Volume I, Issue vi

February 1999

"And Another Thing...": Bitch Goddesses from the Planet Estrogen by Joan Roseman

She was illegitimate, given up at birth.

She learned to scrap and claw for everything she wanted.

Her need to be loved was bottomless.

She looked for love with men who belonged to others.

She bore a child out of wedlock and left it to the care of others.

Her hunger for finer things drove her to aspire to social status far beyond her humble origins.

Her sexual allure drew men to her, but her cunning nature often defeated her schemes.

She concealed her son's true parentage in order to achieve her own ends.

Who is she? Easy, you say, you can name that slut in five letters. Well, not so fast with that buzzer, chum. You'll have to buy another vowel and exchange a couple of consonants to spell this sinner's name:

M-O-N-I-C-A.

Monica Quartermaine is Carly Benson's greatest foe these days, even counting Tony. She has despised Carly for the deceptive, manipulative, gold-digging, social-climbing upstart she believes her to be for longer than almost anyone now on the GH canvas. True, Keesha has the edge historically, but Keesha's not around. Monica is, and she hates Carly with a white-hot rage that, if looked at in another light, could be more high comedy than family tragedy. Monica hating Carly? It's hard not to race for the psychology textbook. Jungian archetype analysis, anyone?

Here's a how-dee-do: Of all the women on the GH canvas, Bobbie included, no one has more in common with Carly than Monica Quartermaine. Like Carly, the young Monica was a grasping, opportunistic schemer who played sexual leapfrog in her effort to find security and love. Monica grew up in an orphanage, apparently unadoptable. Her grandiose fantasies about her birth mother masked a deep feeling of unworthiness. She covered with bravado. Had she not come under the benign tutelage of Gail, it is likely that Monica would have lived entirely by her wits, as did Carly. Even with Gail's loving influence, Monica grew up self-centered and largely amoral.

A case can be made that Monica's crimes, in their time, were as outrageous or more so than Carly's. She was (some say still is) a voracious sexual predator and a serial adulteress. She acquired the patina of wealth and privilege as a shield against her low origins, but it doesn't take much for the street fighter in Monica to emerge, well-manicured talons outstretched. Monica's credentials as a heart surgeon are superb, but her rapacious need to assert power and influence over her family seems to afford her more satisfaction and certainly occupies more time. It is no accident that the defining moment of Monica's adult life is not the birth of her child or a triumph in the operating room. It is instead the day her husband Alan gave her the deed to the Quartermaine mansion.

For all her many faults, self-justifications and selfish schemes, Carly has it all over Monica Quartermaine in at least one department. She knows herself for what she is. Like her mother, Carly is blessed (or cursed) with the ability to see herself in her true colors. Occasionally she is even repulsed by the knowledge of her actions and capabilities. Bobbie's daughter has the advantage of Spencer genes, which seem to be composed--at least fifty percent--of irony. Many compare Carly to a snake. Strangely, it is Monica who exhibits a characteristically snakelike ability: she sheds one skin and slithers on. She doesn't look back.

She should.