What do you think about Spike's mother?

[selenspuffy]

Hi there!
Whenever I watch "Lies my parents told me", I just cant understand why William's mum acts that way, and causes his son to kill her? I mean he did everything to be with his mother, He told Dru that he wants to hang out as a "trio-Spike,Drusilla,Spike's mum" made her a vampire so that she could live forever healthily, so what do you think about that? What did his mother really want?

[Sid]

The point was that Spike realized that instead of saving his mother, what he actually did was murder his mother and give birth to a demon. It's during that fight with Wood he finally realizes that his real mother did love him, and finally has closure; this is why the song that triggered him no longer had the intended effect.

I've sort of concluded that the amount of humanity a vampire retains after being sired is different for different vampires, since it really isn't the same for all of them in the Buffyverse. William's mother was more of an Angelus in that respect, rather than a morally ambiguous creature like Spike.

[Ben]

Personally I just thought she was wacko, I mean he was attracted to Drusilla who aint exactly the smartest gal in the class, I think he has a fetish not that im saying he wanted his mam in that way its just that many women in his life and un-life are usually nuts, then again Buffy aint that dumb. I mean look at Harmony.

[Wolfie Gilmore]

The point was that Spike realized that instead of saving his mother, what he actually did was murder his mother and give birth to a demon. It's during that fight with Wood he finally realizes that his real mother did love him, and finally has closure; this is why the song that triggered him no longer had the intended effect.

I've sort of concluded that the amount of humanity a vampire retains after being sired is different for different vampires, since it really isn't the same for all of them in the Buffyverse. William's mother was more of an Angelus in that respect, rather than a morally ambiguous creature like Spike.

I found LMPTM unsatisfying in the way it portrayed Spike's attitude... something about it just jarred and felt off...until I started to read it as Lies We Tell Ourselves. When Spike tells Wood that his mother loved him, I got the impression that he was trying to convince himself Trying to make things seem very simple, when actually it's muddier than he wanted to believe - his transition from human-demon-vampirewithasoul being a case in point. His speech (well, conversation, but there's a speechy quality to it) to Robin during their final confrontation reminds me a little of Giles's words in Lie to Me about everything being terribly simple, and involving black and white hats:

SPIKE
I don't give a piss about your mum. She was a slayer. I was a vampire. (Spike kicks Robin) That's the way the game is played.

He moves things away from questions of agency to the image of vampire and slayer as pawns in a game. This rhetoric is something he's used in the past when trying to convince himself that life is simple and there's a natural order, a simple balance of bad and good. As for example at the end of season 6, when he's ranting about the chip, trying to rid himself of the guilty, confusing images of attempting to rape Buffy.

SPIKE: You know, everything used to be so clear. Slayer. Vampire. Vampire kills Slayer, sucks her dry, picks his teeth with her bones. It's always been that way.

Has it? Even when Spike was in his evilest phase, things were never simple. Killing slayers wasn't just a game, or rather, the game was complex and psychological. It was a way of proving he was worthy - to Dru, to Angelus. It was about sex, it was about power, it was about fulfilling a fantasy. The language he uses talking to the Chinese slayer is charged with teh secks: "Just like I pictured it. This good for you?" And then, talking to Dru after: "You ever hear them saying the blood of a Slayer is a powerful aphrodisiac?"

It's interesting that Spike, who's often seen as a "grey area" character, craves simplicity. Again, in Seeing Red:

SPIKE: (angrily) It's the chip! Steel and wires and silicon. (sighs) It won't let me be a monster. (quietly) And I can't be a man. I'm nothing.

He sees it as an either/or deal....you have to be one thing or the other, or you're nothing. There's no room for hybridity.

