Volume I, Issue iv

December 1998

A Study in Character: Laura, Seen Plain by Joan Roseman

To many new viewers of General Hospital, Laura Webber Baldwin Spencer is something of a conundrum. They see a beautiful woman who appears devoted to her children, her husband and her home, yet is the object of obsession of a man who alternately loves and lies to her. This man is the scion of a family that once sought to freeze the world for ransom, not to mention imprisoning and enslaving her mother and her. Now he wants Laura to leave her fragmented family and cleave only unto him to form, with the son he claims as theirs, a second family. Laura's husband, seldom seen and always spoken of as violent, avoids her, follows her, and suspects her. Yet, inexplicably, this Luke inspires in his wife feelings of love and trust few others can comprehend. Laura's second-born, Lucky, is only now coming to terms with the fact that she could have married her rapist--his father--and lived in seeming bliss for more than 15 years. This is Laura?

Is it? Who IS Laura? Why should this woman, whose mature beauty is perhaps no longer in the thousand ships-launching category, bewitch and enthrall men and fascinate women? Why is she so appealing, not only to them, but also to us as viewers? Why can't she tell the truth? Why can't she tell Stefan to go away, or Luke to go away, or someone to go away? How could she have deserted Nikolas as she did? Why does she always put him last? Is her sister-in-law Bobbie right? Does Laura avoid blame at all costs? Why?

To understand the person Laura Spencer is today it is helpful to understand the child and young girl she was. While it is a given that we are shaped by early life experiences, real or fictional, with Laura the given must constantly be in mind. She is an incredibly complex character, a mass of contradictions that only back-story can illuminate. Here, then, is a very brief recapitulation of some salient highpoints in Laura's early history. What will follow is an attempt to fill in some psychological blanks for the benefit of current viewers, particularly those who missed these formative years.

What's in a name? Psychologists tell us that knowing one's name is key to knowing one's self. Laura was a child who was taken away from her mother, Lesley, at birth and given to a Canadian mother to raise as her own. For many years, Laura was Laura Vining, sister of Amy and loved daughter of Barbara. When eventually Lesley learned that her daughter had not died at birth and sought to reclaim her, Laura became a displaced person. Suddenly American, suddenly a citizen of Port Charles and the hospital culture to which her new/old mother belonged, Laura was a very confused and disoriented child. She ran back to the safety of the Vinings, then came back to deal with life as Dr. Lesley Webber's child. She coped, with varying degrees of success, by learning the art of pleasing. While she appeared on the surface to be a sweet, lovely child, just underneath the veneer of normalcy was a frightened, angry, rebellious Laura that popped out unexpectedly and with often dramatic and far-reaching consequences. In fact, the young Laura Webber bore a striking resemblance to the young Elizabeth Webber, who spoke more truly than she knew when she confided to Lucky's mother that they had something in common beside rape.

Teenage Laura was lovely, yes, and physically mature beyond her years, but Laura, as she approached her mid-teens, could have been described clinically as a case of arrested development. Her unexpressed anger and frustration drew her to exploit the physical assets she had in her arsenal, her exceptional looks and the ability to charm and give affection. She used them in the forlorn hope of finding reciprocation, even though she often felt unworthy of the love she sought. In an innocent wish to try out her fledgling wiles on men, she encountered disaster in the form of her first older man, David Hamilton. Rebuffed by Lesley Webber, the true focus of his passion, Rick Webber's old friend David took his revenge by seducing Lesley's virginal daughter. But Laura was eager to be seduced, eager to be a woman and perhaps unconsciously eager to be revenged herself, on a mother whom she still saw as having deserted her. [Author's Note to those who say that Carly is wrong to think Bobbie abandoned her: facts aside, any feeling that powerful is valid. The wish is often as true, psychologically, as the deed. Children who discover during adolescence the details of their birth often have complex feelings at odds with the literal truth.]

Laura learned important lessons in passion and lying from her mentor/lover, David Hamilton. Then, upon learning that he loved not her but Lesley, and had been using her as a weapon, Laura killed David Hamilton. The shock made her lose her memory. When it returned, Lesley was on trial for the murder. Laura regained her memory but kept silent. Rather than face the public notoriety as a child-murderer and the private anguish of explaining herself to her mother and stepfather, Laura lied, she stayed quiet, and she ran away. Like the Stop, Drop and Roll instructions for what to do when you are on fire, Lie, Conceal and Run became Laura's personal formula for crisis management.

