‘born on the wrong side of the tracks.’ Marilyn spent her childhood moving from one foster home to another in Los Angeles, living for a few snatched years with her mother who had reclaimed her before being taken away, watched by her daughter, to a mental home. When Marilyn was sent to an orphanage at the age of nine, she protested she was no orphan, since her mother was still alive, and this was something she continued to insist upon until the end of her own life.
In later years, Marilyn Monroe observed that while her 'childhood experiences had given her an understanding of the needs of the young, sick and persecuted,' her own ‘lack of any consistent love and caring' had resulted in her having 'a mistrust and fear of the world.'
In her final interview for Life Magazine in 1962 she said, 'I was brought up differently from the average American child because the average child is brought up expecting to be happy.'
Reference : Jacqueline Rose “A Rumbling of Things Unknown” in The London Review of Books, Vol.34 No.8, 26 April,2012, pp 29-34.
This news and observation item first appeared on the goodenoughcaring home page at http://www.goodenoughcaringcom
on Friday, April 20th, 2012
