Father-Daughter, Mother-Son Relationship

I have been waiting to express my feelings about the relationship between Ned and his mother for a while now, and I would love to see if anyone can relate it to one of the larger themes we have been talking about in class. ( like family, masculinity, father-daughter relationships etc. ) I believe that when Ned's father died in his heart ( when he discovered the red dress) and when he actually died, Ned developed an emotionally incestuous relationship with his mother. He and his mom both raised the children, took on the worries for supporting the family and performed hard labor to keep up the land just like a husband and wife would.

He is protective of his mother to an unhealthy degree, to the point where he is going to jeapordize his own life to get he out of jail and as a result abandoning his wife and unborn child (p321). This is not an attack on his morals changing, because I think he has always been this obsessive about his mother. He should realize that as a mother she would want him to go on and live a productive life, but he does not see her as a caregiver he sees her as this flawless creature who means the entire world to him. His brother comments on his undying love for his mother on pg 195, he call their mom Ned's girl. Then on I feel like he only like Mary because he reminds him of his mother, they are both described as slender with dark hair and pale white skin, then they both have children by the same man! I think he alludes to his mother on p. 213 when he says, " Her lips were so wide and very nicely shaped I never saw the like of her before she were so wonderfully familiar. Hmmm I wonder what familiar means lol!