In New York, Laura joined a commune. It was her second lesson in the art of nontraditional family making, (the first being the Vining connection, which she and, eventually, Lesley, maintain to this day). When she was found by Older Man #2, Scotty Baldwin, and brought home, she entered therapy. Although the ostensible purpose was to regain her already-regained memory, Laura participated in the exercise for her reason: to get the support she needed in order to own up to her crime and free her by-then-imprisoned mother. She used society's framework, in this case psychotherapy, to give herself breathing room and the tools she needed to go on, a technique she resorted to many times since. That is, while hiding a private motive, Laura uses available societal resources to her best advantage. It is an extremely healthy use of lemons to make lemonade, and typically Laura in its structure. Laura, the animate Matroshka doll, conceals several layers of Lauras beneath the one she shows the world.

Laura IS unexpected, unpredictable. She zigs when others zag. She gives her trust a bit too easily, perhaps, but is able to work with people she suspects. She looks as if she might want a soft life, yet she has always insisted on working and paying her own way. Her homemaking skills were first attempted in her playhouse-apartment as Laura Baldwin, but she perfected them in a farmhouse far in the countryside at a time when her life was on the line every single day. Bobbie Spencer thinks Laura trades on her fragility, but she is tough as old boots when she needs to be, and as competent as her nurse-sister-in-law in a pinch. Laura is loyal, and smart, and very, very brave, even when she's most terrified.

To recite Laura's entire history is not only impossible, even with the most accommodating of editors, but also unnecessary. We have already learned some basic facts and isolated key patterns that will help us to see Laura plain. And now, with that one word, we come to a less obvious key to Laura's character and behavior. Plain.

If there is one word everyone can agree describes Laura Webber Baldwin Spencer, that word is "beautiful." Laura is lovely, and one of the things life has done for her is to make her inside as beautiful as the outer shell. Yet to Laura, her self-image has not been built on the secure foundation that supports other beautiful girls and women. Men may rave over her honey tresses and women envy her her limpid eyes and kissable mouth. When Laura sees herself, her mirror must reflect a very different image.

How do we know this? Laura, after all, has never said, as Brenda did, that she thought she wasn't pretty. No V-like modesty makes Laura deny that she has been blessed with beauty. Laura's behavior tells us what she feels, and from the earliest days of her time in Port Charles, Laura has not behaved like a prom queen princess; she has always been what the Quakers mean by plain. She has identified with the humblest of Port Charles' citizenry: the downtrodden, the disaffected, the disenfranchised and the ill. She looked outside the bounds of conventional society when choosing her friends and allies, and she had (she still has) a happy--and useful--facility for making families wherever she goes. Be it Beecher's Corners or Canada or Charles Street, Laura can nest herself among people who appreciate her special qualities as she does theirs. It is interesting to note that in whatever decade Laura has been in Port Charles, she more than any other white, female character has reached out to minorities and society's outcasts. She identifies with them, not with the Amanda Barringtons. In the 1970s, Laura and Scotty Baldwin's closest friends were African-American, Claudia and Brian. She championed overweight Beth and "odd" Richard Simmons, smoothing their incorporation into the Port Charles canvas. Twenty years later, Laura became so much a part of Mary Mae Ward's family she was more daughter than friend, and her recognition of Stone Cates' need for dignity was as great a gift to him as her quick thinking and first aid. It is not that Laura is "liberal." Her empathy is so genuine because it comes from her own feelings of being an outsider. Despite her beauty and privileged upbringing, Laura always identifies with the underdog. She feels plain, as in ordinary, but also as in sound.

Lastly, Laura gets the job done. Whatever the cost, sooner or later, Laura does the right thing, and she does it by gritting her teeth and doing the hard work in a way that no one but Luke truly understands. He knows, because he knows what it costs her. Writing this, and thinking of Nikolas, I suddenly thought of Sophie's Choice. In William Styron's stunning novel, the concentration-camp bound Sophie is offered an opportunity to save her child's life. The catch is that she has two children, and it is she who must select one to live, knowing she must abandon the other to death. In many ways, Laura's choice was to save AND abandon her child, by entrusting his welfare to the only family she could make on that hell of an island of vipers, Stefan.

Ironically, Stefan understands very little of Laura's true nature. He doesn't see her plain, but through a veil of his own longings and cynicism. In large part, he is in love with his own creation, a Laura grown under lights in an exotic hothouse on an island off Greece. Luke understands virtually all there is to know about Laura, except perhaps the depth and extent of her love for him. I hope this peek under the façade will help you to know her better, at least as I see her, and perhaps to understand her more.

She's worth the effort.