Female Sensual Desire in Mrs. Fletcher: A Coming-of-Age story in Reverse

Written by Robyn Bacon

In the first episode, Eve’s needs are almost completely eclipsed by her teenage son Brendan and appear non-existent to the audience. Eve’s altruistic character disposition is displayed through her relationship with Brendan and her occupation as executive director of Haddington Senior Centre. Both Eve’s professional and personal life is spent taking caretaking the needs of others.

As a mother, Eve does everything for Brendan. Eve cleans his room, prepares his meals, and organizes his daily schedule— treating him as if he were a ten-year-old boy. Eve’s helicopter parenting techniques are a reaction to Brendan moving away to college and her personal struggle to let go of her past when Brendan was a sweet and caring young boy. Now, Eve is unwilling to come to terms with the fact that Brendan has turned into an apathetic and unappreciative son. Brendan neglects to show appreciation for the hard work Eve puts into making his life extremely comfortable and privileged. In the first episode, Eve independently packs up the entire car for Brendan’s first day of college, individually assembles his new college dorm room, and politely requests that Brendan send her one text a day while living in college residence. However, even more so Eve’s anxiety surrounding Brendan’s departure for college is rooted in her existential fear to confront her own identity once he leaves—and subsequently discover who she really is besides being Brendan’s mother. The relationship between Eve and Brendan remains tremendously imbalanced—as Eve’s labour as a single mother go completely unacknowledged by Brendan and she remains the passive parent—afraid to scold Brendan for his transgressions.

However, this dynamic in their relationship shifts once Brendan leaves the house and Eve must begin to confront something that completely frightens her—her new identity. Over years of taking care of Brendan, Eve routinely neglected her own needs. It scares Eve that her identity is more complex than merely being Mrs. Fletcher—and so her journey of selfdiscovery begins. The second episode leaves Eve feeling lost—but by the third episode Eve begins to ignite a series of activities that allow her to engage in an intimate journey of self-discovery. Immediately following Brendan’s departure Eve decides to enroll in a personal essay English night class taught at the local community college in town. The professor begins to ask Eve questions that make her question her own life choices that have shaped the course of her life. As the class progresses so does Eve’s habit of consuming Internet pornography. Eve finds herself consistently revisiting a website called the Milfateria to observe women on screen who she sees a part of herself reflected in—and from there Eve finds her own path of sexual self-actualization.

The fascination of Eve engaging in Internet pornography—a field highly dominated by the male gaze—is that Eve is not merely engaging with an objectification of the image, but rather an identification with it. Eve is the narrative subject who also finds visual pleasure as the spectator by watching porn stars receive their own sexual gratification and social freedom on screen. The pornography is a spiritual tool Eve uses to uncover a part of her identity that had lay dormant for many years, or a part of herself she didn’t realize existed at all.

The last episode of Mrs. Fletcher is undoubtedly climactic when Brendan accidentally interrupts Eve’s three-way sexual encounter with her co-worker and his previous high school classmate. Brendan spontaneously decides to visit Eve one weekend and walks in on the three of them naked after their threesome. The last shot of the series shows Eve standing on the front of her porch and staring off into the distance—feeling lost once again. After playing an intriguing game of back-andforth repressing and indulging her fantasies, Eve feels lost once again and that her identity crisis has returned indefinitely. The open-ending leaves Eve confront the aftermath of her conscious choices. The end hints to the existential and dreadful possibility that Eve’s identity crisis has resurfaced—and perhaps it never left.