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| 9 | * ''Literature/OneQEightyFour'': Tengo's father forced Tengo to come along on his NHK fee collection route every Sunday, even if Tengo was sick. This happened for several years until Tengo finally had had enough and- with the help of a teacher- managed to convince his father to allow him to choose how to spend his Sundays. Even twenty years later, Tengo is still weary of Sundays and shows signs of PTSD symptoms whenever that day of the week of rolls around. |
| 10 | * ''Literature/The39Clues'': This is most certainly the case with Ian and Natalie Kabra. [[spoiler: Their mother Isabel verbally degrades them on a regular basis, and it's left unclear whether their father treats them similarly or whether he simply doesn't notice or care about what Isabel does. Ian and Natalie love and fear Isabel simultaneously, while believing that they lead the perfect lives because of their family's extensive wealth.]] Then Isabel takes it to a new level in the final book of the first series, ''Into the Gauntlet'', when she [[spoiler: shoots Natalie in the foot.]] |
| 11 | * ''Literature/TheAbsolutelyTrueDiaryOfAPartTimeIndian'': Rowdy’s dad physically abuses him on a regular basis, which is implied to be why Rowdy is so quick to violence. |
| 12 | * ''Literature/AdventureHunters'': [[spoiler: Lisa's]] parents were truly awful. First they abandoned her in the woods because she was TheRuntAtTheEnd and when she miraculously finds her way home and cries in happiness to see them again, her dad punches her because he believes crying is weakness. Her mother doesn't acknowledge that she came home at all. She runs away from home afterwards. |
| 13 | * ''Literature/AdventuresOfHuckleberryFinn'': Huckleberry Finn's [[TheAlcoholic alcoholic]] dad beats him, verbally abuses him, takes his money to buy whiskey, leaves him to live on the streets, and at one point kidnaps him and keeps him hidden in the woods. In ''Literature/TheAdventuresOfTomSawyer'' it's implied that he also abused Huck's [[MissingMom late mother]] -- "They used to fight all the time." |
| 14 | * Creator/SimonaAhrnstedt has had one case of this in all of her three novels so far. |
| 15 | ** Wilhelm Löwenström of ''Literature/{{Overenskommelser}}'' abuses his own children until his son Edvard becomes a serial abuser [[TheSociopath sociopath]] and his daughter Sofia becomes an [[ExtremeDoormat extreme doormat]]. While we don't know exactly what happened between him and his wife Harriet, she has become ill from unhappiness. But after his niece Beatrice becomes an orphan and has to live with him, she becomes [[EvilUncle her uncle's]] new favorite victim... |
| 16 | ** Illiana's parents in "Betvingade" are really bad as well. Her father is tyrannical, her mother is cold-hearted. They have no love for their daughter, and they even threatened her in front of the king! |
| 17 | ** Gabriel's father in "De skandalösa" seems to have fitted into this trope as well while he was alive, so much that Gabriel ran away from home when he was 16-years-old. Gabriel's mother was also afraid of her abusive husband. |
| 18 | * While both of Sunny's parents in ''Literature/AkataWitch'' use corporal punishment, her father is excessive. He is also never emotionally supportive of her. |
| 19 | * ''Literature/AnandasFall'': |
| 20 | ** Leonardo's mom sometimes throws bad swings at his face and then pulls at the last moment to avoid making contact. This confuses Leonardo because he isn't sure if it actually constitutes child abuse because his mom neither makes nor intends contact when she feels like punching him in the face. |
| 21 | * ''Literature/TheAmyVirus'': |
| 22 | ** Cyan's parents financially and emotionally abuse her, [[{{Gaslighting}} gaslight]] her, isolate her from her friends, confiscate any kind of her music and instruments they can get their hands on to keep her from her favorite hobby, and even [[spoiler: threaten to have her institutionalized]] when she starts to rebel. [[spoiler:Her mother eventually has a HeelRealization and becomes TheAtoner, while her father just gets worse. This culminates in Cyan's mother forcibly divorcing her husband and kicking him out of her and her daughter's life so he can never hurt Cyan again.]] |
| 23 | ** According to Eroica, her mother physically abused her back when she was alive, [[spoiler: which is one of the reasons [[AFriendInNeed why she helps Cyan run away from her parents]]]]. |
| 24 | * Creator/VCAndrews, both the woman herself and her [[OutlivedItsCreator ghostwriter]], use this a lot. |
| 25 | ** All over the place in the ''Literature/CasteelSeries''. Heaven is neglected by her [[spoiler:step]]father Luke since he believes that Heaven was the cause of her mother Leigh's death. Speaking of which, Leigh went through a particularly horrible example of this with her own mother Jillian, who [[spoiler:refused to believe that Leigh was being raped by her stepfather Tony and actually believed that (14-year-old) Leigh had seduced him]]. It gets worse in the prequel ''Web of Dreams'', where Jillian [[spoiler:intentionally used Leigh to 'distract' Tony so that he wouldn't tire Jillian out with his need for sex, which she believed would ruin her youth and beauty]]. |
| 26 | ** Corrine from the ''Literature/DollangangerSeries'' didn't really start out as abusive, but her obvious self-centeredness and greed led to her keeping her children locked up for three years [[spoiler:and she eventually decided to just poison them to get rid of them once and for all (and succeeded with one of the younger kids)]]. |
| 27 | ** Damian Adare in ''Literature/MySweetAudrina''. He abuses his illegitimate daughter Vera, and his obsession with getting the First Audrina 'back' drives him to emotionally abuse the Second Audrina. [[spoiler:It gets worse when it is revealed that the two Audrinas are indeed the same person, and that he has been gaslighting her for years.]] |
| 28 | * ''Literature/AnneOfGreenGables'': In this series, Anne goes through several homes and orphanages before being taken in by the Cuthberts, many of which were abusive and cold. |
| 29 | * Almost every family mentioned in ''Literature/TheApocalypseAccordingToMarie'', sometimes to BlackComedy points, excluding only the Parks and Walls. |
| 30 | * ''Literature/BastardOutOfCarolina'': Bone Boatwright, the main character, was born out of wedlock to Anney, a teenage mother. Anney marries Daddy Glen, who molests and rapes Bone. [[spoiler:Bone later leaves Anney and Glen to live with relatives while her mother still stands by Glen despite him repeatedly abusing her young daughter and ''walking in on him raping her.'']] |
| 31 | * ''Literature/BazilBroketail'': It is mentioned that both Lukash's father and his mother were abusing him as a child. |
| 32 | * ''Literature/BennyRoseTheCannibalKing'': Desiree's mother isn't physically abusive but treats her horribly emotionally, destroying the most beloved of Desiree's belongings specifically to hurt her. |
| 33 | * ''Literature/BlackDogs'': Trent is forced by his sorcerer father to perform ritual bloodletting on unwilling women before killing them. If he refused, his father would do it instead, except more slowly and less mercifully. Trent even tried killing himself to avoid this a number of times, but he would be brought back to life using a sacrifice of one of the aforementioned women. |
| 34 | * The Kid's father from ''Literature/BloodMeridian'' is only briefly seen and discussed in the very beginning of the book, but it's apparent that he's this type of parent. The father became an alcoholic and [[MaternalDeathBlameTheChild resented his son]] for indirectly causing his mother's death, called him a creature straight to his face, and although he was a schoolteacher in the past, he never bothered to teach the Kid how to read. It says something that despite all the crap the Kid goes through after running away from home, he never seemed to even consider going back at any point. |
| 35 | * ''Literature/BridgeToTerabithia'': Janice Avery, Jess and Leslie's bully of a classmate, has an abusive father. For her, it was a FreudianExcuse, in that she's the school bully. A point of heavy ValuesDissonance is how Janice's abuse is treated. It's mentioned that a kid blabbed it to the entire school and everyone, including the teachers, knows. No one bothers to call the police or even sympathize with Janice. It's instead treated as a point of embarrassment that the kids tease her about. Leslie tells her to act ignorant and eventually the others will forget it. |
| 36 | * ''Literature/BrokenLoveSeries'' Mitch Masters sells his firstborn son, later tries to kill him for money and nearly kills his second child. Mario Fulton pimps out his own daughter, and used to beat her as a child. |
| 37 | * ''Literature/BruceCovillesBookOf Spine Tinglers II'': In ''The Elevator'', Martin's father is emotionally abusive, always berating his son for being weak and timid. |
| 38 | * ''Literature/TheCampHalfBloodSeries'': |
| 39 | ** ''Literature/PercyJacksonAndTheOlympians'': Gabe, Percy's stepfather, verbally and physically abuses him for years, and it's revealed Percy's mom only married him because his human stench protected Percy from monsters. Discovering this -- and realizing Gabe's started abusing his mom too -- finally makes Percy crack. |
| 40 | ** [[JerkassGods Ares]] is emotionally and (implied to be) physically abusive of Clarisse, mocking her for trying to impress him with a dangerous quest and disparaging her for being female. He's shown to be her greatest fear in the ''Stolen Chariot'' side story, and even at the end of the Battle of Manhattan it's noted she looks like she's expecting to be hit when Ares is congratulating her on single-handedly slaying a drakon. |
| 41 | ** ''Literature/TheHeroesOfOlympus'': |
| 42 | *** Jason and Thalia's mother, Beryl Grace. She was always drunk and acted like a spoiled child, constantly arguing with Thalia (who was the more responsible of the two), and effectively emotionally abandoning both her children because she couldn't stand that Zeus/Jupiter was unable to stay with her due to his own duties as king of the gods. She eventually gave Jason away to Zeus's wife Hera/Juno (though Thalia didn't know that and simply thought Beryl had abandoned him), and then turned on Thalia for "betraying her" by calling the cops on Beryl over her actions. |
| 43 | *** Marie, Hazel's mother, actively (if unintentionally) cursed her daughter and resented Hazel for it when bad things started happening. |
| 44 | * ''Literature/CanYouSpareAQuarter'': Jamie's parents call him unwanted, an idiot or good for nothing, only buy the bare minimum of clothing and regularly beat and rape him. [[spoiler:During the climax his father almost rapes the boy to death]]. |
| 45 | * ''Literature/{{Carrie}}'': The title character's mother from this Creator/StephenKing book, Margaret White, whose religious fanaticism led to physical and emotional abuse upon her only daughter, whom she believed to be the spawn of the devil since poor Carrie actually was conceived [[RapeAsDrama through marital rape]]. Margaret tried to kill her once when she was a baby, and when the two had their showdown following Carrie's telekinetic rampage at the prom, she tried to kill her again, putting a knife through her daughter's shoulder before Carrie killed her by either stopping her heart telekinetically (book and tv film version) or using several knives to stab and pin her to a door (1976 film version). |
| 46 | * ''Literature/TheCatAteMyGymsuit'': [[OrdinaryHighSchoolStudent Marcy's]] father constantly berates her in nasty ways, calling her stupid, ugly, fat, a know-it-all and saying that he'll never get her married off. Her younger brother, [[AdorablyPrecociousChild Stuart]] (who's ''4-years-old,'' mind you), doesn't get off much lighter, as he's scolded for such [[FelonyMisdemeanor unmanly behaviors]] as sucking his thumb and having an attachment to Wolf, his teddy bear. It doesn't help that their mother is severely in denial, trying repeatedly to justify his actions to Marcy ("Daddy loves you very much, he just doesn't know how to show it"), and is heavily dependent on prescription tranquilizers. "I hate my father" are even the first words printed on the back of one edition of the book itself. (The book was written and is set in TheSeventies, which accounts for some of the ValuesDissonance between the characters; Marcy can see that her family's dynamic is messed up, but her father's mindset is mired so much in TheFifties that he genuinely doesn't realize he's the problem.) Towards the end of the book, Marcy’s mother GrewASpine and starts standing up to him and taking night classes, with the implications that she might eventually leave him. He gets slightly better, but doesn’t apologize for his actions or attempt to repair his relationships with his wife and kids. But he does at least stop verbally abusing Marcy. |
| 47 | * ''Literature/CatwomanSoulstealer'': Selina's mom was abusive to her. Though she doesn't go into many details, Selina does relate that her mom once broke her arm while high and angry with her. |
| 48 | * The Literature/CharlieParkerSeries: Angel's alcoholic father sold him into prostitution for six years, starting when he was just ''eight''. |
| 49 | * ''Literature/TheChemicalGardenTrilogy'': Vaughn towards Linden, who he emotionally controls to an extremely unhealthy extent. [[spoiler:''Sever'' makes it clear that ultimately, he really does love his son deeply, and the abuse is well-intentioned, but it doesn't excuse his actions]]. |
| 50 | * "Literature/TheChimney": Both the narrator's parents are a downplayed version of this. His mother is loving, but she's quite paranoid and prone to fits of fear she projects unto her child, often fueling the narrator's crippling anxiety. His father tries to counter this, but he's so neglectful and short-tempered that he never bothers to actually try and help his son. |
| 51 | %%Administrivia/ZeroContextExample* Chris Crutcher: Any novel of his will have at least one character go through this; it's damn near his trademark. |
| 52 | * ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfDorsa'': Joslyn was [[MadeASlave sold into slavery]] along with her older sister by their father, since as girls they were thought to be a waste of resources. She says selling one's own children is common among their people too, particularly with girls. |
| 53 | * ''Literature/CloudOfSparrows'': Emily was raped by her [[WickedStepmother evil stepfather]], and her brothers were regularly whipped and beaten at the slightest pretext. |
| 54 | * Creator/ChrisCrutcher's young adult novels (''Running Loose, Stotan!, The Crazy Horse Electric Game, Chinese Handcuffs, Literature/StayingFatForSarahByrnes, Ironman, Literature/WhaleTalk, The Sledding Hill'', and ''Deadline'') all have morals, but the one that appears in all these books? Child abuse is '''bad'''. Not just beatings, but verbal and emotional abuse is also given a lot of attention, especially in ''Ironman'' and ''Whale Talk''. |
| 55 | * ''Literature/TheColorPurple'': In the book, film, and musical of this Alice Walker story, Celie's [[spoiler:adoptive]] father sexually and physically abuses her, not only impregnating her twice but taking the children away as soon as they are born and giving them to the local church. Celie believes that he drowns them. |
| 56 | * ''Literature/ACourtOfThornsAndRoses'': |
| 57 | ** Azriel's father and step-mother locked him up for eleven years, letting him out for one hour a day and giving him one hour a week with his real mother. |
| 58 | ** Mor's father sold her into marriage and later on left her for the dead after she had lost her virginity to Cassian. |
