Analyzing Evil: Margaret White From Carrie

[Music] hello everyone and welcome to the 19th episode of analyzing evil in this video we'll be covering the fanatically terrifying margaret white from stephen king's carrie margaret is one of the more terrifying mother villains in the horror genre owing to her abusive nature extreme zealotry and her backwards views on the world around her she's a character that leaves you with questions on how exactly someone develops into such a person and in this video i'll be answering those questions by going through the novel to fill you in on some of the more sinister details surrounding margaret's character and background that were left out of the classic film starring piper lorry to explain how someone can develop into the woman we end up seeing on screen for those who haven't read the book i highly recommend you give it a read as it's quite the thrill and it's a rather short read clocking in at just under 200 pages for those who would rather listen than read there's always the option of an audiobook version which you can easily obtain from our sponsor for this video audible i'm sure a great many of you are familiar with audible by now and for good reason audible has the largest audiobook library available and offers countless hours of entertainment through not only audiobooks but podcasts news articles magazines and much more on audible you can listen to audiobook versions of the many novels that i featured in episodes of analyzing evil like carrie to familiarize yourself with the characters in these videos or to refresh your memory on the subject i myself often listen to these audiobooks to aid in my research for these videos and the best part is you can listen to them anywhere and on virtually any device like a smartphone tablet or even an amazon echo and once you've downloaded them they're yours to keep forever right now you can go to audible.com vial or text vial to 500-500 to get a free 30-day trial as well as a credit good towards anything available in their expansive audio library the best part is you get one of these credits free each month when you're a member and if you don't like what you choose you can exchange it for another so go to audible.com vial or text vile to 500-500 to start listening to audiobooks you've seen mentioned on analyzing evil or your favorite picks today now without further ado let's begin our journey through the troubled psyche of margaret white not much is given to us on margaret's background in the film but in the book we're given just enough about margaret's life as a child and as a younger adult to make some inferences about just how she grew into such a righteously overzealous woman as she grew older according to the book margaret white was born and raised in martin a small town which borders chamberlain and sends its tuition studies to chamberlain's junior and senior high schools her parents were fairly well to do they owned a prosperous night spot just outside the modern town limits called the jolly road house margaret's father john brigham was killed in a bar room shooting incident in the summer of 1959 aside from this excerpt we get a description of margaret as a young girl from mr morton earlier in the novel who tells us that margaret once told a teacher that the lord was reserving a special burning seed in hell for her because she gave the kids an outline of mr darwin's beliefs on evolution margaret was also suspended twice as a student and one of those times was for beating a fellow classmate with a purse for smoking a cigarette now the thing about a child like margaret is that most people would assume she was raised to act the way she does but i think it's fairly clear that margaret formed her views in her own way outside of her family's influence there's no doubt she was raised a christian but what points to her developing these views on her own is the testimony of her stepfather harold allison and her mother judith allison whenever margaret would speak to them she would hound them for living in sin and tell them they were going to hell that god had put an invisible mark on their foreheads but she could see it and they were damned her mother tried to be nice and help her daughter but to no avail and earlier on in this section her mother had even expected her daughter to remain a spinster for the rest of her life a few things point to how margaret could have developed the way she did without the influence of like-minded parents the first is her own personality and innate prudishness margaret as i said was likely raised a christian but at the same time lived in a home where her family operated a roadhouse a popular night spot at the edge of town it was through these conflicting paradigms that margaret saw the contradiction between the gospel she was receiving at church and the reality of her family's sinful profession perhaps she was influenced by a pastor or other members of her church who spoke ill of her family's establishment only fueling her already distasteful views of her family's lifestyle whether from doctrine alone or the help of a member of the clergy this influence is what caused her to lash out at others in her school perhaps taking out her frustrations at her own family on her classmates and doling out punishment to those who chastised her as well as she likely suffered some of the same bullying akin to her own daughter the kids at kerry's school made fun of carrie as prey and carrie and i imagine margaret was an even more extreme version of what she shaped her daughter to be when she was a child this is of course speculation but it seems highly probable that this or something similar was the case for margaret the second component to margaret's development was her father from what little information about margaret's mother that we receive we can say that she was definitely not as fanatically religious as her daughter was but what of her father i don't think he was either but i think it's likely that john brigham was the one responsible for upholding the gospel in the brigham household and thus had a bond with margaret that the rest of the family didn't share this is another bout of speculation on my part but this could explain why margaret's religious views boiled over into the extreme after the death of her father in 1959 when she was 30 years old as she started attending fundamentalist prayer meeting shortly after her father's death we learn here as well that margaret had been sheltering herself from the outside world well into her adulthood as she still lived with her parents at the time of her father's death this sheltering which may have come in some small part from her parents but more