The Perfect Child

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of child abuse, graphic violence, death, animal abuse and death, and mental illness (including postpartum depression and psychosis).

“The angry knot of unfairness lodged in my stomach. Why did the universe allow people who hurt kids to have them? Why couldn’t it give them to people like me, who wanted them?”

The Desire to Be a Parent is the foremost underlying motivation in Hannah’s life. It guides her actions and her thoughts, and it is what leads her to extreme panic when she feels that her child is threatened. Hannah hears about what happened to Janie, and it makes her angry that a loving person like her is denied the ability to have children while abusive people can easily have them. Ironically, Hannah ends up adopting the very child she is referring to, but the experience is nothing like she imagined and culminates in Hannah herself becoming abusive.

“She was as delicate as any newborn I’d ever held.”

When Christopher meets Janie, there is an instant connection between them, and he holds her like she is his own daughter. Christopher sees Janie as the exact person to fill the hole in his and Hannah’s lives and himself as the perfect person to take care of her. Because of Janie’s history, she is small for her size and frail due to being starved. As a result, she gives the impression of being fragile and vulnerable. This proves misleading; though certainly traumatized, Janie is herself capable of