| 59 | * Michael Webster's parents from the ''Literature/{{Goosebumps}}'' book ''Literature/TheCuckooClockOfDoom'', [[TheUnfavourite but only towards him]]. They are extremely doting and loving towards their young daughter, [[EnfantTerrible Tara]], [[HorribleJudgeOfCharacter who they see as an angel]], never notice [[SpoiledBrat just how disturbingly rotten she is as a person]], and in the process treat their son Michael like crap on a daily basis by letting Tara bully him and calling him a liar when he tries to defend himself. Even before Tara was born, Michael's father was mocking him as a baby for not being able to say full sentences yet and not being able to tie his shoes when he was slightly older. Michael's parents are much nicer to him later, though, when Michael is his own age again [[spoiler:and Tara is erased from existence.]] |
| 60 | * ''Literature/TheCuriousIncidentOfTheDogInTheNightTime'': Although Christopher's parents try to care for their son, their parenting still came across as abusive. In the father's case, he was verbally abusive towards Christopher, even threatening to beat him as far back as when he was a child, and even at one point physically assaulted Christopher to the point where he gets knocked unconscious, [[spoiler:and that's ignoring that he lied to Christopher about his mother's death]]. The mother, while was never outright shown to hurt Christopher, still neglected him and was said to be physically abusive towards him [[spoiler:when Christopher read her letters]]. |
| 61 | * From Creator/ChuckPalahniuk's ''Literature/{{Damned}}'', some of Camille and Antonio Spencer's parenting is questionable at best. They have negligent tendencies toward Madison, encourage her to experiment with drugs, and [[OlderThanTheyLook Camille]] cultivates [[NotAllowedToGrowUp Madison's]] image to keep her looking childlike and lies about Madison's age in public to make herself seem younger, even putting the wrong birth year on her headstone. Beyond this, the Spencers use adoption as a PR stunt each time one of them has a project coming out that puts them in the spotlight. The children they adopt are always either NonSpecificallyForeign or InspirationallyDisadvantaged, such as the child Madison mentions who has a cleft lip. Once they have served their purpose, they are PutOnABus to one foreign BoardingSchool or another and promptly forgotten. |
| 62 | * ''Literature/DanielFaust'': |
| 63 | ** Daniel's father was both an abusive alcoholic and an unmedicated schizophrenic who flew into a paranoid rage at the slightest provocation. Daniel occasionally wonders/worries how much of his father's madness is in his own blood, and nothing sends him into a murderous rage faster than seeing a child harmed. |
| 64 | ** Nadine, a noblewoman in the Court of Night-Blooming Flowers, to her daughter Nyx. Nadine makes a hobby of torturing people horrifically and is a great believer in YouHaveFailedMe, and [[TheWorfEffect Nyx has never won a single fight against a major character]]. |
| 65 | * Creator/DanielleSteel: She likes this one too. Parents in her books are either perfect or display varying degrees of emotional abuse, although one book in particular does feature a physically abusive mother. |
| 66 | * ''Daphne's Book'': In this Mary Downing Hahn book, the protagonist Jessica discovers that Daphne and her little sister are orphaned and live with their grandmother. Said grandmother is mentally unstable and unemployed; she feeds all the food in the house to [[CrazyCatLady her many, many cats]] instead of eating it herself or feeding her granddaughters. She screams and throws tantrums in the grocery store when Daphne tries to buy a particular food item they need. She's horribly neglectful, tells Daphne to her face that she "sent her father away" (in reality, he was killed in Vietnam), and terrifies the younger, kindergarten-aged girl by saying the ceiling will fall on them and kill them all. She also forbids the younger girl from going to school, calling it useless, and Daphne herself misses many days of school to take care of Grandma and her sister. |
| 67 | * ''Literature/DarkerThanYouThink'': April's father beat her because he believed her to be another man's child. When her powers began to manifest, she was forced to use them to stop him from killing her and her mother. |
| 68 | * ''Literature/DarknessVisible'': William Marsh's father is a brute, though how much of one is only gradually made [[ScarsAreForever clear]]. Lewis is so shocked about it that the abuse is never, ever played for [[DudeNotFunny laughs]]. |
| 69 | * ''Literature/DeepgateCodex'': In this series, [[spoiler:the god Ulcis]]' abuse of his daughter [[spoiler:Carnival]] lists so heavily on the ''holy shit'' meter that it might as well be breaking it. He only kept her mother alive so that he could rape her to his enjoyment, and was ''not'' pleased when she got pregnant, especially because as an angel's mother, she died in childbirth. Although he named his daughter Rebecca, he more commonly referred to her as a freak or with expletives -- she [[spoiler:calls herself Carnival as in ''carnival freak'', and [[BerserkButton WILL NOT]] be referred to as anything else]]. He had his soldiers gang-rape her often and very brutally; when years of this treatment didn't break her, he executed a vicious MindRape on her and ''hanged her from Deepgate's chains''. She got loose -- as a rather psychotic amnesiac. [[spoiler:It wasn't for 3000 years, until Carnival finally got acceptance and kinship from Dill and Rachel (and bloodily killed Ulcis), that she finally started to calm down a little.]] |
| 70 | * ''Literature/DeltanEscape'': Seems to be a common problem in Delta Sector, due to the sector's values reinforcing controlling parents. |
| 71 | ** Having already tried to force Fian to study Science instead of History by blackmailing tutors, Fian's father moves on to framing him for assault, effectively using the justice system as his own personal goon squad to control his son. |
| 72 | ** On his way to Beta Sector, Fian joins a whole group being helped out of similar situations. At one point, he helps repel a woman trying to prevent her niece and nephew leaving with their father, who was injured by their mother. |
| 73 | * ''Literature/{{DFZ}}'': Opal's parents explicitly see her as their property, despite the fact that they constantly belittle and insult her as not being good enough. |
| 74 | * In the first ''Literature/DiaryOfAWimpyKid'' book, Greg says that his father, Frank's, method of discipline is to throw at his misbehaving sons whatever he just so happens to be holding at the time and Greg even once talks about how a bad time to make a transgression was when his dad was laying ''bricks''. |
| 75 | * In ''Literature/{{Divergent}}'', [[spoiler:Tobias's worst fear is his own father who used to beat him as a child]]. Which is why he transferred. |
| 76 | * As recounted in the Purgatory of ''Literature/TheDivineComedy'', the kings of the Capet family have so chained by greed that they are willing to sell their daughters, with all the affection of pirates haggling over slaves. |
| 77 | * ''Literature/DoctrineOfLabyrinths'': The Keepers who raised Felix and Mildmay were as close to parental figures as the brothers had after they were [[ParentalAbandonment sold]] at the ages of four and three, respectively. Both of them were raised as kept thieves. Felix's Keeper regularly beat and drowned children who failed tasks or didn't obey; after his death Felix was taken in by a pimp who later sold him to a blood wizard. Mildmay's Keeper forced him to work as an assassin until he ran away at seventeen. |
| 78 | * ''Literature/DogMan'': Petey's Dad, Lil Petey's Grampa is an evil, selfish, arrogant, careless, abusive, and irresponsible father, by having no love for Petey whatsoever and had abandoned him when Petey's mom was sick; when he came back after years not seeing Petey, all he did was being mean to his son and so far tries to reveal gleefully and evily to his grandson on why his Petey's tail is so flat which maybe Petey's Father was responsible for. He isn't so kind to his grandson either; when he stole Petey's identity, he kidnaps his grandson and throws Lil Petey into a recycling bin. |
| 79 | * ''Literature/DoloresClaiborne'': This Creator/StephenKing book had a husband who, in addition to physically abusing the title character, had a decidedly unwholesome interest in their teenage daughter Selena, who suffered sexual abuse at his hands in addition to [[ManipulativeBastard manipulation]] into being afraid of her mother in order to keep her from talking about it. It is this, along with the stealing of their children's college money in order to spite her, that ultimately led to Dolores' decision to murder him. |
| 80 | * ''Literature/DontHurtLaurie'', a 1977 novel by Willo Davis Roberts, is the story of a sixth-grader (the titular Laurie) who is subject to repeated beatings and physical abuse from her mother, Annabelle, who explains Laurie's injuries to others as the result of Laurie being clumsy or stupid. To escape suspicion from teachers and doctors, Annabelle moves her family frequently and discourages her daughter from having close friends. At one point, Annabelle even tells her daughter she'd like to ''kill'' her, which understandably frightens Laurie. After a particularly severe beating in which she is knocked unconscious, Laurie finally tells her step-grandmother about the abuse, and Annabelle is forced into counseling and also loses custody of Laurie indefinitely. It's revealed in counseling that Annabelle was herself a victim of abuse at the hands of her own mother. |
| 81 | * ''Literature/DontYouDareReadThisMrsDunphrey'': The 16-year-old protagonist suffers abuse from both her parents. Her father, who left the family years earlier, was emotionally abusive and tried to pass it off as [[JustJokingJustification just kidding around]], and physically abusive--one of his last actions before running out on them was shoving his daughter so hard he knocked her out. The mother is neglectful, sitting around and being useless, letting her daughter parent her 10-year-old brother, and then finally just runs away from home without so much of a note, leaving her children to starve and freeze for a few weeks until the protagonist finally decides to tell someone what's happening. |
| 82 | * The titular character's father in ''Literature/DragomirsDiary'' is almost unreasoningly abusive and berating to his son, for no reason that Dragomir himself can muddle out. Oswald the Farmer is such a horrible dad that [[spoiler:he essentially calls Dragomir a quitter after Dragomir is revealed to have died and been brought back to life.]] |
| 83 | * ''Literature/DragonsOfRequiem'': Almost every BigBad with offspring is horribly abusive to their children. King Raem Seran imprisons his own son and allows a witch to torment his daughter; Frey Cadigus physically abused and nearly killed all three of his children when they were young; Beatrix Deus verbally assaults her son and frequently threatens her daughter into committing horrible acts, such as mass murder. |
| 84 | * ''Literature/DragonridersOfPern'' has Menolly, the youngest child of the Holder of Half-Circle Sea Hold. Her parents deplore her love of music and treat her miserably over it despite the fact that she has immense talent. When the resident Harper of the hold dies, they reluctantly allow her to instruct the younger children until a replacement arrives, but when her father hears her absentmindedly playing one of her own compositions, he beats her with his belt. When she finally grows tired of the emotional cruelty, she runs away from home and ''they don't try to find her''; only her eldest brother seems to care at all what becomes of her. |
| 85 | * ''Literature/{{Dragonvarld}}'': Bellona becomes the adopted mother of Ven, her lover's son. It turns out she's quite abusive to him, slapping Ven for asking about his father, and whipping him when he's broken her rules with a switch. |
| 86 | * ''Literature/DreamscapeVoyagerTrilogy'': Zayne's father, Judge Caraden, as seen in the flashback chapters of Skies of the Empire. He is a violent drunk who beats his wife and children. [[spoiler: It seems he murdered his wife and younger children, and framed Zayne for the crime.]] |
| 87 | * ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles'': Lord Raith rapes his daughters when they start to be a threat to his position. The Raiths are [[SuccubiAndIncubi White Court vampires]], so it gives him supernatural control over his children as well. [[spoiler:[[TheVamp Lara]] [[HoistByHisOwnPetard turned the tables on him]] and kept this fate from falling upon her youngest sister Inari.]] |
| 88 | %%Administrivia/ZeroContextExample* ''Literature/{{Dubliners}}'': Farrington in "Counterparts" receives a surprisingly sympathetic, AntiVillain-like portrayal. |
| 89 | * ''Literature/EleanorAndPark'' has the abusive ''step''father in Richie, who is frequently drunk, bullying his stepchildren, or abusing his partner Sabrina. [[spoiler:The ending hints he was planning on sexually abusing Eleanor as well.]] |
| 90 | * ''Literature/ElementalSeriesKemmerer'': Kate's mother never loved her and even tried to kill her. Quinn's mom favored her older brother over her. |
| 91 | * ''Literature/EllaEnchanted'': The title character's father is emotionally distant and controlling. Then he remarries, and Ella's stepmother and stepsisters do their best to make her life awful. |
| 92 | * ''Literature/ElsieDinsmore'': Horace is this towards his daughter Elsie at first. A strict disciplinarian, he is always scolding or punishing Elsie for the most asinine things: Going to a meadow all by herself for a few minutes, not playing a song on the piano that he wants, not reading a secular book on the Sabbath, freeing a hummingbird that he trapped in a glass jar and attempted to kill, crying (He considers crying to be babyish), and other simple things no normal person would think to be too big a deal. He deliberately tries to cut her off from every person who has shown any love and affection for her, and constantly assumes the worst in her even though other people who know her constantly tell him she's a genuinely good girl. He's also a complete idiot and yells at Elsie for being afraid of him, while completely unaware of the fact that it's his cold, unnecessarily draconic nature that makes her so afraid of him. It's not revealed until later that his stepmother, Elsie's paternal step-grandmother, also hates the child and frequently wrote letters to Horace making up a bunch of lies about Elsie for no other reason than pure contempt, which is the reason why Horace grew to hate Elsie before he even met her. It's not until the end of the second book, after Elsie recovers from a deadly illness, that he and Elsie reconcile and fix their relationship. |
| 93 | * ''Literature/AnEmberInTheAshes'' has the Commandant, who teams up with her son's rivals for succession and therefore tries to kill him. She doesn't single him out in training, but she's never imparted any maternal love (except for the first few hours of his life). |
| 94 | * ''Literature/TheEmpiriumTrilogy'': Rielle's father was once a good parent before his wife's (unintentional) death at the hands of Rielle. After this event, he began to treat Rielle incredibly coldly either by ignoring her or not showing her any affection. Growing up, Rielle was constantly reminded by him that she's a "murderer" and dangerous, as well as bringing her to the lower parts of the royal castle and forcibly drugging her whenever a storm came through. Rielle believes that he would keep her locked in a room for the rest of her life if he could get away with it. |
| 95 | * Elsdon's father in ''Literature/TheEternalDungeon'' series for no apparent reason at first and then in a strange, backfired attempt to "fix" Elsdon of his own sadism. Elsdon is understandably self-hating and mostly AxCrazy at the beginning of the series until he's given a chance to channel his own desires productively. |
