De Zonde van de vrouw - Connie Palmen
Summarizing the chapter on Patricia Highsmith pages 50-62
- Het debut novel was 'Strangers on a train' Alfred Hitchcock based a film on this book with the same title.
- The fictional character Tom Ripley could be seen as Patricia's Alter Ego, she wrote 5 books with him as the main character, the themes of these books are identity (p50)
- During this writing period, she signed letters in her corresponding with 'Pat, alias Ripley'
- Her parents got a divorce 9 days before she was born, she met her father for the first time when she was twelve.
- She had a particular love-hate relationship with her mother. The mother is extremely honest, she told Patricia she wasn't wanted as a child and she tried to drink turpentine to during her pregnancy to get out of the situation.
- Her mother remarried quite soon, Patricia didn't get on with stepfather, although she did choose to officially take his surname when she was 23 years old, she was using unofficially from 4 years old.
- The first 6 years of her life she was living with her grandparents so her mother and stepfather could focus on their career in advertising.
- He is a lesbian woman, she feels like a man in the wrong body.
- She often has relationships with older woman, longing for something she never got from her mother. (p58)
- Patricia loves to drink and feels it is necessary to get the truth, the dark and violent side of her subconscious mind which she is suppressing since her childhood. (p56)
- Just like the characters n her work she is constantly looking for ways to get escape from her detested self
- Sometimes she likes to call up people to threaten them with a twisted voice or she would send letters to the newspaper under a pseudonym to spit her political ideas. (p57)
- She is manic depressed, every new love starts with a manic period, with an extreme sexual drift and untamed hunger to work. Although all her affairs finish because she can't be intimate with them on a personal level. She feels attracted to woman who-who reduce and criticize her.