likely had been self-imposed her entire life would vastly contribute to her development into a righteous fundamental christian as she raised blinders over her own eyes to keep out anything but the truth of the lord our third component to margaret's development that according to her mother must have spiraled her into further zealotry was a suspected miscarriage of a child margaret's mother speculated on this after a brief stint in the hospital a month following margaret's marriage to ralph white and it was later confirmed by margaret herself when speaking with carrie towards the end of the novel it was here that her mother noticed margaret had grown even more unhinged and she raved about how an angel with a sword would walk through the parking lots of road houses and cut down the wicket overwrought with grief at the loss of a child the grief she still held over her father's death at the family's roadhouse and the line of thought that she confessed to having that her miscarriage was caused by her sinning and fornicating with ralph before marriage led margaret further over the edge than she already had been our fourth component to her development was this marriage to ralph and her possible intertwined abuse and reverence for a husband who met an untimely end and the further grief that event caused her margaret undoubtedly married ralph due to a shared view of religion and through this i imagine she developed a bond with him unlike any other she had experienced before they had first become lovers then a husband and wife who chose to live a chaste life which margaret must have found the utmost comfort in but that would only last for so long as the night carrie was conceived ralph came home drunk and forced himself upon his wife who resisted his advances but fell into a state of ecstasy once the act had commenced further damaging her mind as she succumbed once again to something she had dedicated her life to combatting sin though this fractured their relationship margaret is a woman who holds the institution of marriage in high regard and through a combination of prayer and forgiveness she went on with her married life until her husband's death her husband as explained by a neighbor in a testimonial was an intimidating and frightening man who nobody looked in the eyes or attempted to converse with in any way and according to this neighbor his eyes seemed to glow in their intensity and he carried a 38 revolver to work with him alongside his bible every day i can only imagine that margaret felt safe and not only the world views her and her husband shared but his strong presence as a righteous force for good in the world his eventual death may have taken margaret's mind back to the death of her father and the loss of another stable male force in her life akin to her father accompanied by a lack of friends or family to comfort her during her time of bereavement drove her further into grief and madness the fifth and final component of margaret's transformation into the woman we see in the film is her pregnancy and her daughter carrie in the book margaret wrote a letter to a friend five months into her pregnancy where she explained that she feared she had cancer of the womanly parts and that she'd soon be joining her husband in heaven in this same passage it's said that scholars had put forth that the reason margaret may have been ignorant of her own pregnancy was that she had linked the concept with the sen of intercourse in her mind and had blocked it out entirely refusing to believe that such a thing could happen to her seeing as she believed herself to have cancer and couldn't link the intercourse she had with ralph months prior to her current pain i think this is a suitable way to frame her misunderstanding of her pregnancy more traumatic than the pain she experienced during this pregnancy was the way she delivered carey alone in her home in her own bed she went through hours of screaming agony as she labored to bring carrie into the world when someone had finally called the police and they arrived on the scene they found margaret covered in blood with a butcher knife laying on the floor beside her with carrie nursing at her breast assuming she had cut the umbilical cord herself with the knife it's only later in the novel that we find out that margaret had intended to kill carrie when she was born using the knife this was the first time margaret intended to murder her daughter but not the last already having the thought of sin attached to her daughter in her mind margaret would find another affirmation that her daughter needed to be given back to god when she found her levitating her bottle above her head in her crib when she was only a year old here we learned that margaret's grandmother had the same talent carrie does which terrified margaret as she had believed her grandmother to be a witch and earlier in the novel we learned that researchers had come to conclude that females were carriers for the telekinetic trait and held a recessive gene for the talent which could only be awakened by the same dominant gene in a male producing a female child and only a female child these researchers explained that it typically manifests in incestual relationships and it's highly unlikely that two people who carry one of these genes will meet one another and produce offspring that have the talent this might be a hint from king that perhaps margaret suffers some sort of genetic malfunction that causes her to behave the way she does due to incest in her family tree as not only does margaret explain that her grandmother would whirl the sugar bowl like a dervish with a witch-like glow in her eyes but that she would drool and make the sign of the evil eye all about when she did so and sometimes panted like a dog on a hot day indicating that perhaps the grandmother was the result of an incestuous relationship and suffered a mental malady that often comes of these relationships this is speculation on my part but it could partially explain why margaret is predisposed to the type of personality that she has let me know what you think of this notion down in the comment section now back to the second attempted murder we learned that margaret would have gone through with it had it not been for ralph staying her hand now this could be an error stephen king made with his timeline as it's stated by both the testimonial and margaret herself that ralph had died before carrie was born or perhaps he was meaning for margaret to be under the impression that her own inability to kill her child was the heavenly influence or memory of her late husband nevertheless this murderous intent would bring itself to the surface once again when