The Making of Pig Wife - Part One - Early Inspiration
It’s been a long time since I started this process, so it’s hard to remember exactly where the idea of Pig Wife came from. I wanted to make a story about a girl who went through a portal to another world, inspired by books like Coraline or The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe… only much darker and psychedelic. In this new world, anyone the residents didn’t like was dehumanized and designated an animal so they could be treated poorly. Unfortunately, this is a common tactic in the real world. We label outsider groups as “less than” because of superficial disagreements over anything, like politics, religion, or whether it is necessary to wash your feet in the shower.
Mary gazes into the portal to hell.
Rebellious, smart, sarcastic Mary came to me as the main character in this adventure. Someone who was growing up too fast, who felt burned by the world at a young age, who has lost respect for authority, who doesn’t know where she fits in, who longs to run away from it all. I saw Mary as a girl who acts hard to cover up her vulnerability as a defense mechanism from getting hurt. She’s in denial about how much she’s been burned in the past and instead looks at her childhood through rose-tinted glasses. She thinks that her current situation is a hell she needs to escape, but she’s her time underground serves as a massive proverbial “time out” that makes her see how poorly she’s treated her mother, who’s been desperately trying to save Mary every step of the way.
In addition to the “portal to hell” trope, I was also fascinated by the tragic stories of parents who lock their children up in isolation for years. These stories inspired the character Pearl, who keeps her son Ed locked up first in his room, then in an abandoned gold mine for his entire life.
Ed hallucinates demons after being locked underground his entire life.
Sometimes these cases of neglect were so severe that the children never learned language or social skills, and were labeled “feral.” One of the most famous and heartbreaking cases was the story of Genie (born 1957), a little girl who was locked in a dark room by her father from the time she was 20 months old to the time she was rescued at age 13. The father forbid any family members from seeing her and kept her strapped to a children’s toilet or crib the entire time. She never learned language or how to walk properly. Genie was discovered when her near-blind mother took her to town on a rare occasion and they accidentally walked into a social services office. The social worker immediately saw that something was wrong with Genie, and was shocked when she asked her age and found out she was 13. Genie was so small and malnourished that she looked about six years old. The social worker immediately called the police, exposing one of the most severe cases of neglect and abuse of all time.
Beautiful young Genie, a victim of isolation abuse.
The case of Genie makes me sick to even think about. As a parent of two small children, it’s difficult to fathom how someone could do this. In my research on the reasons that drive parents to abuse their children in this way, I came across some common themes that fascinated me. These include protection, avoiding humiliation, and control. These three reasons aren’t the only ones that result in a child being raised in isolation, but they were the ones that stuck out to me as I developed the character of Pearl.
The protection motivation is often fueled by religious mania or doomsday fears. By keeping their children locked away from the dangerous conditions or ideas in the outside world, they justify locking their children up because it keeps them safe. This was the motivation behind the Anglo family, made famous by the film The Wolfpack. Their father was convinced the neighborhood on the Lower East Side of Manhattan was too dangerous to let his family go outside.
The six brothers in the Wolfpack learned about the world through movies and often acted out their favorites, like Reservoir Dogs.
When humiliation is the motivation, it’s simply because the victim has disgraced the family in some way, either by their actions or their mere existence. Alice Marie Harris (1932-1942), known by the pseudonym Anna, was locked in her grandfather’s attic from the age of five months to six years because she was an illegitimate child. In statements taken by police after her rescue, both Anna’s mother and grandfather referred to her with the pronoun “it.”
Control is the most obvious motivating factor in my opinion. The desire for control is the main motivation for a myriad of abuse tactics. People who isolate people to control them are often sexual predators and physically abusive as well. Blanche Monnier (1849-1913) was locked in a small room by her mother for 25 years simply because she didn’t approve of the man Blanche wanted to marry.
A drawing of Blanche’s discovery. There’s also a photo, but it’s too disturbing for me to post.
Man, this shit is depressing, huh? Researching this book involved a lot of crying in front of pages of terrible abuse stories, and it hurts me to even bring it all back up again. Next time I’ll talk about something more fun I had to research, like when we visited an old gold mine in Bisbee, Arizona. The series isn’t out yet, so I’m not sure any of this is interesting to anyone. But after years of working on this thing, it is nice to think back on the seeds that started it all. If you want to be the first to know when this book finally drops, please take a moment to sign up for the Prone mailing list.
Thanks for reading! See you next time.