When he's talking to Wood, imagining that his mother was simply an evil demon makes it easier to handle the pain. While, as Angel is about to point out re evil Willow before Buffy gives him an evil of her own... vampires do tend to take on aspects of the person they were before. So there's nothing to say that Mrs Pratt didn't have the feelings that her demon self expressed so brutally. She may well have loved her son, but it may also have been far more complex than that. She may well have felt smothered by him, unable to live her own life...or at least conflicted about his constant presence.

Ooh, just noticed something...when Spike tells Wood about his relationship with Mommy Dearest, he phrases it like this:

"I'll tell you a story about a mother and son. See, like you, I loved my mother. So much so I turned her into a vampire... (nods) so we could be together forever. She said some nasty bits to me after I did that. Been weighing on me for quite some time. (points at Robin) But you helped me figure something out. You see, unlike you, I had a mother who loved me back. When I sired her, I set loose a demon, and it tore into me, but it was the demon talking, not her. (stands) I realize that now. (walks toward the computer) My mother loved me with all her heart. I was her world. (clicks the mouse, playing the recording again)."

He describes it as a story. Now, I don't think he means consciously to undermine the truth of it. But putting it like that is telling - because it is a story, it's just one version of events. One in which mothers wear white bonnets and everyone lives happily ever after. Ok, they don't. But the resolution is all terribly simple, in Spike's mind. Rather like Giles's lie version of reality.

Now, I don't believe that Spike is twisting the truth on purpose. But I think he's believing what he wants and needs to believe in order to move on. Because the truth might just be too unbearable.

[Sid]

I'm sure his mother did feel a great deal of what Spike was told by the vampire version of her, but she made it sound much more extreme than it likely actually was. I speculated her true feelings (pre-siring) as one of a loving, nurturing mother who was concerned that her son was unable to build his own life, was far too attached with her, and she didn't have the heart to tell him. Which isn't really all that horrible, I don't think. I dunno, I'd have a pretty easy time living with that if I were Spike, all things considered.

His vamp-mum, in a nutshell, lied with the truth. In the end, Spike's evaluation of "my mother loved me" and his realization that the hatred and brutality she dished out on him prior to him staking her wasn't really her were both correct.

I chalked up the "I don't give a piss about your mother" stuff as the audience being told that Spike had snapped back into his regular self, and (if only to stick it to Wood) was through with guilt-tripping himself. In fact, I'm certain that a lot of that was bravado, since we know that his declaration that he's going to kill Wood then and there was BS.

We're free to analyze the living daylights out of anything, but I'm pretty sure my initial reply here was the overall message of that episode, since it's what the audience was told in a very "here it is" manner. As a rule for TV shows, the most obvious interpretation is probably the intended one.

[Kiera]

That scene is so sad; even as a vampire you can't help, but feel for Spike at that point in the episode. As for what his mother really wanted, I was never too sure of that myself. She was dead the minute he bit her, but in all honesty, I do think she loved him. Granted he did give birth to a demon the minute he sired her, but she also held back her true thoughts because she cared about his feelings. That to me, is love in itself; not wanting to hurt the ones you love or who love you. Though it's not the best thing to do either...

Feminists Are Ugly: I loved the point you made as well about Spike snapping back to his old self. I agree.

[Paradise]

Spike's mother truly loved him as a living person, and he came to realize that finally through Robin Wood. But as a vampire, she was evil and wanted to torment and hurt him. It was very sad.

[spuffbeste]

Spike's mother truly loved him as a living person, and he came to realize that finally through Robin Wood. But as a vampire, she was evil and wanted to torment and hurt him. It was very sad.

I agree with you. When Spike's mother became a vampire, she couldn't see anything but the badness. So she wants to taste the evil things , that's why she doesn't really care about his son. But in my personal opinion, the love between mother and son can not die with being a vampire. Because the vampires love each other!!They can feel it. Maybe Spike's mother wanted freedom. She wanted to escape from his son so she could live her real life!She could want this thing to happen earlier, but maybe she couldn't tell because of her goodness. When she was evil, the goodness flew away so she wanted to do the thing that she wanted at the beginning...