carrie was exposed to the partial nudity of a sunbathing neighbor according to this neighbor margaret went into a mad animal-like frenzy when she saw carrie standing next to her banging at the sky and clawing at her face and dress leaving both torn then squatting down like a frog with a crazed look on her face drool running down her chin and her arms opened wide as if to crush rather than embrace her daughter as she ran towards her i'd like to note here that margaret's inclination towards self-harm had manifested itself before in a desire to kill herself when she had miscarried her first child and after her husband had raped her and i think it would be fair to say that in these moments of great distress her mind drifts back to these thoughts as she mutilates herself once margaret has taken carrie into her house it was then that she in her crazed state much akin to the way she described her own grandmother advanced towards a three-year-old carrie with her husband's bible and butcher knife in hand to cut the sin out of her daughter once again here though she was stopped by what you might call another instance of the divine or rather the demonic in margaret's mind the telekinetic assault on her home by her young and distraught daughter once the clamor had ceased margaret fainted and when she awoke she likely found within her a new fear alongside her fear of the almighty a fear of her young daughter now this is everything we have to go off of to give us an idea of how margaret has formed into the woman we see on screen in the film to sum it up we likely had a naturally prudish girl whose developing mind may have had a handicap in the form of an incestuous family history who was given a common christian upbringing that through the influences of either those in her church or just the bible itself escalated to fanatical levels causing her to develop highly negative views on sin and the sins of those around her namely her family's unsavory business in her early years and the sight of her witch-like grandmother performing telekinesis she must have had an attachment to her father as once he died her psyche broke down even further and she found salvation in new fundamental teachings and an advancement of her hatred of road houses and sinners through a husband she found comfort in shared ideology a lover and a new male figure in her life this however was quickly corrupted by premarital intercourse a subsequent marriage a bizarre bout of marital rape which she both loved and loathed and then the death of her husband and quote unquote sickness in the form of her pregnancy with her daughter that brought forth a child made from sin and who was molded after the witch she had feared in her grandmother she's a woman who so desperately turned to god and jesus christ throughout her life that it has encompassed her personality and left her an isolated wrathful and harmful woman to not only others but herself as well it's with all of these things in mind that we can turn to both the market we encounter in the book and film as it pertains to carrie's story and understand why she is who she is and why she does what she does here and what would be her final few days on earth we find a woman who preaches the gospel in every second of her life and to everyone around her finding god and the horrid absence of his love in the everyday sins of human life we have a mother who is highly abusive of her daughter lashing out at her for her imagined sins as she does to herself so overwhelmingly frightened at the prospect of her daughter succumbing to the innate sin she sees within her that her only solution is violence and forcing her daughter into isolation in a closet to have her pray in front of her god for hours to expunge the sin from her soul a woman who is so ignorant and willfully so of the female body that she doesn't bother to explain to her own daughter the process of becoming a woman and how to handle it fearing the very thought of her own daughter advancing from childhood into the unending sin of adulthood further poisoning the development of her own child she's a woman who is so fearful of the outside world that she abhors the thought of her daughter interacting with anyone other than herself and finds it necessary to dress herself all in black cover chin to heel and fabric not letting the world gawk at her exposed flesh and imposes the same prude restrictions upon her daughter she's a woman who's so ultimately consumed by the sin she has experienced in her life real and exaggerated that her solution to her daughter's want for independence and unnatural talent that she views as inherently demonic is once again to turn to murder to sacrifice the blood of the lamb as she says as abraham did unto isaac righteously zealous overly prude violent and deranged margaret white is a woman who has suffered a fair share of tragedies and abuse in her life but who ultimately cannot overcome the negative aspects in her life instead seeing the world through a lens of constant sin that must be corrected and justifying her terrible thoughts and actions as the will of god margaret white is ultimately a great example of how and why a person can develop into a broken and morally backwards person whose unfortunate upbringing negative influences and abuse can turn someone into an abusive person themselves with a twisted justification for their crimes real and attempted and is yet another sad case of a person guided along the path of evil thank you all for tuning in to this episode of analyzing evil and i hope you've enjoyed what are your thoughts on margaret white feel free to let us know down in the comments and leave a suggestion for a villain you'd like to see featured in a future episode while you're at it if you liked this video give it a like and click subscribe if you want to see more videos just like it appearing in your feed a big thank you to everyone who's already subscribed as it's one of the best ways you can support the channel as of making this video the channel has almost reached the 100 000 mark and that's an incredible number to say the least if you'd like to support the channel even further you can do so by signing up as a patron over on patreon by clicking the link on screen or down in the description thank you to everyone who has signed up so far and a most vile thank you to the names you're seeing on screen now as always thanks for watching and i'll be seeing you soon you

Channel: The Vile Eye

Views: 135,896

Keywords: Carrie White, Carrie, Margaret White, Stephen King, Horror, Sissy Spaeck, Piper Laurie, Evil

Id: tihF7bFKvW8

Length: 17min 23sec (1043 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 24 2021