| 96 | * ''Literature/EveryHeartADoorway'': It's strongly implied that a number of the students' parents are not actually very good parents at all. Nancy's parents are the nicest ones we encounter, and they are oblivious to their daughter's asexuality and take away her clothes of choice to force her to wear things that make her look more like their "little girl". [[CloudCuckooLander Sumi]] has childhood pictures of herself looking very sad, still, and meek. Kade's parents misgender him and refuse to take him back unless he presents as female according to their wishes. Jack and Jill's parents are implied to be the worst of all, and almost certainly contributed to one of their children becoming [[spoiler:a monster and a serial killer]] and the other becoming [[spoiler:a fratricidal mad scientist]]. |
| 97 | * ''Music/EvilliousChronicles'': |
| 98 | ** ''Literature/PraeludiumOfRed'' and ''Literature/PraefacioOfBlue'': Prim Marlon demoralized and [[MyBelovedSmother emotionally smothered]] her son to force him to become king. [[spoiler: She also had him possessed twice, and then there's what she did to Ney... poor neglected Ney...]] |
| 99 | ** ''Literature/TheLunacyOfDukeVenomania'': Duke Venomania's father [[spoiler: locked him in a basement for years because of his deformity, and when he finally let him out it was to work as a servant.]] |
| 100 | ** ''Literature/EvilFoodEaterConchita'': Banica's mother force-fed her when she didn't finish her leftovers and harshly punished her besides. |
| 101 | * ''Literature/FairestOfAll'': Mahon and Siofra both suffer these. First, Mahon's father tries to ''burn him alive'' thinking he's a changeling. Later, both his parents simply leave him in the forest and tell him never to return. Similarly, Siofra's mother tried to drown her and later Siofra ran away after being told she wasn't human and to go back where she came from (with the faeries). |
| 102 | * ''Literature/TheFatalDream'': While not physically abusive, Johnson is ignorant of his daughter Wendy's accomplishments and sees her only as a crutch to get him a higher position in the business world by having her marry her AbhorrentAdmirer Norman Gregson, the son of a rival. When she gets engaged to Steven instead, he confronts her and threatens to disown her on her wedding day. |
| 103 | * ''Literature/FatAngie'': Connie, Angie's mother, is of the emotionally abusive variety. When Angie is diagnosed with [=PTSD=] as a result of both a suicide attempt and her older sister's disappearance in Iraq, Connie merely dismisses it as something Angie can use to act out and cry for attention. She continually berates Angie for her weight, claims she sucks the family's finances dry even though Connie is the one who sends her to a therapist that her daughter clearly doesn't like, is convinced Angie is trying to make the family the laughingstock of the town, and even claims outright that the only thing she can genuinely support Angie in is an attempt to lose weight. Connie also comes across as a major {{hypocrite}} because she always berates Angie for not trying hard enough to improve her life, but when Angie gets accepted into the school basketball team, she straight up tells her to quit, convinced she only got in out of pity and nothing else. She refuses to make any effort to genuinely help her daughter in any way, and claims her issues are little more than some game Angie is playing to ruin everyone's lives even when it's clear that it isn't. She also refuses to scold her adopted son Wang for the many cruel things he does to Angie [[spoiler: and this is mainly because she's secretly having sex with his therapist to cope with her divorce and her older daughter's disappearance.]] Needless to say, she is the main contributor to many of Angie's crippling self-esteem issues. [[spoiler: It's even implied the only reason Angie's sister went to Iraq was because Connie forced her to in a misguided attempt to make her prove she was actually worth something... and basically led her to her death.]] |
| 104 | * ''Literature/FeralsSeries'': Cynthia Davenport is of the emotional variety towards Selina, neglecting her for much of her childhood in favor of scheming up ways to gain power for herself, as well as manipulating her to achieve her own ends and carelessly putting her life on the line. [[spoiler: She even attempts to [[OffingTheOffspring murder her]] when Selina makes it clear she has no intention of becoming like her.]] |
| 105 | * ''Literature/TheFifthBorn'': Odessa, the protagonist of this novel by Zelda Lockhart, was physically abused by her mother while her father emotionally and sexually abused her. It doesn't help that she's the youngest of five kids and was 3-years-old at the start of the story. |
| 106 | * ''Literature/{{Flight}}'': Several of Zit's foster fathers sexually abused him. |
| 107 | * ''Literature/{{Forbidden}}'': Lily Whitely. Not only is she an [[AlcoholicParent alcoholic]] and [[ParentalNeglect incredibly neglectful]], sometimes spending weeks away from the house at her boyfriend’s, but she is also [[FinancialAbuse financially abusive]] as well as emotionally and verbally abusive towards her oldest child, Lochan, even reminding him on more than one occasion that the only reason she married their father was because she accidentally got pregnant with him. |
| 108 | * ''Literature/FourKidsInFiveEAndOneCrazyYear'' has a few. Max's father was a domestic abuser who made the family move out of the state for several years to avoid him, and Ah Kum is noted as always losing her smile when her father picks her up after school and taking a while to start smiling again the next day, with him driving her hard to succeed, to the point where she is afraid to show him a report card with a ''95'' on it. |
| 109 | * ''Literature/FoxDemonCultivationManual'': Rong Bai's father Tu Shan Bi. In flashbacks he throws Rong Bai -- who's just a child at the time -- to the ground for resting without permission, and years later he whips Rong Bai for bringing Song Ci back with him. |
| 110 | * ''Literature/{{Freckles}}'': In this Creator/GeneStrattonPorter book, Freckles is horribly afraid that his parents were this, and otherwise disreputable, and so he comes of bad blood: |
| 111 | -->''Does it seem to you that anyone would take a newborn baby and row over it, until it was bruised black, cut off its hand, and [[DoorstopBaby leave it out in a bitter night on the steps of a charity home, to the care of strangers]]? That's what somebody did to me.'' |
| 112 | * In ''Literature/AFrozenHeart'', a tie-in novel to ''WesternAnimation/{{Frozen|2013}}'', Prince Hans' father, [[GreaterScopeVillain the king of the Southern Isles,]] emotionally manipulates his thirteen sons and encourages violence within his large family so that they'll be indoctrinated in his SocialDarwinist mindset. |
| 113 | * Zoey Ashe, the protagonist of ''Literature/FuturisticViolenceAndFancySuits'', had very little luck with her mother's boyfriends, one of whom filmed her showering as a teenager and then held her down over a hot stovetop when she confronted him about it. When she tells the story to Will Blackwater, he notes that he can sympathise - his father used to [[ChainPain whip him with a chain]] for such minor failings as a poorly-ironed shirt. |
| 114 | * ''Literature/{{Galilee}}'': |
| 115 | ** Cadmus Geary treats his sons and grandsons as assets in his big business, he doesn't hide the fact that should they push him too far, he'll get rid of them one way or another. Garrisson doesn't take it well. |
| 116 | ** Cesaria is of unstable mood and her tantrums have the nasty tendencies of leveling cities and killing lots of innocent people. The children are rightfully afraid of her. But they hardly ever flee or say no to her, valuing their life to much for it. |
| 117 | ** Nicodemus, an absolute nymphomaniac who cheats on Cesaria with about half the woman on the globe (although she gladly does the same in return), doesn't shy away from showing off his genitals to his 6-year-old daughter, and cares more about his horses than his children. |
| 118 | * ''Literature/GeraldsGame'': In this Stephen King novel, Jessie (the protagonist) is sexually molested by her father once. This was especially traumatizing to her because until then, they had [[DaddysGirl a very close, loving relationship]]. |
| 119 | * ''Literature/TheGirlFromTheMiraclesDistrict'': Nikita's father Ernest is so terrifying, she and her mother Irena spend Nikita's entire childhood running away from him. When he catches up to his daughter, he kidnaps her, tortures and cuts off two of her fingers to mail them to Irena as a boast. Not that Irena herself is much better -- she often verbally abuses her daughter and withholds food from her until the girl does the task she's been given perfectly. |
| 120 | * In ''Literature/TheGirlNextDoor'' by Jack Ketchum, Meg's caretakers are abusive of both her and her sister Susan. It gets worse when you realise the book was loosely based on the real-life case of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Sylvia_Likens Sylvia Likens,]] which is still considered to be one of the worst, if not the worst, case of child abuse in the United States during the twentieth century. |
| 121 | * ''Literature/GirlsDontHit'': Joss' dad would make her tell exactly what boys were thinking about doing with her when they'd call, as “crude mind games” in her words. |
| 122 | * The ''Film/GodzillaVsKong'' movie's {{novelization}} portrays [[Characters/MonsterVerseApexCybernetics Apex Cybernetics CEO Walter Simmons]] as one. Not only does Simmons make a routine out of [[ToughLove constantly testing his daughter and heir Maia's wits]] to ensure that she still meets his standards, he also deliberately left her in the dark about several relevant details of the HollowEarth expedition before sending her off to join them; an expedition which carries a ''serious'' risk of mortal harm for all human parties physically involved. And the darkest thing is, Maia suspects this was merely Simmons' idea of a joke. |
| 123 | * ''Literature/GoToSleepAJeffTheKillerRewrite'': There are rumors of Randy having an abusive father. The second time Randy meets Jeff, he's prepared to pour bleach on him, which he says his father has done to him before. WordOfGod says that Randy is lying and his parents are rather normal, although they may be neglectful of him instead. |
| 124 | --> '''Randy:''' One time my dad pulled a bottle of bleach on me. You know, a well-known cleaning product. He heard about all the shit I cause, though that dick is no saint. He claimed that I needed to clean my act up. So, he held me down and poured it all over me. It stung like a bitch but meh, I got out of it fine. So, now it’s your turn. |
| 125 | * ''Literature/TheGoblinEmperor'': Maia's father despises him and put him out of sight, out of mind at some back-country estate, while his guardian Setheris is emotionally and physically abusive. |
| 126 | * ''Literature/{{GONE}}'': This series has Orc, whose stepfather hammered a electric drill through a vein in his wrist, Bug, who was beaten pretty badly by his mom's boyfriend and apparently had to go to boarding school for "his own safety" and Dekka Talent, who was slapped twice across the face and disowned by her father because of her sexuality. A case could also be made for Diana Ladris, who was implied to be "perved on" by her mom's boyfriends when she was in the shower at the age of twelve. |
| 127 | * ''Literature/GoneGirl'': Amy's parents, Rand and Marybeth Elliot, fall into the emotionally abusive category. But ''not'' intentionally, believe it or not; as the authors of the ''Amazing Amy'' books, they based the title character, who excels at everything she does with zero effort, off of the real Amy. This unfortunately set a bar Amy could never reach and forced her into a life of being compared to her fictional self, which didn't do her developing psyche any favors; one of Amy's earliest memories is being at a birthday party and not understanding why the other kids were having fun. Even Nick lampshades how messed up this is, saying that creating a fake version of your daughter who's perfect in all the ways she isn't is '''not''' how you raise a mentally stable child. This turns out to be truer than Nick likes when Amy is revealed to be an unapologetic sociopath [[DisproportionateRetribution who will gleefully ruin people's lives over the smallest things]], [[{{Determinator}} no matter how much time and planning she has to put into it]], and she sets the story's plot into motion by staging her own disappearance and making it look like Nick might have killed her, all because she found out he was cheating on her. Amy's parents somehow get even worse when this happens, acting more like their fictional daughter has gone missing instead of their real one. The biggest problem with all of this is that they're both '''''child psychologists''''', so if they weren't ignoring the damage they were doing to Amy, then they at least didn't realize it. [[TheCobblersChildrenHaveNoShoes Either way, they really should have seen this coming]]. |
| 128 | * ''Literature/GoodnightMisterTom'': In one of the most harrowing treatments of the subject in a children's book, Willie is regularly beaten and starved by his religious maniac mother. [[spoiler:He is eventually found locked in a cupboard after a week's incarceration, cradling his dead baby sister]]. |
| 129 | * ''Grave Sight'': Harper and her stepbrother from this series by Creator/CharlaineHarris were nearly sold into prostitution as children by their drug-addicted parents. |
| 130 | * ''Literature/GrimoiresSoul'': When Ceyda proves too troublesome to deal with for her parents, they decide that the best thing to do is to give her a lobotomy, which causes her to run away from home near the end of Part 1. |
| 131 | * ''Literature/GuardianCatsAndTheLostBooksOfAlexandria'': Professor Chin's father would beat him, especially whenever he tried to protect his mother from him. |
| 132 | * ''Literature/HalcyonPark'': Archie and Gary's father was an abusive alcoholic, causing the two to rely on each other to protect their mother. Gary, having inherited his father's alcoholism, becomes especially passive with his own family to avoid becoming this. |
| 133 | * ''Literature/HaremInTheLabyrinthOfAnotherWorld'': The closest thing Michio has to a fond memory of his mother is watching traffic pass by because she thought it would be a great idea to take him to a beauty salon and leave him with nothing to do, and wondered why he was so bored. And that's nothing compared to his father, who decided the best way to mourn his wife's death was to side with the vicious bullies tormenting his son and bully him too, then proceeded to simply ignore the boy as if he didn't exist when he realized Michio was learning Kendo and could plausibly retaliate. All of this is [[AdaptationExplanationExtrication inexplicably omitted]] from the corresponding episode of the anime. |
| 134 | * ''Literature/HarryPotter'': |
| 135 | ** In Harry's case, the Dursleys are emotionally, verbally and, on occasion, physically abusive to Harry. Relegating him to the cupboard under the stairs of their house, hiding the letters from Hogwarts, telling people that he was a delinquent, lying to him about his deceased parents, boarding up the door to Harry's new bedroom except for a small cat door through which food is inserted...he is clearly neglected as well, as well as starved. [[spoiler:Later on it is shown, that Dumbledore himself is not much better; that while his intentions are good, he all but set up Harry to die. [[WordOfGod Rowling]] stated that "Harry was Dumbledore's puppet".]] |
| 136 | ** In Dudley's case, the Dursleys are an odd sort of mentally abusive because they raised Dudley to be a bully with an entitlement complex, and Petunia spoils him so much that he is morbidly obese up until ''Order of the Phoenix''. This is made more obvious in the last book, where Dudley finally thanks Harry for saving his life in the fifth book and wishes him luck. His parents are horrified. They also abuse Dudley psychologically through how they treat Harry, telling him what amounts to "If you don't live life by our rules, we'll treat you like this." In ''Half-Blood Prince'', the only thing Dumbledore can thank Vernon and Petunia for is not subjecting Harry to the "appalling abuse" they brought on Dudley. |
