Character Analysis
Child Bride
Margaret Street is very anxious about spending all of her time in Valerian's Caribbean house. Sure, it might sound like paradise, but the truth is that the house is on a pretty deserted island. Also, Margaret is way younger than her husband and has often had a difficult time living in his household: she's uncertain and totally under this old guy's thumb. As the book tells us: "She was seventeen [when she got married] and couldn't even give (the servants) orders the way she was supposed to" (2.27). To make things worse, Valerian has ordered her not to treat their servants like friends, even though Ondine is pretty much the only other woman that Margaret is ever around.
So Margaret is pretty depressed. She has never been able to enjoy anything in her life other than the stuff Valerian pays for. For example, we find out that when she was first married, "Margaret lived for the concerts Valerian took her to, and the dinners for two at restaurants and even alone at home. Otherwise it was solitude with the coloured couple floating mysteriously through the house" (2.28). And even when she started becoming friends with these "coloured people," Valerian ordered her to stop. So she's kind of stuck between a (really lonely) rock and a (really depressing) hard place on this one.
Clingy and Ill
As she got older, Margaret continued to crave the company of people other than her husband and two servants. So she's thrilled to have the young Jade around. Jade's role, while at the Street mansion, is to be Margaret's friend. We're guessing that Valerian's "no black friends" rule has bent a little.
As friendless as she is, it's no surprise that Margaret is obsessed about seeing her son Michael. She does everything she can to get Michael to come visit her in the Caribbean for Christmas, but it all seems pretty delusional. It seems like Michael wants nothing to do with her, but she just can't accept that.
Margaret seems to think she has a much deeper bond with her son Michael than she actually does. Michael won't ever visit her, yet she insists: "I am special to him. Not as a mother, but as a person. Just as he is to me" (2.28). As readers, though, we can tell that this is a pretty creepy thought, even though it's kind of sad that Michael won't come see her.
We know from the get-go that Margaret is sad. But what we don't find out until later in the book is that there's actually something psychologically wrong with her. For starters, she suffers from bouts of confusion that suggest she has some sort of neurological condition. At this moment, we might truly feel bad for her. But it's only a matter of time before we realize that her psychological disorder (whatever it may be) has caused her to harm those around her.
A Bad Mom
Our opinion of Margaret shift radically when we find out that Margaret abused her son Michael when he was just a baby. She used to stick little pins into him and put out cigarettes against his skin in places where the marks wouldn't show. When it comes time to explain herself, Margaret says she did it because she was tired of being totally controlled by other people.
Margaret's husband Valerian has always been totally in control of their relationship, and as a baby, Michael controlled her by always needing her. In the words of the narrator: "She could not describe her loathing of its prodigious appetite for security—the criminal arrogance of an infant's conviction that while he slept, someone is there; that when he wakes, someone is there; that when he is hungry, food will somehow magically be provided" (8.24). In other words, she needed something to make herself feel in control, and hurting Michael seemed to be the only outlet.
She also unapologetically insists that Michael has not been permanently damaged by what she did to him, since he was too young to understand. She still believes that Michael loves her, and she still wants to go move in with him whether he wants her to or not.
Yikes. It seems like nutty old Marge would be perfectly at home in a Tennessee Williams play.
Timeline