When We Were Bad

Charlotte Mendelson’s When We Were Bad is a very good and very funny re-telling of the classic myth of Medusa. You may remember Medusa was a stunningly beautiful woman with gorgeous flowing hair, who was blamed for desecrating the goddess Minerva’s temple. As punishment, Medusa’s lovely locks were turned to hissing snakes (talk about a bad hair day). In the end, she became a monster whose stare had the power to petrify anyone who looked directly at her. Historically, there have been many interpretations of the myth, everything from using it to blame strong wives for their hen-pecked hubbies to holding overbearing mothers culpable for their sexually neurotic children.

Mendelson’s tale begins with an Old Testament allusion to Genesis–‘It is beginning’– so we know this is a book of epic proportions. Throughout the novel, the point of view shifts from Claudia Rubin, the matriarch, to Norman, her weedy husband who describes his wife as ‘Beauty, with his testicles in her hand,’ to Frances, the obedient but sexually conflicted daughter, to Leo the weak son whose act of rebellion topples the entire family’s facade. Claudia’s other daughter, Em, is ‘too sleepily fragile for independence’ and her son, Sim, at 30 ‘still lives in his boyhood bedroom.’ As Mendelson tells the tale of the Rubins’ descent into family hell, she skillfully overlaps these shifts in point of view in such a way that they seem to burst from Claudia’s head like Medusa’s snakes.

Claudia has literally and symbolically petrified her family. Her demands shape every character’s perspective to the point that they can’t think without her. She commands their loyalty, insisting they are either ‘in this family or against it.’ Her children are frozen in their adolescence and her husband derives most of his pleasure from writing about the life of a minor scholar.

Like Medusa before the snakes, Claudia is a beautiful woman. She’s ‘a fertility symbol made of praline.’ The novel opens with the wedding of her eldest son, Leo, but instead of the bride as the vision of beauty for all to behold, all eyes are ‘drawn in one direction’ to Rabbi Claudia Rubin. She’s ‘tall and distractingly voluptuous,’ the mother of all mothers. One of the themes of the Medusa myth that Mendelson cleverly plays with is the one exploited by Freud holding strong mothers responsible for the sexual inadequacies of their sons. In order to be free sexually, the interpretation suggests, sons of Medusa must metaphorically behead their mothers. Leo jilts his bride at the altar, but it’s his mother he’s really trying to abandon. Leo begins his symbolic beheading by cutting his mother off from her source of power: the respect of her community and the adoration of her son.

Claudia’s character consumes everyone, but in a lovely symbolic moment of self-awareness toward the end of the book, Claudia discovers she’s also consuming herself. She realizes her children and her husband have to confront themselves before they ever will be free of her, and she must let them do so before she becomes a monster.

Despite the weighty nature of the book’s themes, we loved its satiric tone, its barbed wit and its swift pacing. Claudia is a fascinating character in a novel full of fascinating characters, but we decided in the end what Mendelson is really saying to all sons and daughters is ‘grow up’ and ‘stop blaming your mother.’