| 137 | ** Draco Malfoy at first appears to be similar to Dudley, but at closer inspection it is an Aversion, while he is spoiled and cared for, Lucius is not above calling him out on his failings at school (While slightly mocking, it was light chiding) but balances it out by supporting most of his son's interests including Quidditch. On the Flip-Side, Lucius and Narcissa are terribly racist people and impart those morals on his son, but they are hardly the only ones. While Draco's attitude is rephrensible, his malice seems to come from himself than any other place. |
| 138 | ** Severus Snape's {{backstory}} implies that his father, Tobias, was physically and emotionally abusive. For extra points on the tragedy meter, Snape spends much of his adult life handing out the same kind of emotional abuse he received from others. It's also implied that Severus' mother, Eileen, was neglectful, although whether it was because [[WildMassGuessing she hated/didn't want/was indifferent towards him]] or because she was dealing with the effects of Tobias' abuse could be debated until the Earth falls into the sun. |
| 139 | ** Voldemort's mother, Merope Gaunt, also definitely suffered some level of parental abuse. Some fans interpret it as going [[RapeisaSpecialKindofEvil even further]]. |
| 140 | ** The Blacks tended towards this with children that didn't turn up quite up to their standards, such as Sirius, Andromeda, Alphard, Marius, Cedrella Weasley, etc. Anyone who got sick of their holier-than-thou attitude and left was automatically disowned and scorched off the family tree tapestry. Being cooped up in his family's house again is brutal on Sirius's mental health; Harry, who dearly wants to escape his own "family," sympathizes. |
| 141 | ** Many, if not most, pure-blooded wizards turn into this if they have a non-magical child. Neville, whose abilities took a long time to manifest, mentions that his great-uncle went to rather alarming lengths to "scare" some magic out of him. His actual parents were never abusive, but that's an even sadder story. |
| 142 | * ''Literature/TheHeartsWeSold'': |
| 143 | ** Dee's father is an emotionally abusive drunk, and is later revealed to be [[spoiler:financially abusive as well, stealing Dee's inheritance from behind her back]]. |
| 144 | ** Riley's parents threw her out for being trans. |
| 145 | * ''Literature/HeirloomOfTheRusks'': |
| 146 | ** Art's mother Cynthia, to horrific levels. She has made a habit out of berating and physically battering her son for every small thing she can possibly blame him for. |
| 147 | * Several characters in ''Literature/HeraldsOfValdemar'' have parental abuse in their backgrounds. |
| 148 | ** Talia was a Holderkin and was expected to either become an older man's first wife or one of several at ''thirteen''. Her actual mother [[DeathByChildbirth died giving birth to her]] and the other wives, and her father, generally held her in contempt for her daydreaming nature. She was abused by one of her brothers, who saw no punishment for this as boys were valued more highly than girls. |
| 149 | ** Skif's mother died when he was quite young, leaving him up to the nonexistent mercy of his uncle, who'd only agreed to be his guardian because he thought Skif would be a free source of labor. Until running away [[JustifiedCriminal and becoming a thief]] Skif lives in his cousin's squalid tavern and is beaten regularly by said cousin. |
| 150 | ** Vanyel, in the ''Literature/LastHeraldMageTrilogy'', showed [[InTouchWithHisFeminineSide effeminate aspects]] from quite a young age, also [[{{Gayngst}} proving to be gay]]. His father Withen WantedAGenderConformingChild and was more than willing to hurt Van to try to "cure" him, calling him a "perverted catamite" at one point. He relents somewhat after Vanyel, no longer living under his roof, [[GayngstInducedSuicide nearly kills himself]] and Withen's sister and eldest daughter tell him off passionately. In the second book of the trilogy Withen is able to have a civil conversation with his son at times but thinks AllGaysArePedophiles and won't be convinced otherwise. By the third book, a good twenty years of CharacterDevelopment have mellowed him to the point where he's uncomfortable around Vanyel's lover but is determined to do better. |
| 151 | * ''Literature/HeroesSaveTheWorld'': Hannah Johnson, who is currently in foster care, has gotten this at least a couple of times. At least one of her prior parents hit her, and it is noted that her current foster father only refrains from beating her because "he takes some sort of pride from having a smart kid." He still hits his other kids. |
| 152 | * ''Literature/{{Heroics}}'': John Wechsler is the most prominent example, a CorruptCorporateExecutive who treats his daughter like a [[GuineaPigFamily lab mouse]] and has [[OffingTheOffspring tried to kill her]] several times. |
| 153 | * David's father from ''Literature/HeroinStory'' is emotionally abusive. He also attempts to cut his son off, financially, primarily out of greed. |
| 154 | * Austin, the protagonist of ''Literature/HollowPlaces,'' went through three sets of parents/guardians. His biological parents were authoritarian cult leaders. Later, he and his sister were taken in by their older brother and his girlfriend, who both eventually began to neglect them and became domestic terrorists. They forced the two children under their care to sit in the crossfire when they were beset by an attack drone, resulting in Austin suffering horrific injuries and his sister's death. Luckily, the foster parents who took Austin in were good people. |
| 155 | * ''Literature/{{Hometown|2014}}'': |
| 156 | ** The first time we see Brenda Powers, she throws a glass at her daughter's head. It just goes downhill from there. |
| 157 | ** Val's parents are heavy-handed, but not abusive ''per se''. It's her ''grandmother'' that's the piece of work. |
| 158 | *** Part of [[AlphaBitch Natasha VanDyne's]] FreudianExcuse is that her mother is emotionally abusive. |
| 159 | *** Even Angelina's father starts to tip this way when he finds out that his daughter's best friend is a lesbian. |
| 160 | * ''Literature/TheHouseOfNight'': Aphrodite's parents are manipulative and emotionally distant, and only care about her when she gives them some kind of political power. |
| 161 | * ''Literature/HowNotToWriteANovel'': In the section "A Novel Called It" (named for a RealLife account of this), the made-up "excerpt" serving as an example of this trope has a heroine who is beaten by and forced to toil for her emotionally abusive dad, valiantly hoping that her little brother Tiny Tim will be safe if she takes the brunt of his cruelty. The authors proceed to discourage the use of this trope in fiction, as it is both hackneyed and depressing. |
| 162 | * "Literature/HowToLeadALifeOfCrime": Flick's father is a violently abusive alcoholic who [[spoiler: murdered Flick's brother Jude]] which fuels Flick's actions throughout the novel. |
| 163 | * ''Literature/HuckleberryFinn'' has a father who neglects him to the point that he's nearly feral, until Huck comes into money. Then "Pap" kidnaps his son and hides him in a wilderness cabin, while working to get his hands on Huck's money. Regular drinking fits and beatings are routine to the point that Huck only notices when they're worse than usual. |
| 164 | * ''Literature/TheHungerGames'': Peeta is beaten by his mother (badly enough to give him a black eye) for burning two loaves of bread in the oven. He was eleven at the time. It's implied it wasn't an isolated incident. The second book of the trilogy implies that she also ''whipped'' him. In the face. She also wishes Katniss luck in the tournament, meaning she wanted her to win over her ''son.'' Ouch, that hurts. Katniss calls her a "[[YouMonster witch of a wife]]" and says the father is nice when she isn't around. |
| 165 | * ''Literature/{{Hurog}}'': Ward's father. Ward tries to protect his siblings from the abuse, and he himself started ObfuscatingStupidity after a particularly violent beating to avoid being ''killed'' by his father. He mentions that if they're ''both'' late for dinner, his father will focus his anger on him instead of his younger sister, Ciarra. Their middle brother, Tosten, was [[DrivenToSuicide driven to attempt suicide]] by their father's treatment, and only just rescued by Ward in time. Their mother isn't abusive per se, but she's closed-off and neglectful, spending most of her time on drugs. |
| 166 | ** Oreg's father counts as well, as [[spoiler:poisoning his (illegitimate) son to transform him into the GeniusLoci and [[PoweredByAForsakenChild forsaken child]] powering Castle Hurog was apparently only the beginning: Oreg notes that the only reason he still has a physical body which feels pain is that it "amused" his father]]. |
| 167 | * ''Literature/ICaptureTheCastle'': Mr. Mortmain is presented as a broken, pitiful man who was imprisoned for an AbuseMistake incident. But when his daughter Cassandra challenges his ennui he first hits her and then throws a plate at her. He also is verbally abusive at times and puts down her writing efforts. |
| 168 | * ''Literature/InDeath'' series: |
| 169 | ** Eve Dallas's mother was a prostitute who resented Eve's very ''existence''; her father beat, starved and raped her regularly, with plans to sell her to pedophiles, until she killed him at the tender age of ''eight''. Hers is a LineOfSightName, since her "parents" didn't see fit to give her one. This leads her to become a police officer, in order to never again be a victim. If that wasn't enough in the long [[BreakTheCutie cutie break]] that was her childhood, she winds up with Trudy Lombard, who had a ''pattern'' of fostering girls, treating them like slaves, forcing them to take ice-cold showers (the reason Eve takes 100+ degree ones), and so on. It was bad enough that just ''seeing'' Lombard again (she had come to {{blackmail}} Eve and Roarke) hit her like a ShellShockedVeteran's flashback. |
| 170 | ** Roarke himself received regular physical and financial abuse from his father, and his hatred for the man is one of the things which motivated him on his way from being a petty street-thief to topping the {{Fiction 500}}. |
| 171 | * ''Literature/{{Imajica}}'': An extreme example here. While Sartori creates a clone of [[spoiler:Quaisoir]], he gets drunk and starts finding the clone quite alluring. He ends up raping her ''mere seconds'' after she is born. |
| 172 | * ''Literature/InheritanceCycle'': Murtagh had his father Morzan, who threw his sword at Murtagh when he was three years old, leaving a permanant scar on his back; the reason why it didn't progress to anything worse was because Brom killed Morzan in a duel when Morzan was chasing down a dragon egg, and Murtagh doesn't hold it against him for doing so. |
| 173 | * ''Ironman'': Has a minor and a major example. The minor example is the main character's father, whose extremely strict discipline policies, while ultimately well intentioned, end up being a major contributor to the main character's anger issues and inferiority complex. He eventually gets better. The major example is [[spoiler:Hudgie's father, a psychotic, inhuman sociopath who regularly ''tortured'' his son for even the most minor offenses. Thankfully, he's finally arrested for his atrocities towards the end of the book.]] Unfortunately, the semi-sequel ''Angry Management'' reveals that [[spoiler: Hudgie killed himself shortly after ''Ironman''.]] |
| 174 | * The inhabitants of Pala, the titular island of ''Literature/{{Island|1962}}'' have a system of "Mutual Adoption Clubs" (basically {{Honorary Uncle}}s for everyone) in order to prevent abuse in the family. Will, an outsider, who has had an alcoholic father and a depressed mother, is sceptical about this, and the Rani (who came from the neighbouring island) won't participate or allow her son to, being a MyBelovedSmother to the highest degree. |
| 175 | * ''Literature/{{IT}}'': |
| 176 | ** In this Creator/StephenKing book, Eddie's mother takes him to the emergency room at least twice a month for imagined ills, bullies her doctor into prescribing unnecessary placebos for the psychosomatic asthma she caused, pressures his teachers into keeping him out of gym class, and tries to drive off the rest of the Loser's Club after Henry Bowers breaks his arm, all because of her fears of him abandoning her. |
| 177 | ** It's made worse if you grasp HOW this irrational fear started: the unexpected death of her husband and Eddie contracting pertussis/whooping cough as a very young child, when pertussis is at its highest risk of being fatal. Describing how she sat by his bed, night after night, listening to Eddie struggle to breathe and wondering if she was going to have to bury her son as well...that's how it starts. The rest is human failing. Years later, when Eddie is middle-aged, he's married to a woman who treats him almost exactly the same way. |
| 178 | ** Also happens with Beverly Marsh, whose father took the overprotective dad archetype to abusive levels, and it's further implied that [[ParentalIncest he has sexual feelings for his daughter]], though he doesn't act on them. The man that she marries, Tom Rogan, is just as abusive as her father. |
| 179 | ** It's hard to tell if Henry's bat-shit craziness was a result of heredity or environment, although it's quite possibly both. |
| 180 | ** There's also a whole chapter on the disappearance of a boy who turns out to be one of It's victims. Newspaper clippings chronicle an investigation revealing that the boy's stepfather killed a younger stepson with a hammer, leading him to be wrongly convicted of the older stepson's murder as well. |
| 181 | * "Literature/JoeyAMechanicalBoy": Joey's mother leaves him alone in a playpen all day, feeds him on a strict four-hour schedule no matter how much he cries, never touches him unless necessary, and generally treats him with cold indifference. His feckless father punishes him for crying at night before [[DisappearedDad mostly disappearing from his life]]. |
| 182 | * Creator/JohnVarley: This man employs this trope with frightening frequency: |
| 183 | ** ''The Golden Globe'': Sparky, emotional abuse and physical violence by his father |
| 184 | ** ''Steel Beach'': [[ShoutOut Brenda Starr]], sexual abuse by her father |
| 185 | ** ''Red Thunder'' trilogy: Jubal, religious extremism and physical violence by his father |
| 186 | ** Some short stories as well. |
| 187 | * ''Literature/TheJourneyToAtlantis'': In this Bryan Miranda book, the father of [[spoiler: Stacie]]. Not only does he beat this character and one's siblings, he's a general asshat as well. |
| 188 | * ''Literature/{{Jumper}}'': Davy Rice in this book was physically abused by his father. In fact, Davy's learning to deal with the emotional effects of the abuse he and his estranged mother suffered is a major subplot of the novel. |
| 189 | * Creator/KatherinePaterson: Every single novel written by her has at least one abusive parent (though it's sometimes only tangential to the main plot, like in ''Literature/BridgeToTerabithia'' where it's a minor character's father). She claims that the reason is because it reflects her childhood. |
| 190 | * ''Literature/KeeperOfTheLostCities'': |
| 191 | ** The Sencens are explicitly stated (and shown) to be verbally and emotionally abusive. Additionally, [[spoiler: Gisela uses knowledge about her son's hatred of her, as well as who he cares about, in order to manipulate him into doing her bidding]]. |
| 192 | ** Quan and Mai Song cared so much about their public image that they abandoned their daughter Linh as soon as she became a inconvience to them, and let her be exiled over something she couldn't control. |
| 193 | * ''Literature/TheKindnessOfDevils'': |
| 194 | ** ''Literature/NoneTooHoly'' has [[spoiler:the Pijavica, who is actually Aleksander's mother who raped him multiple times as a child]]. |
