YMMV / The Glass Castle

• Diagnosed by the Audience: Jeannette's mom, Rose Mary probably has some sort of Bipolar Disorder going on because on some weeks she's very jovial and giddy, but by the next week she won't even get out of bed while sobbing hysterically. Then, once again, her depression then turns into happiness and vice versa. She also shows plenty of signs of being The Sociopath.
• Disposable Fiancé: It's rather obvious from his first scene that Jeanette's relationship with her fiance was not going to last. It's more due to Jeanette's stubborness and desire to prove her dad wrong that they even get married. He isn't seen again after Jeanette leaves him and his clients at dinner and runs to see her dad, and he's noticeably absent at the family dinner at the end (when Jeanette is living in a new house).
• Moral Event Horizon: Rex breaking into his children's New York fund for drinking money, after they saved and scraped for months doing menial work such as lawn-mowing, shovelling driveways, babysitting, and, in Lori's case, selling her art pieces.
  • In the book, Rex whipping teenage Jeanette with his belt after she finally gets fed up with his and Rose Mary's irresponsible behaviour and furiously calls them out on it.
  • In the movie, Rex deliberately putting Jeanette in the sights of an attempted rapist for a hustle, giving her a cut of the money, only for her to find out he was drinking at the bar in the first place using money he stole from her piggy bank, is the last straw for her.
  • In the movie, Jeanette finding out, on the night of her engagement party, that Rose Mary was sitting on her share of her late mother's land in Texas since Jeanette was 11 and that the land was worth a million dollars (but Rose Mary never got it appraised).
• The Scrappy: Whereas Rex (occasionally) goes out of his way to show the children he cares for them, Rose Mary is emotionally torturous, and selfish to an insane degree, refusing to work and provide for her children even though she has a good teacher's degree (during a time period where there were a lot of teaching positions available). And while Rex has a Freudian Excuse, Rose Mary doesn't and could have divorced Rex at anytime and gotten welfare for her and her kids. She choose her life and art instead. It's made worse after it's revealed that she's been sitting on a fortune she inherited from her family, but refuses to sell their oil wells, keeping their family in poverty out of sheer, stupid stubbornness. It's hard to find a reader of the book who isn't completely and utterly disgusted with her.
  • Rose Mary kind of sort of has a Freudian Excuse. If you read Half Broke Horses, the author's novel about the life of her grandmother Lily Casey Smith, you find out that Lily was a very strict, no-nonsense mother who did everything she could to whip her two children into tough-skinned, upstanding, hard-working citizens. And, when Rose Mary was thirteen, Lily literally whipped her with her belt, for being caught swimming naked with older boys. She also thought very little of Rose Mary's artistic inclinations and made her get a teaching degree. Rose Mary's behavior as an adult can basically be interpreted as one long, endless teenage rebellion against her mother and rules/responsibility/authority in general. But there is no excuse whatsoever for letting her children starve, especially when she had every possible means to take care of them.
• The Unfavorite: It's subtle, but the parents don't seem very fond of Lori. She's the one who's the most disapproving of their antics even as a child (before Jeanette, Brian, and Maureen are old enough to realize how disfunctional their family is) and is teased by her parents for having no imagination.
• Unkempt Beauty: Naomi Watts with tangled dirty hair and aging makeup is still Naomi Watts.