Sympathy for Mrs. Clutter

One character who I cannot help but sympathize with is Bonnie Clutter. The fact that she is ill is not what causes me to feel this way, but rather that she tries so hard to rise above her illness but can never seem to succeed. Unlike many diseased, she does not desire pity or attention for her flaws. She instead attempts to please others because she herself is not pleased with her life. When entertaining Jolene, a young girl brought over to learn how to cook, she explains how her daughter Nancy tired of having to cook pies and how “It’ll be the same with you. No, no--why do I say that. Forgive me, dear. I’m sure you’ll never know what it is to be tired. I’m sure you’ll always be happy” (25-26). Evidently, Mrs. Clutter never wants anyone to have to go through any sort of pain resembling hers, so she attempts to always make people feel happy when they are around her. Though she finds ways to handle herself around others, Bonnie is still left with a sense of being trapped by her illness. When an “episode” hits her she cannot be around others and feels as though she is “missing out on everything. The best years, the children—everything” (29). These constant worries add to her uneasy feelings and prove that she strives for normalcy, but knows it is unattainable. This helpless feeling causes her yearnings to be free from a life of social pressure where she is labeled as the sick one. Her feelings are clearly expressed when Capote describes how “Some years earlier Mrs. Clutter has traveled to Wichita for two weeks of treatment and remained two months. On the advice of a doctor, who had thought the experience would aid her to regain ‘a sense of adequacy and usefulness,’ she had taken an apartment, then found a job—as a file clerk at the Y.W.C.A. Her husband, entirely sympathetic, had encouraged the adventure, but she had liked it all too well, so much that it seemed unchristian” (27-28). Because she was able to live in a world where there was no pressure to be perfect, she enjoyed the freedom of not having to worry about her “spells” effect on people because they were all strangers. Though at times Mrs. Clutter appears to be a burden to those around her, her hopeless attempts to be normal cause readers to feel for her.