| 195 | ** ''Literature/UnderTheColdMoon'' has Siegfried Gunmarsohn, who raised ''hundreds'' of werewolves solely to use them as cannon fodder, and would frequently abusive them when they were alive. Even when his competent daughter, Sieglinde Nomura, [[spoiler:dies towards the end of the story]], he just murmurs "oh fucking well" to himself and shrugs it off. |
| 196 | * ''Literature/KnavesOnWaves'' has plenty, most of whom helped drive the cast towards piracy. Jacques had it particularly bad, however, with his adoptive carer [[spoiler: selling him into childhood prostitution, and then later pit fights.]] |
| 197 | * ''Literature/KnightAndRogueSeries'': Michael's father comes off as just a strict man with his sons. One who also told Michael that being honest was the only thing he could do right, and who was willing to let him go off as a man with no legal rights to try and take down a murder suspect to win favor with a higher authority figure, and who permanently stripped away those legal rights to try and force a life on Michael that he knew his son didn't want. |
| 198 | * ''Kokoro'': Sensei in this Japanese novel, albeit through his uncle. It's one of the reasons why he crossed the DespairEventHorizon. |
| 199 | * ''Literature/TheLangoliers'': Craig Toomy's father Roger was extremely abusive towards him, constantly belittling him for not doing anything perfectly and claiming that monsters called Langoliers would eat him if he was lazy. Toomy never really got over it, as he suffers from mental trauma throughout the novella and often hallucinates that his father is speaking to him and demanding that he do something productive. |
| 200 | * ''Literature/{{Legatum}}'': |
| 201 | ** ''Literature/SmirvlaksStone'' has Gnekvizz's parents, both of whom were verbally (sometimes physically) abusive to him due to his homosexuality. |
| 202 | ** ''Literature/ScrambledEgg'' has Snorrv's father, who physically abused him for years and later molested him just to determine how fertile he was. |
| 203 | * ''Literature/LikeWaterForChocolate'': [[EvilMatriarch Mama Elena]]. She is constantly controlling of her youngest daughter, Tita, and forbids Tita to marry the man she loves so Tita can care for Elena when she's old just because it's tradition. |
| 204 | * ''Lola Rose'': This Creator/JacquelineWilson book has Jayni talk about how her dad beats up her mum whenever he gets angry or suspicious, and constantly threatens her, and how he inevitably hits Jayni hard at the start of the book for the first time. Jayni repeatedly talks about how scared she is of her dad, even when he's miles away. He treats her little brother Kenny 'okay', but his behaviour is slowly convincing him that it's okay to beat women, and it seems only a matter of time before either he starts hitting Kenny or Kenny starts hitting his mum and sister. Lola Rose's mother's father was also abusive to her and treated her as [[TheUnfavorite The Unfavorite]], to the extent that she speculated he wasn't really her biological father. |
| 205 | ** In ''Cookie'' by the same author, the heroine's father frequently berates and emotionally abuses his wife and daughter. We are shown that he hits his wife, and while he's never violent to his daughter on the page, he has her living in a state of terror and even kills her pet rabbit when he decides that she wasn't grateful for the birthday party he gave her. |
| 206 | ** In ''Secrets'' by Jacqueline Wilson, both of the main protagonists go through this. India's neurotic mother constantly criticizes her and insults her weight, as well as generally neglecting her and having very little time for her. Treasure has a violent stepfather who beats her with his belt, and as a result she goes to live with her grandmother, who eventually gets legal custody of her. |
| 207 | ** Dixie in ''Literature/TheDiamondGirls'' discovers that her new friend, a 6-year-old girl, is being violently abused by her mother. The mother eventually ends up in hospital due to her mental illness. |
| 208 | ** In ''Love Lessons'', Prudence and Grace's father is verbally abusive to both daughters (particularly [[TheUnfavourite Grace]]), refuses to let them attend public school and regularly belittles and chastises them. This treatment is part of the reason Prudence has NoSocialSkills and cannot relate to other teenagers when she and Grace eventually do start secondary school. |
| 209 | ** ''Waiting For the Sky to Fall'', an early novel of Wilson's, features much the same cast of characters that was later re-used for ''Love Lessons'', including the abusive father. The title refers to the protagonist spending most of the book in a state of distress about what he'll do when her exam results arrive: if she's passed he will continue to pressure her academically, if she's failed he'll take it out on her. |
| 210 | * ''Literature/TheLordOfBembibre'': Don Alonso becomes emotionally and verbally abusive to his daughter Beatriz when she refuses an arranged marriage, belittling her for not obeying his orders and threatening to curse her and kick her out of his home if she does not comply with his desires. To his credit, he eventually realizes he should not treat her like that. |
| 211 | * The Rat's father in ''Literature/TheLostPrince'' is a drunkard, and given to beating his son until his son finds a way to fight back. |
| 212 | * ''Literature/TheLoveAndLiesOfRukhsanaAli'': Once she's outed, Rukhsana's dad slaps her for not obeying about hiding her sexual orientation, which shocks her to the core as neither he nor her mom had ever done that until then. She gets blamed by her mother later over her dad collapsing while they were arguing over their plans to have her marry a man as well, deeply hurting Rukhsana. They then have Rukhsana come with them to Bangladesh visiting her sick grandmother, attempting to force her into an arranged marriage as well after drugging her so she can be held in place to get an "exorcism" as they believe that a djinn is making her this way. She only escapes by running away to the US. |
| 213 | * ''Literature/{{Malevil}}'': This French SciFi novel has Wahrwoorde, an EvilPoacher. He forced this family to live in backwards squalor in a swamp, without electricity or anything they can't produce themselves. He's cruel to his son (and mother-in-law), rapes his stepdaughters, and is willing to risk the young man's life for his gain. |
| 214 | * Poor parenting is abound in the ScienceFantasy world of ''Literature/MagikOnline'' with such parents such as Henry Powells who was a horrible father and it's not hard to see how [[SocialDarwinist Maggie]] and [[TheSociopath Jack]] ended up the way they did under his care. Next up is Blackcinders who is a perfectionist stage mom who openly looks down on her son, Smokefang, for never meeting her absurd standards and refuses to let him heal his blinded eye as a form of discipline, and Blackcinders own POV reveals that her parents weren't much better, indoctrinating her with their toxic ideals of strength and ruthlessness starting the cycle with her own children. |
| 215 | * ''Literature/MansfieldPark'': Fanny Price suffers from neglect when she's adopted by her Aunt and Uncle Bertram and cruel emotional abuse from her Aunt Norris. |
| 216 | * The parents of Literature/TheManWithTheTerribleEyes beat him and abandoned him as a child, largely because his eyes were so disturbing. Eventually, his future Supervisor, no prize himself, found him and used mind alteration technology to make them love him. |
| 217 | * Creator/MargaretAtwood does this a lot: |
| 218 | ** In ''The Year of the Flood'', Burt is implied to be sexually abusive towards his daughter. |
| 219 | ** In ''Literature/TheRobberBride'', ''all'' of the main characters had abusive parents/guardians -- Tony's mother was emotionally abusive, her father became an alcoholic and tried to physically abuse her after her mother ran off with another man, Charis first had her mentally ill mother who physically abused her and then her pedophile uncle and her aunt who refused to believe her when she told on him, and Roz had her emotionally manipulative mother. Also, one of Zenia's stories about her past has her mother acting as a pimp to her (it, like all of Zenia's stories, may or may not be true.) |
| 220 | ** In ''[[Literature/CatsEye1988 Cat's Eye]]'', it's heavily implied that the reason [[TheBully Cordelia]] engages in such vicious psychological games towards her 'friend', Elaine, is because of her father's psychological and emotional abuse, particularly given her unfavourable comparison to her older sisters. |
| 221 | *** Carol's parents aren't much nicer -- Carol's mother furiously chastises her in front of her friends for [[FelonyMisdemeanor wearing lipstick]] and her father occasionally beats her with a belt. |
| 222 | * ''Literature/TheMarvellousLandOfSnergs'': Main character Joe's father is a violent drunkard who did beat his son every time he got himself hammered. |
| 223 | * ''Literature/{{Matilda}}'': Creator/RoaldDahl's Matilda endures both this and neglect; they call her names and deride her for not being like them (she prefers to read while they watch endless, brainless television). At one point, her father rips up one of her library books while calling it trash. Also, her parents leave her (a 5-year-old) alone on afternoons when they are at work or bingo. And yet for all that, they're not as bad as [[EvilTeacher the Trunchbull]]. Later in the book, it's revealed that Miss Honey was raised by the Trunchbull, who wasn't any less abusive to her than she is with the students. |
| 224 | * ''Literature/MaximumRide'': Dr. Jeb Batchelder is the adoptive father of the Flock and the biological father of Ari [[spoiler:and Max]]. While he initially appeared benevolent, rescuing them from the School and taking them to be raised in a secluded area before disappearing, it's later revealed that he willingly went back to work for the School (though how loyal he is to them isn't revealed until the very end), and it's heavily implied that he orchestrated the Flock's suffering throughout the series. He's also quite dismissive of the Flock (sans Max, who he -- despite her being his favorite -- forced to take the role of parent for the others, constantly pushed to fulfill her purpose of saving the world, and was willing to sacrifice other people for, which put an ungodly amount of pressure on her), and proves willing to sacrifice them to fulfill his plans. Ari, meanwhile, was emotionally neglected and abandoned in favor of the Flock, and after he was turned into an Eraser by the School, Jeb was all too willing to use him as muscle. |
| 225 | * ''Literature/{{Midnighters}}'': This Scott Westerfeld book. Rex Greene's father would beat him occasionally, once pointed a loaded gun at him, and made him sit still while tarantulas crawled over him because he wanted Rex to be "a man instead of some book-reading pussy". |
| 226 | * In ''Literature/MidnightRobber'': Not at first, but after Tan-Tan and her father have come to the PenalColony world of New Half-Way Tree, the story gets a whole lot darker, especially after Tan-Tan hits puberty, and starts to resemble the mother they left behind. She still loves her father, but after he begins to rape her, she mentally divides him up into "Good Daddy" and "Bad Daddy", and lives in fear of the times that Bad Daddy will come out. |
| 227 | * ''Literature/MidnightsChildren'' has a few: |
| 228 | ** Saleem's father starts off kind, but gradually becomes more distant, eventually disowning him entirely after [[spoiler:the SwitchedAtBirth reveal]]. [[SubvertedTrope He eventually comes around, though.]] |
| 229 | ** Saleem's cousin Zafar is frequently beaten and harangued by his father for his [[UrineTrouble enuresis]], to the point that Saleem suspects TheDogBitesBack as a motive when Zafar decides to become a SelfMadeOrphan. |
| 230 | ** Mustapha's children are so abused into silence and irrelevance that Saleem can't remember any of their features. It's implied that TheChainOfHarm might be at play here, as Mustapha is enraged at constantly being passed over for promotion. |
| 231 | %%Administrivia/ZeroContextExample* ''Mommie Dearest'': The book which inspired the better-known film. |
| 232 | * Valentine Morgenstern from ''Literature/TheMortalInstruments'' is of the emotionally abusive variety. He also beats [[spoiler:Jace]] on alternate Thursdays. |
| 233 | * ''Literature/MyNextLifeAsAVillainessAllRoutesLeadToDoom'': |
| 234 | ** Baron Shelley treats his illegitimate daughter Anne horribly, telling her that she's of no use to him after she gets scarred in a fire, resulting in her going to the Claes family to work as a maid. Years later, after Anne has become happy with working as Catarina's maid, Baron Shelley returns to force her into another arranged marriage. |
| 235 | ** Keith's biological mother practically abandoned him to the custody of his nobleman father, where he suffered even more for being a bastard child. |
| 236 | * ''My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece:'' Jamie's parents are slightly unusual for this trope in that their (relatively unintentional) abuse is less physical and more psychological. It stems from their inability to get over the death of one of their daughters, Rose, and flat refusal to allow their other two children to let her go and move on. They constantly remind the whole family of Rose's existence by pretending she is still alive and forcing Jasmine, Rose's twin sister, to continue dressing like her even five years after her death. Jamie, who was very young when Rose died, barely remembers her, but his parents refuse to understand why her death doesn't sadden him and force him to memorialize her at every opportunity -- he recalls one school assignment where he had to write about someone special, and he wrote a whole page about his favorite soccer player, but his mother made him tear it up and write about Rose instead. Besides that, Jamie's father loses his temper at his son when he finds out he made friends with a Muslim girl, because Rose died in an Islamic terrorist bombing. |
| 237 | * ''Literature/MySisterTheSerialKiller'' Kehinde, father to Ayoola (the titular serial killer). When she is a little girl he catches her playing with his prized knife and ''flings her'' across the hallway. Later, when a boy from her school comes to visit teenage Ayoola, he beats her brutally. Finally, [[spoiler: he trades her as a child bride to a much older village chief.]] Only his death prevents this. |
| 238 | * ''Literature/MySistersKeeper'': Sara Fitzgerald is of the well-meaning variety in that she essentially forces Anna to go through various medical procedures for the benefit of her sister Kate, who has cancer. She doesn't mean to hurt anyone, and there are scenes scattered throughout the book in which she shows that she ''does'' love Anna too, but Kate's medical issues are so paramount in her mind that she doesn't even seem to fully register that she's basically steamrolling over Anna's life (and pushing her other child, Jesse, aside completely) in order to meet Kate's needs. She does, arguably, get better over the course of the book, if only because the lawsuit forces her to face the true extent of what she's been demanding from Anna. |
| 239 | * ''Literature/MyTeacherFriedMyBrains'' reveals the crappy home life of school bully Duncan Dougal. He himself is [[BigBrotherBully bullied by his older brother Patrick]], his father actually ''encourages'' said older brother to do so because he thinks it's healthy, and his mother just doesn't give a damn either way. |
| 240 | * ''The Nature of the Daughters'': This novel by Elizadeth Hetherington features a female protagonist, Renata Savannah, that suffers all but sexual abuse at the hands of her mother, a woman who has repeatedly tried to kill her. Her mother even enlists her [[EvilTwin twin sister]] to aid in the murder attempts. Given that this is a coming-of-age novel about [[DaddysLittleVillain a teenage serial killer,]] the horrid abuse Renata suffers is the least disturbing thing in it. |
