The interesting thing about having burned through almost a decade talking about the comic strip "For Better Or For Worse" is that you notice certain trends that drive the characters. While I started to list these on my LiveJournal account recently, it occurs to me that I made a mess of things because I didn't start from the right vantage-point and ask what it is that main character Elly most wants out of life. While we don't get to see what drives her in the later years, the need Elly has to make sure her children live lives of stultifying blandness in order to obey a rather rigid ideal of 'correct' behaviour suggest that the Elly of 2008 is as hampered by the same obsession as the Elly of 1979 was. This means that the primary motivation Elly Patterson has is expressed as follows:
Axiom 1a:
Elly Patterson's every action is designed with the goal of gaining her mother's approval and thus proving that her mother is wrong to treat her like a despised disappointment all the time.
The problem with that is that Elly's mother Marian didn't actually see Elly as a despised and detested disappointment she regrets having. Marian actually seemed to be quite fond of her daughter and only pointed out problem areas because she wanted Elly to excel and be even happier. The tragedy is that is not her need to keep Elly 'humble' is that not only did she not anticipate how that would make life worse is that Marian seemed to be incapable of really understanding how Elly felt about herself because it never occurred to her that people like Elly's level of self-loathing exist in this world. This means that she died 'knowing' that her daughter 'knew' she was loved because she was unaware of a distressing limitation that hampered her daughter and blighted her chances of happiness:
Axiom 1b:
Elly seems to be incapable of actually seeing what's right with her life; not only does she see the glass as being almost empty, she's certain that people who hate her drank it to make her life worse.
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