Who Is Dependent Doree In Alice Monro's Dimensions

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Dependent Doree In Alice Monro’s Dimensions, Doree is a young woman struggling to find her own identity as a person. She has constantly linked herself to her husband, turning to him in times of tragedy because she did not know how to cope independently. Her ideas of her purpose in life inhibit her psychologically from fully growing and experiencing life as most do. Dimensions is an excellent portrayal of a girl in a vulnerable position being taken advantage of and being unable to escape because of her dependence on the one using her.
Since her relationship with Lloyd began, Doree was in a very vulnerable position in her life. She was a young sixteen-year-old girl when she met him at the hospital, while he was just barely younger than her mother. Once Doree’s mother passed away, Lloyd took advantage of the vulnerable state that she was in. She had no way to cope with the loss of her mother, and he used that to his advantage. Lloyd would not allow her to take birth control, getting her pregnant before she was even a legal adult. This forced her to become attached to him, creating the bond that she felt
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Lloyd made the decision that their children would be homeschooled, even though she would be the one to teach them for the most part. He was threatened by Maggie, so he subtly convinced her that Maggie did not understand them or their relationship, so she should not bother connecting with her. Lloyd kept Doree so isolated that she had no choice but to depend on him. Everything she learned, she learned from him. Even the skill that was able to liberate Doree from him in the end – giving the motorist CPR which helped her realize that she had a purpose in life — was taught to her by Lloyd. He purposefully held her captive within her own home in order to ensure that she was so physically and psychologically dependent on him that she would not know what to do with her life if she was ever able to leave