| 241 | * ''Literature/TheNightCircus'': Has two prominent examples: Mr. Alexander H -- who isolates the orphan he plucks out of the street for uninterrupted study for about a decade and then, once the child has grown into a man, essentially vanishes from his life. There's also Hector Bowen, who never hesitates to tell [[MadScientistsBeautifulDaughter his daughter]] how much of a disappointment/weakling/slut/whore she is while slashing her fingers open to teach her healing magic. |
| 242 | * ''Literature/NightHuntress'': Justina from these books tells her daughter Cat about her rapist vampire father with the words "You have a monster inside of you". She convinces Cat that her rape and her ostracism for being a single mother is all Cat's fault. When Cat starts hunting vampires in high school, it's the first time that Justina ever shows pride or love for her daughter, not caring that her 16-year-old is risking her life to earn her mother's affection. |
| 243 | * ''Literature/{{Nightrunner}}'': Korit, father of Seregil from this Lynn Flewelling book -- his mother died at childbirth and he could not expect much more than coldness from his father -- Seregil believed that his father blamed him for the death of his mother, but it is later revealed that Korit never got over losing his wife. That Seregil is the very image of his mother didn't help. Not that this would excuse him being a distant, cold bastard who imparted a major inferior complex on his son.... |
| 244 | * In ''Literature/NightWatchDiscworld'' it's revealed that Nobby's father, Sconner, used to abuse him to the point of breaking his limbs. Nobby begs not to be sent back to him. |
| 245 | * ''North of Beautiful'': The father. Exhibit A: One of his sons self-harms. Exhibit B: Terra, the main character, is almost anorexic, hates herself, is germophobic, and is in a mostly sexual relationship that she knows is unhealthy at the start of the story. Exhibit C: Terra's mother, a binge eater, has nonexistent self esteem. Exhibit D: His eldest son has no healthy relationships at all. This book has a very realistic portrayal of abuse. |
| 246 | * ''Literature/NorthangerAbbey'': General Tilney might be seen as emotionally abusive. His behavior to his children goes from overbearing to tyrannising and it's clear that Eleanor fears him. Catherine even wonders why his children are always so sedate when he's present. |
| 247 | * ''Literature/NothingsFairInFifthGrade'': Elsie's mother berates her for being fat, calls her names, hits her with the broom, and ignores her in favor of her prettier, thinner younger sister. Even worse, when Elsie was younger and her parents were fighting more in the lead-up to their eventual divorce, her mother would take her anger out on her by yelling at her after every fight with her husband. |
| 248 | ** In one of the direct sequels, ''Seventeen and In-Between'', it's revealed that things also aren't so rosy between Elsie's father and his new wife, Jeanne. While babysitting for her stepsister, Elsie witnesses Jeanne lose her temper and smack the child across the room. Remembering how she herself was abused, Elsie informs Jeanne she'll call the police on her if she witnesses any more instances of abuse. |
| 249 | ** A side story in the Elsie series, ''I Never Asked You to Understand Me'', reintroduces a previously minor character in the series named Stacy, who is sexually abused by her father. |
| 250 | * ''Literature/TheMysteriousBenedictSociety'': [[OnlyKnownByTheirNickname Sticky]] ran away because his parents were financially abusive. He has a PhotographicMemory and they were using him in game shows and other events. [[spoiler:They eventually reconcile]]. |
| 251 | * ''Literature/OddThomas'': |
| 252 | ** Stormy Llewellyn lost both of her parents when she was little and was put in an orphanage. She was adopted by a couple who lived in Beverly Hills and didn't go three weeks before her adopted dad came into her room at night and molested her. She took it for three weeks before telling a visiting social worker what was happening; from then on she lived in the orphanage until she was 18, claiming she didn't want any parents except her biological ones. |
| 253 | ** Odd himself has a self-absorbed father who abandoned him when he was born, leaving him to his mentally unstable mother. She's even worse: at one point she held a gun to his eye and threatened to kill him because he got sick. He was ''5-years-old''. No wonder he's a 16-year-old runaway at the beginning of the first book. |
| 254 | * ''Literature/OfFearAndFaith'': |
| 255 | ** August briefly talks about how his stepfather used to hit his stepsister and him, and [[spoiler: August was also sexually abused by their mother.]] Said abuse is what started August's descent into [[TheAlcoholic alcoholism]]. |
| 256 | ** Lilac's parents are also examples. Her mother is verbally and emotionally abusive almost to the point of BlackComedy, insulting her daughter with almost every sentence that comes out of her mouth, and Lilac's father is said to be neglectful if not necessarily abusive outright. |
| 257 | * ''Literature/OfFireAndStars'': Mare mentally recalls that her father would hit her after she'd cry at night when her mother died, as she kept him awake. |
| 258 | * ''Literature/TheOriginOfLaughingJack'': Isaac's mother is strict and abusive to her son, insulting him and giving him so much chores and homeschool work that he can't go out and socialise, while [[AlcoholicParent the father wastes his day's earnings on alcohol and drunkenly abuses his wife]], which likely contributes to her abuse of her son. |
| 259 | * ''Literature/TheOrphanTrainAdventures'': |
| 260 | ** The treatment Mike gets from Mr. Friedrich. |
| 261 | ** Caroline Whittaker's father beat her. He disappeared after his wife's death. Caroline's biggest fear is that her father will find her. |
| 262 | * ''Literature/TheOutsiders'': The reason Johnny is such a NervousWreck is because his father beats him and his mother either ignores him or verbally abuses him. |
| 263 | * ''{{Literature/Paranoia}}'': Frank Cassidy, the father of the protagonist Adam Cassidy, is verbally abusive to him every chance he gets. He constantly tells him that he is unable to achieve anything, tells him he is a loser for not getting anywhere, then demeans him for when he gets a corporate job and is actually doing well, telling him off for not going his own way and being his own person. A lot of this stems from his once working as a coach for a prep school's football team, but that ended when he hit a kid. After repeating that with a public school, he's worked as security guard ever since, until his emphysema forced him to retire, and live off Adam's paychecks for all his medical bills. [[spoiler: He then dies from his continuing to smoke, giving Adam a complex about having an argument with his dad being the last conversation he had with him.]] |
| 264 | * ''Parting Jane'': In this short story, a young girl is being harvested for parts to save her sick sister. Her parents don't seem to care about Jane at all, only the sick girl. Unfortunately this can be TruthInTelevision. |
| 265 | * ''Literature/PatienceAndSarah'': Sarah's parents are usually loving and laid-back, however upon finding out that Sarah is in love with Patience, Sarah's father beats her up and then drags her to Patience's home to find out the nature of their relationship. For several day in a row, whenever Sarah tries visit Patience afterwards, her father would try to beat her into submitting to his will (though he doesn't consider them serious beatings because they "only" result in bruising). It doesn't work. Sarah doesn't look down upon her father for his behavior but it does tarnish their formerly pleasant bond. |
| 266 | * In the ''Literature/PleaseDontTellMyParentsImASupervillain'' books, Ray Viles doesn't really go into detail about his family situation, but it's [[ImpliedTrope implied]] to be so bad that it would probably be best if we and Penny didn't hear about it. Now that he has superpowers, his parents can't really do much to him, but he still can't bear being around them to the point that he spends as little time at home as possible and is seriously considering the possibility of becoming emancipated. |
| 267 | * ''Literature/ThePower'': Allie's foster parents are both abusive. Her foster father beats and rapes her as "punishment", while his wife knows of this but does nothing, as she approves (she'd also psychologically abused Allie by threatening her with Hell for supposed misdeeds). [[spoiler:Later it turns out that her foster mother was the ''instigator'' of him raping Allie as "punishment for her sins", making it even worse. Allie's horrified to learn later that she's now running a children's home, where it's strongly implied more abuse is ongoing.]] |
| 268 | * ''Literature/ThePowerOfFive'': It is revealed in Matt's backstory that [[spoiler:when he was taken under the 'care' of his Aunt Gwenda and her boyfriend, they spent all of his inheritance; after they lost all his money, they started beating him]]. In Jamie and Scott's backstory, [[spoiler:when things start to go badly for their adoptive parents, they start abusing the kids to the point where Scott snaps and tells the father figure to 'go hang himself'. Considering that the twins have the power of telepathy and mind control, this ends very badly]]. Oh, and let's not forget ''wonderful'' Uncle Don... |
| 269 | * ''Literature/ProphetsHouse'': This Micah E.F. Martin Quintology has Lord John Blackwall, who despises his [[TheUnfavorite second son, Jonathan]], for outliving Titus, his heir. Then there's Sen'Tan Alecad who engages in OffingTheOffspring at every opportunity. Given, he has about eighty kids, so this may be justified. |
| 270 | * ''Literature/{{Push}}'': This is central to the plot of this Sapphire novel. Precious is raped by her father from age seven. When she has her first baby at twelve, her father leaves, but later returns and impregnates her again at sixteen. Her mother fondles her and forces her into oral copulation, reasoning that since Precious was responsible for her husband's disappearance, she should provide sexual services in his place. Much of the plot revolves around Precious' love for her children and her determination to give them a better life. |
| 271 | * ''Literature/PurpleHibiscus'': Kambili and her brother Jaja are often physically hurt by their father -- whipped and scalded, but also forced into a strict, oppressive form of Catholicism. Kambili hardly speaks and never laughs -- at least until her Aunt and Cousin get fed up with that. |
| 272 | * ''Literature/TheRavenCycle'': Adam Parrish's father. [[spoiler: Even causes Adam to go deaf in his left ear when he tries to stand up for himself.]] |
| 273 | * In Creator/LJagiLamplighter's ''[[Literature/RachelGriffin The Raven, the Elf, and Rachel]]'', we learn of Magdalena Chase's parents, who offered her up for [[spoiler:HumanSacrifice]] and were told it wouldn't work because they didn't love her enough. [[InsaneTrollLogic So they locked her in her room for a week. Two days, they didn't even bother to feed her.]] |
| 274 | * ''Literature/{{Raybearer}}'': |
| 275 | ** The Lady used to leave Tar alone for months and kept her locked up in Bhekina house with no one but her tutors for company. She also used her wish to brainwash Tar into being a sleeper-agent to kill the crown prince. [[spoiler: When Tar meets her again as a teenager, imprisoned by the emperor, The Lady guilt-trips her for trying to resist the wish and gaslights her about all the abuse she's suffered, showing not even a lick of remorse for her neglectful and narcissistic parenting.]] |
| 276 | ** Sanjeet's father used to send him to the fighting pits to earn money and would regularly beat on him and his mother. He also send Sanjeet's brother Sendhil away with a band of mercenaries because he believed Sendhil was too soft. |
| 277 | * ''Literature/RedDragon'': Francis Dolarhyde. The main culprit is actually his grandmother, who is nevertheless the parental figure for most of his childhood. Some of her [[GroinAttack methods of discipline]] could easily be considered sexual abuse, and she only took Francis in in the first place to get her own back on his mother. The mother in question abandoned him because of his cleft palate. A real TearJerker, seeing as he UsedToBeASweetKid. |
| 278 | * ''Literature/ReignOfTheSevenSpellblades'': Many secondary characters had very poor family lives, [[JustifiedTrope courtesy of]] mages tending to view ''everything'' in terms of [[ForScience pushing the envelope of magical research]], including their own children. |
| 279 | ** Vera Miligan was the only one of six children to ''survive'' childhood on account of [[spoiler:her parents implanting basilisk eyes in her left socket and left hand]]. [[LoveMartyr She has convinced herself it was an act of love.]] |
| 280 | ** Joseph Albright had a non-magical childhood friend, a serving girl ([[NamedByTheAdaptation named Emma in the anime]]) who liked to play chess with him. After she managed to defeat him, his parents tortured him for most of a day for losing, and murdered Emma and her entire family. |
| 281 | ** Ophelia Salvadori was made a de facto BreedingSlave for her mother's eugenics experiments the moment she hit puberty and carried multiple pregnancies, and was once ForcedToWatch her mother rape a man. That plus the SlutShaming she endured from other Kimberly students led to her descent into villainy. |
| 282 | * In the Literature/RendezvousWithRama series, Richard suffers at the hands of one, and becomes a somewhat cold parent in his turn, especially to the first of his daughters. As he was kidnapped by aliens, he was not present in their youth. However, the exploration he was doing when he got kidnapped was triggered by extreme jealousy at Nicole's sleeping with fellow castaway Michael O'Toole, which prompted him to leave the human enclosure. He was sensitised to this kind of thing as a former girlfriend, then famous, cheated on him; she had been his first love, and, absent a loving family, he seems to have given all his energy to her and his books. He worries about becoming like his father, who was an intelligent misfit with poor communication and a mean drunk, and allowed that to make him -- and therefore his family -- miserable. In the sequel, Literature/RamaII, Richard tells all this to Nicole. However, his subsequent kidnapping in book 3 also affects his mind, and leaves him functioning less well than before for the fourth book. |
| 283 | * ''Literature/TheReynardCycle'': Reynard began his life of crime in order to support his mother, a drug addict who beat him whenever he came home empty-handed. |
| 284 | * ''Literature/{{Rogue}}'': The Elliotts force Chad and Brandon to help them obtain the chemicals they need to make meth, and both boys have to act as lookouts even after Brandon gets pneumonia from standing in the freezing rain for hours on end. They also beat Chad if he doesn't clean up the byproducts of meth production quickly enough. |
| 285 | * ''Literature/RogueSorcerer'': Serah's mother neglects and verbally abuses her after Aiden is taken away. |
| 286 | * ''Literature/TheRulesOfSurvival'': Nikki is a deranged mother (implied to have borderline and/or narcissistic personality disorder) who switches on a dime between being overly affectionate to her three children and cruelly abusing them. Her oldest son Matthew recounts an incident where she held a knife to his neck for stealing cookies, as well as another where she took him and his sisters to eat at IHOP, then on the way home, decided the kids weren't being grateful enough for the food, so she drove the car into incoming traffic and didn't stop until they screamed that they loved her. After going to jail for trying to run down her ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend with her car, and losing custody of her children to her sister and ex-husband, she decides to make all their lives a living hell. [[spoiler:Eventually she kidnaps her youngest daughter Emmy and tries to poison her to death by forcing her to drink a very large amount of alcohol]]. |
