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Post by fairplay28 on Jul 7, 2011 14:22:26 GMT -8
But not till after Pat, who by the way, would have been better off if Dee had just reverted to her depressed ways of spending too much tie in bed.
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Post by raggedycheryl512 on Jul 7, 2011 15:16:19 GMT -8
My best friend from childhood had her first child in Feb. 1976. It was a bad labor and C-section, and she was really sick -- physically -- afterwards. But through the next year, she had such bad depression and mood swings that her husband was considering taking the baby himself and leaving her (she was basically unable to care for her herself). Fortunately, she got the right combination of medications that brought her back to stability. I'm sure this is what is now popularly known as post-partum depression. I wonder when that term became part of everyday conversation? I think now it would be unavoidable on a soap to ignore that. But in 1976 I'm sure no one had ever considered that.
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Post by destclev on Jul 7, 2011 19:08:49 GMT -8
She wanted a life of ease and importance. Hard to see full-time care of a baby fitting into that model. If that's all she wanted she would have married Roger, who was offering her exactly that. Did I say that was all she wanted? No, I didn't. Obviously, she wants more than anything to be a Ryan, but when it came right down to it, not enough to espouse the hard work ethic the Ryans love and indeed require. There's explicit discussion of this at several different points in these first several years.
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Post by fairplay28 on Jul 7, 2011 19:19:07 GMT -8
If that's all she wanted she would have married Roger, who was offering her exactly that. Did I say that was all she wanted? No, I didn't. Obviously, she wants more than anything to be a Ryan, but when it came right down to it, not enough to espouse the hard work ethic the Ryans love and indeed require. There's explicit discussion of this at several different points in these first several years. You are so right. How could I have ever been silly enough to disagree with what you said rather than what you were thinking, especially since the subject has been explicitly discussed many times.?
However, it seems to me that anger and depression, not laziness are at the root of her problem, as well as her inability to make a meaningful connection with another person or to feel wanted and safe and loved. Delia needs, as Maeve described in today's episode, to be the center of attention, everyone's star, because that's the only way she can feel she is special and wanted. But much as she loves money and luxury (and really, who doesn't and what's wrong with that anyway?) no amount of it would ever give her what she craves and she knows it.
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Post by destclev on Jul 7, 2011 20:33:08 GMT -8
Did I say that was all she wanted? No, I didn't. Obviously, she wants more than anything to be a Ryan, but when it came right down to it, not enough to espouse the hard work ethic the Ryans love and indeed require. There's explicit discussion of this at several different points in these first several years. You are so right. How could I have ever been silly enough to disagree with what you said rather than what you were thinking, especially since the subject has been explicitly discussed many times.?
Not sure what you mean. You did disagree with what you thought I said, not what I said.
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Post by destclev on Jul 7, 2011 20:43:32 GMT -8
However, it seems to me that anger and depression, not laziness are at the root of her problem, as well as her inability to make a meaningful connection with another person or to feel wanted and safe and loved. Delia needs, as Maeve described in today's episode, to be the center of attention, everyone's star, because that's the only way she can feel she is special and wanted. But much as she loves money and luxury (and really, who doesn't and what's wrong with that anyway?) no amount of it would ever give her what she craves and she knows it. [/color][/quote] It's an established fact -- established by Delia herself on numerous occasions -- that she does not want to work. She doesn't want to hold a job, she doesn't want to keep house as an exchange with a husband who will work (either Frank or Roger), she wants a life of ease and importance. I think that much has been amply demonstrated.
Is that all she wants? Of course not. Everyone wants to be loved and appreciated, and she wants more than anything to be a Ryan. But that set of desires does not obliterate the first set. What I said originally, and still maintain, is that Delia was no more industrious before the baby was born than she was after. To Frank, it probably looked like more of the same.
Is she industrious now, two years and more since the birth? No. She lies around in bed in her slip waiting for Patty to come home. Once in a while she helps out in the bar, but she always looks resentful when she does so.
Was she experiencing postpartum depression after LJ was born? Probably. But as was noted above by other posters, not me, selfishness/laziness is not incompatible with PPD.
Just as wanting a life of ease and important is not incompatible with other psychological or psychiatric problems. But the psychiatric problems do not necessarily nullify the bad behavior.
Of course we don't all have to see this the same way. Why should we?
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Post by fairplay28 on Jul 7, 2011 21:41:14 GMT -8
Debbie, Industrious? really? Isn't that a word we use to describe ants?Psychiatric problems may not nullify bad behavior in your book but they can cause it in mine. Dee suffers from depression. That's why she lies around in bed all day - except when she's lying in wait for Pat - when she does. Healthy people do not enjoy doing nothing. She was vey energetic and even happy to work, during the brief reconciliation with Frank.
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Post by destclev on Jul 8, 2011 5:22:54 GMT -8
Debbie, Industrious? really? Isn't that a word we use to describe ants?
Judy, in a word, no. You quoted the dictionary yesterday, and I'll return the favor today.
in·dus·tri·ous [in-duhs-tree-uhs] –adjective 1. working energetically and devotedly; hard-working; diligent: an industrious person.
