True History Of The Kelly Gang

8 Pages 1903 Words

d’s family only allows them a small hut with a sheet to separate the children from the parents. Ned and his siblings often hear late night intimate conversations that Ellen Kelly and her men have. They are also exposed to views of strange men in her bed. This affect on Ned even causes him to go as far as to describe to his daughter an intimate tale of himself and her mother:
“Then we was playing what they call THE GAME you never knew so
many hooks and buttons and sweet smelling things we took them off her
one by one until she lay across her bed there were no sin for so did God
make her skin so white her hair as black as night her eyes green and her
lips smiling. She were a teacher with a mighty vocation pulling and drag-
ging when I took her she were slender and strong as a deer her breasts
small but very full. . .” (Carey 202)
Whether Ned intentionally takes an interest in these relations or not, he is definitely exposed and effected by the intimate relations of his mother and fulfills the first criteria of the oedipal complex.
Ned continuously challenges himself to be the man of ...