| 287 | * ''Literature/{{Run}}'': Almost all of Bo's family is pretty abusive to her. Her mom is the worst because not only is she physically abusive, but half the time she’s genuinely kind and loves Bo. Her dad is another story since he walks out on the family, and [[spoiler:when Bo meets him again he doesn’t make any attempt to help her and lets his new wife kick her out.]] |
| 288 | * ''Literature/SagaOfTheExiles'' (''Pliocene Exile Saga''): Felice in this saga by Julian May. Introduced as a sadist and violent sociopath, it's revealed that her parents sated their boredom and idle lust with her, and otherwise thoroughly neglected her. She later gains her all-consuming power [[spoiler:after being sexually tortured, stripping her mind to a bare core of personality and conveniently also removing all her mental blocks. An attempt to heal her mind succeeds in making her sane, but it was far too little, far too late to save her soul. In the end, she's removed from the game via her mind being trapped in a crystal along with her torturer, condemned to torture each other forever.]] |
| 289 | * In ''Literature/TheScholomance,'' El works out early on that Orion's parents must have been abusive. She realizes that they treated him both like a freak, for his obsession with killing maleficaria, and as a [[TykeBomb living weapon]] they could use both to fight mals and gain clout. Not even his parents treated him like a real person. [[spoiler: When she finally meets them in the third book, she realizes that Orion's father is actually [[ParentsAsPeople an ultimately loving man who didn't fully understand his son, but is overjoyed that El finally managed to connect with him and bring him joy.]] Orion's ''mother,'' on the other hand, manages to be even ''worse'' than El imagined, as she slaughtered an entire graduating class of the Scholomance in order to make her unborn son into a HumanoidAbomination she could use to brutally dominate all the enclaves of the world.]] |
| 290 | * ''Literature/SchooledInMagic'': Emily's stepfather is a leering man who, while never having touched her, left mental scars by the way he spoke to her and looked at her in a predatory way. Emily's mother on the other hand was simply a neglectful alcoholic. Neither of her parents took care of her and she had to learn to fend for herself when it came to meals and clothing. |
| 291 | * ''Literature/TheSecretLifeOfBees'': Lily's father. She only refers to him as "[[CallingParentsByTheirName T. Ray"]]" as a result. He's emotionally distant, neglectful, and physically abusive. One of his {{Corporal Punishment}}s is making her kneel on grits. He was [[DomesticAbuse abusive]] towards his deceased wife as well. She was trying to leave him the day she died (though Lily [[AccidentalMurder accidentally]] [[SelfMadeOrphan killed her]], not T.Ray). |
| 292 | * ''Literature/SeptimusHeap'': Queen Etheldredda is very disapproving of her daughters, treating them with less love than her hunting dogs. |
| 293 | * ''Literature/ASeriesOfUnfortunateEvents'': Count Olaf was the Baudelaires' legal guardian, and, really, he covered all the abuses. He hit Klaus, called Sunny names, and was going to force Violet to marry him, all to get the family fortune. It was mainly played for dark comedy, but in the [[Film/ASeriesOfUnfortunateEvents2004 2004 film]], Olaf's abuse was a bit less comedic and a bit more shocking. The Baudelaires also manage to avoid the FreudianExcuse and grow up fairly well because they have each other to lean on despite the horrors plaguing them. |
| 294 | * Numerous examples in ''Literature/TheShahnameh'' and almost always the father: |
| 295 | ** Sahm Abandons his infant son Zal in the mountains because Zal was born with platinum white hair. |
| 296 | ** Goshtasb Tries to get his son Esfandiar killed so he can remain king. |
| 297 | ** Siavash's (unnamed) mother had run away from home because her father was a violent drunk, before marrying Key Kavous. |
| 298 | ** Afrasiab disowns his daughter Manijeh when he finds out she'd been fooling around with Bijan. |
| 299 | * Literature/SherlockHolmes prefers the city to the countryside because this is more easily revealed: |
| 300 | -->''There is no lane so vile that the scream of a tortured child, or [[DomesticAbuse the thud of a drunkard's blow]], does not beget sympathy and indignation among the neighbours, and then the whole machinery of justice is ever so close that a word of complaint can set it going, and there is but a step between the crime and the dock. But look at these lonely houses, each in its own fields, filled for the most part with poor ignorant folk who know little of the law. Think of the deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness which may go on, year in, year out, in such places, and none the wiser.'' |
| 301 | ** It shows up in direct examples with regards to his client in "A Case of Identity" [[spoiler:(whose stepfather and mother concoct a horrible scheme to cheat her out of her inheritance)]], and a character in "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches" [[spoiler:(whose father and stepmother are doing something similar)]]. The latter story is the source of the above quote. His client in "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" is also emotionally and physically abused by her stepfather, who [[spoiler:murdered her twin sister and is trying to murder the client, so he won't lose control of their money from their mother's estate]]. |
| 302 | * In the ''Series/DiagnosisMurder'' book "[[Literature/DiagnosisMurderTheSilentPartner The Silent Partner]]", we're introduced to a SerialKiller who had been locked up in a closet repeatedly by his mother. This both caused his {{claustrophobia}} and was the reason he became a serial killer of women. |
| 303 | * ''The Silver Metal Lover'': In this Creator/TanithLee's book, Jane, the heroine, discovers that her mother [[spoiler:futzed with her phenotype to make Jane plainer than she should have been because she didn't want the competition]]. The reader sees all along how her mother passively-aggressively manipulates and undermines Jane at every opportunity. She also [[spoiler:arranges for the destruction of Jane's android sweetie]] because Jane was growing up: growing *away* from her. |
| 304 | * An abusive stepmother is expected in a "Snow White" adaptation, but both parents in ''Literature/SixGunSnowWhite'' are abusive in different ways. Mr. H is neglectful. Mrs. H is more direct, hitting Snow White, locking her up without food, bathing her in freezing milk, and other such actions. |
| 305 | * In ''Literature/SkinHunger'', Hahp's father is one of those. He hits both Hahp and Anna, Hahp's mother. As Hahp is a second son, not the precious heir, his father considers him a burden, and when Hahp fails to pass the entry exam of any other school, his father sends him to a wizard boarding school that openly states that only one of a group will become a proper wizard, and those who fail will never see their parents again. [[spoiler: While no actual corpses are ever seen, Hahp sees some other boys (who are not as talented) become weaker and thinner, and eventually vanish.]] There's also Sadima's father, who forbids his daughter to socialize with other children, and sometimes becomes angry and beats his children, but in his case, it is caused by [[spoiler: his wife's death in Sadima's birth]], which gives him a FreudianExcuse and the children aren't shown to be as fearful of him as Hahp is of his father. |
| 306 | * ''Literature/TheSonOfTheIronworker'': When Itxicol refuses an arranged with their chieftain's nephew, her father decides to make her see reason by beating the crap out of her once and again. |
| 307 | * Drago in “Song for the Unraveling of the World”, a short story by Creator/BrianEvenson, appears at first to be just a concerned father looking for his missing daughter, but gradually emerges as one of these, leaving exactly what happened to the daughter as a troubling mystery. |
| 308 | * ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'': |
| 309 | ** Tywin Lannister treated his youngest son like crap for years, culminating in forcing him to watch -- and ultimately participate in -- the gang-rape of his new wife because she was a commoner. He sees his older son and daughter as pawns to further his takeover of Westeros and judges them on how useful they are to him. |
| 310 | ** Tywin's daughter Cersei has shades of this, too. She genuinely loves her children, but clearly favors Joffrey, the eldest. After [[spoiler:he dies and his kinder, gentler brother Tommen takes over the throne, Cersei constantly compares him to Joffrey, and uses him as a puppet so that she can act as queen. She goes as far as to ''force him to beat his whipping boy'' when Tommen refuses to obey her out of love for his new wife, whom Cersei hates. Tommen is ''eight.'']] |
| 311 | ** Samwell Tarly's father takes WhyCouldntYouBeDifferent to extreme levels, openly despising his son for his bookishness and lack of badassitude. After years of trying to make him shape up through means such as forcing him to constantly wear chainmail and slaughtering a bull and making him [[BloodBath bathe in its blood]], he fathered a second son who he liked more. So he threatened Sam with a "hunting accident" if he didn't join the Night's Watch, thus giving up his inheritance to his younger brother. |
| 312 | ** Craster lives alone with his nineteen unwilling wives, [[ParentalIncest the majority of whom are his daughters]]. But the girls are almost lucky by comparison, as he leaves his infant sons out as sacrifices for the Others. The only reason he's even allowed to get away with this is because he lives North of the Wall, a place where the only law is that there is no law. |
| 313 | * ''Literature/SongOfTheLioness'': Alanna's father neglects his two children, spending more time in his study reading books than raising them. And during the time Alanna was at the palace, all he did was send one letter and nothing more. Even other characters such as Jonathan and Duke Gareth knew it and were both happy that Alanna had found a ParentalSubstitute in her teacher Myles. |
| 314 | * ''Literature/SpectralShadows'' has a few of these here and there. Christine's father Harrison James had some of his abusive moments, and in Serial 11 there's Queen Davilla, who hasn't really abused her daughter but fills her with horrid morals such as love being useless unless you gain something out of it; it's played more straight with her when [[spoiler: Jenny gets pregnant by the canine prostitute, though the Queen tries to play it off like she won't harm her daughter]]. Then there's also Alditha Collins, Princess Kara's mother. |
| 315 | * ''The Starbound Trilogy'': [[CorruptCorporateExecutive Roderick [=LaRoux=]]] in ''Literature/TheseBrokenStars''. Lost his wife some years prior to the start of the novel, and responded by exerting an unhealthy amount of control in his daughter's life. She's surrounded by "friends" who are really bodyguards and all report her every move back to him. Anyone threatening to touch her life in any meaningful way soon suffers an unfortunate "accident" and her cousin Anna, the one person she loves who he ''can't'' get rid of, he poisons Lilac's relationship with by forcing her to report on her too. |
| 316 | * ''Franchise/StarWars'': This is part of Darth Bane's FreudianExcuse. His father was a grade-A asshole who physically and emotionally abused his son. Said son went on to become one of the most badass and evil Sith Lords to have ever lived. |
| 317 | * Prudence from ''Literature/TheStonesAreHatching''. Actually an abusive older sister, but she still raised Phelim, destroying his self esteem by constantly insulting him, and [[spoiler:lied to him about his father; she claimed he had died when she actually had him committed to a lunatic asylum for being a 'dreamer'.]]. |
| 318 | * ''Literature/TheStormlightArchive'': |
| 319 | ** In ''Literature/TheWayOfKings2010'', we find out that Shallan's father was violent, quick to anger, and got the entire family into debt with extremely powerful people. He also really screwed up his three sons, though he left Shallan alone. [[spoiler:Didn't stop her from killing him.]] |
| 320 | ** ''Literature/WordsOfRadiance'' gives more detail. After killing his wife, Shallan's father slowly went insane, seeing enemies in every corner and punishing his children by killing their pets and beating their loved ones. [[spoiler:Shallan eventually poisons him, then strangles him with the necklace he gave her when that didn't work]]. Furthermore, Shallan's mother [[spoiler:was also abusive. When she realized that Shallan was becoming a surgebinder (which implied that the [[OurDemonsAreDifferent Voidbringers]] were returning) she freaked out and tried to kill her. Shallan killed her using the Shardblade every Radiant has due to their bond with their spren, and her father took the blame]]. |
| 321 | * ''Sunny Ella'': In this dark retelling of ''Cinderella'', Ella's stepmother slaps her across the face twice the day they meet. Later she uses her cane as a weapon and at one point removes Ella's voicebox as punishment for talking back. |
| 322 | * ''Film/TheSweetHereafter'': In this Russell Banks book (and the critically acclaimed film adaptation by Creator/AtomEgoyan), 15-year-old Nicole Burnell is molested regularly by her father. Following the accident around which the plot of the book revolves, which leaves her paralysed, she even expresses some relief that he won't find her attractive any more. |
| 323 | * ''Literature/SwordOfTruth'': Three examples occur in the series. Darken Rahl ''kills'' all of his children who he knew about, since none had magic (he wanted a gifted heir). Oba's mother does nothing but belittle him that we see, and this may be why he has an utter {{lack of empathy}} (though his birth father Darken Rahl displays the same trait). Nicci's mother was entirely unsympathetic to her daughter's needs, and even hit her when Nicci came for comfort over being frightened by a beggar, saying she should accept this. She demanded utter self-denial and service to others from Nicci, which left her a self-loathing mess for years to come. This explains why she served the Keeper and then the Imperial Order, since both fed into this. |
| 324 | * ''Film/{{Sybil}}'': Sybil Dorsett, subject of this book (and miniseries), suffered domestic abuse at the hands of her mother so severe that she developed sixteen split personalities. Even worse? The story is based in truth. |
| 325 | * ''Literature/TalesFromNetheredge'': |
| 326 | ** Myr's mother disowned him when he was born, and his father -- the then CourtMage -- would beat and hurt him to gain magical power. |
| 327 | ** [[spoiler:Charna's parents were merchants who "bought and sold anything" -- which included forcing their underage son into prostitution.]] |
| 328 | * In the novella ''Literature/ATasteOfHoney'', Lucrio asserts that Aqib's father is guilty of abuse by inaction, because Master Sadiqi largely ignores the abusive behaviour his oldest son displays towards his younger brother. Aqib doesn't see this behaviour as abusive until Lucrio points it out to him, [[spoiler:and it causes a big fight between them]]. |
| 329 | * ''Tender Morsels'': This Margo Lanagan book features the teenage Liga who is used as a replacement for her mother after her death when Liga was only a child. Because of this, Liga becomes pregnant by her father not once, not twice, but THREE TIMES. She later becomes pregnant a fourth time after she is [[spoiler: assaulted by some boys from the village.]] |
| 330 | * Alys's mother Lucy in ''Literature/TerraMirumChronicles''. She drinks, hits her daughter, and brings home a string of worthless boyfriends that warrant Alys buying a lock for her bedroom door. Charlie's father's abuse was one of the driving forces behind Charlie committing suicide. |
| 331 | * Creator/TerryPratchett: |
