The Protection Needed by Phoebe from Caroline

41 and dinner every night; to wake with him in bed beside her, not in some anonymous hotel room a hundred or five hundred miles away” 435. Caroline states her need for affiliation when she is worried about Phoebe who wants to get married to a down syndrome man, named Robert. She cannot imagine Phoebe to be independent and have another life with Robert. It is not about Phoebe who has not ready to build a family, but it is about Caroline who has not ready to be leaved by Phoebe. Murray 1964 stated that in our cultures, it is less acceptable for a male to be dependent and to seek the comfort of others. But in some cases, there would be possibility for men to be more dependent than women p. 104. It depends on how they passed their childhood and the surroundings treated them. Caroline should not be worried about Phoebe because she will learn many things when she gets married. “She stared at the crown molding, thinking it needed painting, while a difficult truth struggled to the surface. “I can’t imagine my life without her,” she said softly 442.” This worry comes up from Caroline thinking. Smith 1992 noted that some general observations suggest that the parents of affiliation-motivated children put more emphasis on close family ties and conformity to parental authority. For her, the unity of her family means everything. She never imagines to live separately from Phoebe. The affiliative motivation is defined as the desire to establish, maintain, or restore warm relationships with other people Smith, 1992, p. 53. Her attraction to David Henry is a drive coming from inside her heart, which misses the love from others. 42 She was still trying to compose herself when the door from the vestibule to the waiting room swung open. A man in a brown tweed overcoat hesitated in the doorway for a moment, his hat in his hand, taking in the yellow textured wallpaper, the fern in the corner, the metal rack of worn magazines. He had brown hair with a reddish tinge and his face was lean, his expression attentive, assessing. He was not distinguished, yet there was something in his stance, his manner ―some quiet alertness, some quality of listening ―that set him apart. Caroline’s heart quickened and she felt a tingling on her skin, both pleasurable and irritating, like the unexpected brush of a moth’s wing. His eyes caught hers ―and she knew. Before he crossed the room to shake her hand, before he opened his mouth to speak his name, David Henry, in a neutral accent that placed him as an outsider. Before all this, Caroline was sure of a single simple fact: the person she’d been waiting for had come. 34 When she is asked to take David Henry’s daughter far away from her mother, Caroline is doubt. He convinces her of what he decides is right. He just wants to protect his wife from sorrow that she would get if she still keeps for the baby. The baby with down syndrome is indicated to have heart complications and he does not want his wife spending her life to mourn this baby’s death. She knows there is still a mistake in this case, but remembering all the good things that David Henry did to the patients who could not afford the fee. “This was why she had come to love him, for his goodness” 38. This memory easily erases all of the bad things she has thought about him. Someone who has affiliative motivation tends to prioritize in socializing with other people Murray, p. 102. Caroline has already had the picture of David Henry in her mind. She knows all the good things made by him. In her opinion, one bad thing cannot change the image of him. She thought of that night, almost twenty years ago now, when he’d woken and lifted his head from the desk and caught her in the doorway, naked in her love for him, the two of them as vulnerable to each other in that moment as it was possible to be. 309