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Post by destclev on Jul 8, 2011 5:27:01 GMT -8
Psychiatric problems may not nullify bad behavior in your book but they can cause it in mine. Dee suffers from depression. That's why she lies around in bed all day - except when she's lying in wait for Pat - when she does. Healthy people do not enjoy doing nothing.
Okay, then, by your logic we can all just stop talking about Delia, because her psychiatric problems caused everything she did or didn't do, so there's nothing to discuss.
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Post by fairplay28 on Jul 8, 2011 5:29:47 GMT -8
Not by my logic. By my logic, it makes her even more interesting.
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Post by fairplay28 on Jul 8, 2011 5:47:15 GMT -8
Debbie, Industrious? really? Isn't that a word we use to describe ants?
Judy, in a word, no. You quoted the dictionary yesterday, and I'll return the favor today.
in·dus·tri·ous [in-duhs-tree-uhs] –adjective 1. working energetically and devotedly; hard-working; diligent: an industrious person. Thank you. Anyway, I don't necessarily think being industrious is a virtue, nor is not being so a vice. Industrious seems like a very Puritan Work Ethic value judgement to me.
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fantine
Wearing of the Green
Posts: 29
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Post by fantine on Jul 8, 2011 13:19:04 GMT -8
I think Delia is kind of lazy, depressed or not. As soon as she married Frank she couldn't wait to quit her job at the phone company, even though she only had a tiny apartment to take care of. That newlywed period - when Frank was still so adoring - should have been the happiest period of her life, but still she couldn't wait to stop working even though she and Frank were never exactly well off. And she grew up knowing a working wife (and mother) Maeve, who was her mother-figure. A little crazy or not, Dee is kind of allergic to work (at least this version is; the revamped version of Dee as portrayed by Randall Edwards enjoyed her "Crystal Palace"career)
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Post by fairplay28 on Jul 8, 2011 13:48:42 GMT -8
Can you really call Delia lazy after watching her tracking down Jill's secret. Her adrenaline was flowing. She was indeed a busy beaver, a buzzing bumblebee, a lioness on the hunt!
Would she be better served if she put her time to more productive purpose? Perhaps. But she can't do much of anything, except make trouble. She certainly excels at that, and good troublemaking takes a lot of energy. Is it a wonder she is tired so much of the time?
She also, as many have pointed out, endured knowing her husband was having an affair for most of the marriage and that could make even a balanced person depressed. She could have left him. She should have left him. She is pretty enough to get another man and never have to go back to the phone company, but she needed to be a Ryan, so she needed to stay.
And now, she is pursuing Pat with an energetic vengeance.
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Post by jwinks on Jul 8, 2011 14:36:14 GMT -8
well I don't know if anyone else can, but I can call Delia lazy. I did it on page 1 of this thread and I'll do it now.
Delia IS lazy. That's my opinion, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.
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Post by gladrags on Jul 8, 2011 18:25:06 GMT -8
Can you really call Delia lazy after watching her tracking down Jill's secret. She's not lazy when it comes to getting what she wants, that's for sure. And perhaps she is lazy as a means to an end, as well.
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Post by dustygal on Jul 9, 2011 1:54:04 GMT -8
Personally, I think Dee runs on adrenaline much of the time~ Dusty
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Post by forte on Jul 9, 2011 6:02:51 GMT -8
Dusty, I think you're right. Then, when the adrenaline runs out, she crashes. It explains the energetic and the lazy Dee.
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Post by bethp0201 on Jul 9, 2011 6:38:01 GMT -8
Now we're thinking bi-polar too!
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Post by bethp0201 on Jul 9, 2011 6:42:12 GMT -8
You are correct, Frank, to his credit did not use the words lazy and selfish. The judge asked if Dee's behavior had gone beyond selfish or careless, but exhibited an emerging pattern of instability.
While Frank never described the state of their home before the baby at this hearing, we do know from other accounts that she was neglecting the home to get even with him for being with Jill. Still he didn't seem to think it was just more of the same.
He said she got much worse after the baby was born. He noted that she had been excited about taking care of a baby, but once it was born she couldn't even get up the energy to give him a bottle. He thought she would get her energy back but it didn't happen and in fact he often found the baby having cried himself to sleep, and Dee the same. His explanation was that the baby brought out her childish instincts.
He also said that Ma and his sisters (which sister? Mary, we've never seen that and Siobhan and Kathleen were out of town, weren't they?) began giving her a hand. In big ethnic families, the girl's mother usually helps out when a baby is born. Since Dee's mother was dead, it was only right that Ma would step in, especially as Frank really wouldn't have had time to do much what with his job and school.
In 1967 I worked for an agency that supplied two weeks of a home health aid after the birth of a baby to women whose families had been victims of the holocaust and who didn't have a mother or aunt to turn to.
Frank said Siobbhan stopped by 3-4 times a week to stay with LJ until dinnertime so Dee wouldn't feel trapped. Siobbhan must have been going to school in the city at that time!
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Post by forte on Jul 9, 2011 7:04:08 GMT -8
How would Frank know what went on at home? He was either at work, at law school, or at Jill.
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