| 332 | ** Coin, the {{Tykebomb}} from ''Literature/{{Sourcery}}'' was psychically dominated by (what was effectively the ''ghost'' of) his father almost from birth, [[spoiler:leaving him with almost no personal identity after he was finally freed]]. Overlaps with physical abuse, via FunctionalMagic; at one point, a bystander smells scorched flesh. Coin's ''nine''. |
| 333 | ** ''Literature/TheTruth'': William de Worde and his father are not, shall we say, on speaking terms. |
| 334 | ** Young Nobby Nobbs fears prison because his father's in there, and he used to break Nobby's arms. And while the Grey House isn't exactly parental abuse, it's still... icky. |
| 335 | ** In the novel ''Literature/{{Hogfather}}'', the criminal Catseye is famous in criminal underworld circles for being able to see in the dark. But as he admits he is actually scared of the dark and of old cellars, because when he was a boy his father regularly used to lock him up in their cellar without a light for hours as a punishment and beat him if he tried to escape. He trained himself to see in the dark mainly as a way of compensation. |
| 336 | *** Most of the working-class, small-time criminals in ''Hogfather'' turn out to have been abused, physically and/or emotionally, as children, although they're still sane... compared to the main villain, the psychotic, boyishly handsome assassin Mr. Jonathan Teatime, who is implied to have killed [[SelfMadeOrphan his own parents]] when he was still a child. |
| 337 | * ''This Boy's Life'': Dwight was this. He would force Toby to spend hours shucking extremely spiky horse chestnuts bare-handed as a chore for no apparent reason other than to torment him, spent Toby's money on a dog that Toby himself didn't want, and tried to force Toby into the local Boy Scout troop just to give him some work to do, even joining as the adult leader just to make sure he did. There's also the times where Dwight attacked Toby physically over some pretty minor offenses. In the climax of the film version, Dwight attacks Toby over something involving ''breakfast'' which a now fed-up Toby reacts to by fighting back. The two end up in a huge fight. Finally, Toby's mother helps him and the two decide to leave. |
| 338 | %%Administrivia/ZeroContextExample* ''TheThreadThatBindsTheBones'': This is TheReveal. |
| 339 | * In ''Literature/ThreeDarkCrowns'' the foster families of the foster queens practice child abuse as a method to keeping the child queens under control. |
| 340 | ** The Arrons regularly poison Katharine in order to increase her poison tolerance. Genevieve Arron often hits and pinches Katharine, not to mention the emotional and verbal abuse she heaps on the poor girl. Genevieve's sister Natalia never stops Genevieve so she is party to the abuse as well. |
| 341 | ** The Westwoods and the High Priestess Luca are emotionally manipulative toward Mirabella. Luca has Rho force Mirabella to kill an innocent. This leaves the girl utterly traumatized. All of Luca's interactions with Mirabella are designed to make her feel guilty and ungrateful. Luca has not forgotten how a 6-year-old Mirabella nearly drowned her. |
| 342 | ** The Milones are the best of the bunch but they are rather dismissive of Arsinoe's chances of winning. Something that has the poor girl resigned to the fact that she will die. |
| 343 | * ''Literature/TheTiesThatBind'': Laika took corporal punishment from her father for the first 20 years of her life. |
| 344 | * ''Literature/TillWeHaveFaces'': In this Creator/CSLewis story, the king of Glome is physically and verbally abusive to his daughters, particularly Orual. |
| 345 | * ''Literature/TimeScout'': Skeeter's parents were so distant that five years after he went missing, his father's response was, "How much money can we make? Gotta be a TV movie in this." and his mother gave him a peck on the cheek for the cameras, started organizing his doctor's visits, and never said a word. Jenna Caddrick's father ''might'' never have hit her, but he was certainly a vile man. Meanwhile, Margo's father was a drunk who hit her and her mother. Seven-year-olds are advised not to spill nail polish when playing dress up. |
| 346 | * ''Literature/TitansForest'': At the beginning of ''Crossroads of Canopy'', Unar's mother decides to sell her daughter as a slave on the basis that whatever price they'll get for her will be worth more than what value Unar will be able to get by gathering food in the forest. Unar's father argues against this, but in large part because he expects that his wife will just waste the money. |
| 347 | * ''Literature/ToKillAMockingbird'': |
| 348 | ** Mayella Ewell's father, Bob Ewell. We know her dad beats her, and it is hinted that he also abuses her sexually. |
| 349 | ** Boo Radley as well. He was kept locked in his house for over 30 years by a man described as "the meanest man God ever blew breath into". |
| 350 | * ''Literature/TouchingSpiritBear'': Cole's dad drank until he couldn't remember his own name, then proceeded to beat Cole for no reason at all. [[spoiler:Turns out, this is because he himself was abused and didn’t know any better]]. |
| 351 | * ''Treasure at the Heart of the Tanglewood'': the wizard isn't actually her father, but is a father figure to Hannah. Once a month she's supposed to pull out all the plants that grow in her hair (a painful process) and brew a tea for him to drink, which gives him magic powers; he tells her this is because if she doesn't remove them, she'll go mad. One month, when he finds she's been keeping some of them in, he yanks them all out and she passes out from the pain. [[spoiler:He later tries to kill her.]] |
| 352 | * The first ''Literature/TrixieBelden'' novel deals with Jim's [[WickedStepmother stepfather]] Jonesy, who beat him regularly and left him tied up for days on end after Jim's mother died, essentially using him as slave labour while waiting to get his hands on Jim's inheritance. After escaping, Jim mentions having nightmares about Jonesy coming after him with a whip. |
| 353 | * While most of her novels deal with AbusiveParents in some aspect, Elena Ferrante's ''Troubling Love'' is the one that specifically hones in on the subject as well as the topic of DomesticAbuse. Delia's father was a violent drunk and not only beat her mother, but his kids as well. When she confronts her father about it, he hits her. |
| 354 | ** In her [[Literature/TheNeapolitanNovels Neapolitan Novels]], ''all'' the parents in the poor Naples village the books are set in are violent and abusive. Elena, in the first chapter of ''My Brilliant Friend'' states that she doesn't hold nostalgia for her childhood because all she remembers was violence. Lila's father once threw his daughter out a window and broke her arm and Elena's mother beats her as well. |
| 355 | * ''Literature/TheTruthOfRockAndRoll'': When Jenny gets suspended from school, she has to stay out an extra day "to let the bruises heal to the point she could cover them with makeup." They're pretty good at emotional abuse, too. Meanwhile, Johnny's parents are extremely controlling, and turn truly nasty if balked. |
| 356 | * ''Literature/TrylleTrilogy'': In this trilogy, Wendy's mother stabbed her with a knife when she was 6, claiming that she was not her child. Turns out, Wendy was actually a changeling child. |
| 357 | * ''Literature/TwistedCogs'' has Joanna, who is regularly punishes the MC for talking to Ele, thinking he's imaginary. |
| 358 | * ''Literature/VeraWongsUnsolicitedAdviceForMurderers'': Marshall was constantly calling his two year-old daughter Emma stupid and embarrassing, yelling at his wife for "coddling" her. When she first meets Marshall's identical twin brother Oliver, Oliver is horrified at how Emma is clearly ''terrified''. Several people note that Emma asks about her dead father exactly ''once''; when she is told he won't be coming home, she appears to do everything she can to forget about him. |
| 359 | * ''Literature/WarriorCats'': |
| 360 | ** Crowfeather is neglectful and verbally abusive towards his son, Breezepelt. This is because [[spoiler:he only chose Nightcloud as his mate and had Breezepelt after he returned to prove that he was loyal to the Windclan after he had a secret relationship with the Thunderclan medicine cat and ran off with her, leaving their clans behind]]. |
| 361 | ** Rainflower, Crookedstar's mother, can also count. She rejects him all because he broke his jaw and couldn't be cured of it. Earlier on, before she starts ignoring him, she had become verbally abusive. |
| 362 | ** Lizardstripe, Brokenstar's foster mother, definitely counts. When she was given Brokenkit to take care of, she keeps biting him, scratching him, and doing whatever to keep him from being loved. It's perhaps thanks to her that Brokenstar is the evil tyrant we see today. |
| 363 | ** Tigerstar is also this to his son, Hawkfrost. He doesn't care at all for his son even after he [[spoiler: follows him to the grave,]] but is rather affable (albeit rather manipulative) to his older son, Brambleclaw. |
| 364 | * ''The Watcher'' by James Howe (of Bunnicula fame): The title character [[spoiler: whose real name is Margaret, is violently abused by her father, while her mother is too weak or fearful to intervene. Her father tries to murder her by drowning her in the kitchen sink, but the two other main characters rescue her and her mother finally turns against her dad.]] |
| 365 | * ''Literature/WhateleyUniverse'': |
| 366 | ** Generator's dad. Physically and emotionally abusive, ''especially'' after Generator's mother was killed (which may have been dad's fault). Generator would have been beaten to death if she hadn't manifested her mutant power right then. Money? All gone now that dad's on the run from the police for other crimes. The only reason dad didn't rape her is probably because [[spoiler:she wasn't a girl back when she was living with her father.]] |
| 367 | ** Circuit Breaker as well -- parental abuse doesn't get much worse than [[spoiler:murdering your oldest child in front of the other two, then burying the body under a church pulpit and forcing everyone to pretend that the he never existed.]] |
| 368 | * In ''Literature/WhereAreTheChildren'', [[spoiler:Carl Harmon]] turns out to have been an abusive father whose children lived in terror of him; he was extremely strict and domineering towards his children, demanding their total, unquestioning respect and obedience. He would spank them even over things like accidental bedwetting. He also sexually abused [[spoiler:Lisa]] and potentially [[spoiler:Peter]], too (it's made explicit he molested [[spoiler:Lisa]], while it's more implied with [[spoiler:Peter]]). [[spoiler:Carl eventually committed the ultimate act of abuse by [[OffingTheOffspring murdering his children]] to ensure his abuse wouldn't be exposed, especially as their mother was starting to realise something was wrong and breaking free of his control]]. |
| 369 | * In ''Literature/WhyWeTookTheCar'', Maik's father turns out to be the abusive parent whereas Maik's alcoholic mother is actually loving and sincerely cares for her son. |
| 370 | * ''Literature/WildCards'': |
| 371 | ** Succubus, one of the characters from this series, was used as a sexual toy by her parents. |
| 372 | ** Mackie Messer was physically abused by his mother. Possibly sexually as well. |
| 373 | ** The Amazing Bubbles was supposed to have had money from her modeling career put into trust for her until she was of legal age. But her parents instead funded their own decadent lifestyle. When she found out and sought legal help against her parents, they took the money and ran, leaving her with what they couldn't carry. And in a nasty parting shot, they also slashed open her beloved stuffed toys. |
| 374 | * ''Literature/WolfHall'' opens with young Thomas Cromwell being so badly beaten by his father Walter that his own sister can barely recognize him. She and her husband are too intimidated by Walter to even be able to protect Thomas under their own roof -- as is the rest of Putney -- so Thomas leaves England entirely to find mercenary work on the Continent. Years later, after he returns and starts his own family, Thomas promises himself he'll give his children the loving upbringing he was denied and refuses to even consider letting them anywhere near Walter. |
| 375 | * ''Literature/TheWolvesOfWilloughbyChase'': In this sequence: Dido's parents are neglectful of her to the point of cruelty and her father, in particular, does not hesitate to imprison and endanger his daughter in the name of Hanoverian conspiracies. Worse off still, her half-sister, Is, is used by her mother as a drudge and treated with nothing but casual violence and verbal abuse by both her mother and father. It's never acknowledged outright by the pair that she is their child, probably since she is the product of an extramarital affair, a fact which might explain their disregard. An example of an abusive guardian is Miss Slighcarp, to Bonnie and Sylvia in 'The Wolves Of Willoughby Chase', and to Dido and Dutiful Penitence in 'Nightbirds On Nantucket'. |
| 376 | * ''Literature/TheWomensRoom'': |
| 377 | ** Lily's father, who regularly beat her, her mother and her siblings. At one point during her teens, she tries to escape by saving up and moving into a youth hostel, only to be found out, beaten in public and called a whore by her father, and forced to move back in with her family. The narrator does not go into great detail about Lily's childhood, stating that 'enough is enough'. |
| 378 | ** Ava's father regularly beat her, both as a child and an adult. One time, he hit her for saying she dislikes Lyndon B. Johnson. She retaliated by stabbing him in the stomach with a giant fork. |
| 379 | * ''Literature/AWrinkleInTime'' (''A Swiftly Tilting Planet''): Meg Murry O'Keefe learns that as a teenager, her mother-in-law had a horrible stepfather who physically abused her mother and brother Chuck, and harbored sexual interest in his stepdaughter. When the stepfather attempted to hurt their beloved grandmother, however, Chuck intervened and received such severe injuries that he was brain damaged and ultimately died. |
| 380 | ** It's also implied that Calvin's home life is not a happy one and that his mother is physically abusive, likely as a result of her own abusive childhood, and it's part of the reason he spends so much time at the Murrys'. |
| 381 | * Loads of characters from the superhero WebSerialNovel ''Literature/{{Worm}}'', probably because in ''Worm'' people get superpowers due to being in really bad situations. The main character is the only member of her supervillain team who actually had caring parents. The others were: Neglectful, drug-addled mother and a series of "stepfathers", none of whom were much better (Grue, Imp), Terrible foster care experience culminating in an over-controlling foster mother who tried to drown her child's pets (Bitch), Neglectful, overpressuring family that tried to exploit their daughter once she manifested powers (Tattletale), and a Charles Manson-esque supervillain who considered his non-powered kids wastes of space and his powered kids as prize jewels in his collection (Regent). And that's just the central team. A full list of every abusive parent or parental figure in the story would take up the entire page. The trend continues in its sequel, ''Literature/{{Ward}}'', with the main character having a mom who's emotionally manipulative and a father who is negligent due to his depression. |
| 382 | * ''Literature/YoungWizards'' -- ''Games Wizards Play'' -- Dairine's mentee, Mehrnaz, [[spoiler:is taking emotional abuse from her mother for doing so well in the competition, she's expected to lose because by doing well she's supposedly showing up other members of the family. This abuse is also coming from other members of her extended family as well.]] |
| 383 | * In ''Literature/{{Zeroes}}'', Mob's mother was physically violent towards her, resulting in Mob's father taking Mob away from her. He meant well, but over the subsequent years he also ends up failing as a parent: he is a scam artist and a drug dealer, and gets Mob involved in his criminal activities from a young age. |
| 384 |
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