Mom And I Would Read Books Or Play Board Games Until He Was Done

Gotham is kindly offering me another example of the ubiquitous Paternal Narrative.

Both of young Bruce Wayne’s parents were killed, and he is obsessed with finding out by whom and why. Increasingly everything he thinks, says, and does is focused on his father. A Wayne Enterprises exec tells him that Thomas Wayne and Grandfather Wayne knew all about the company’s illegal activities, and accepted them. Lucius Fox says Thomas Wayne was a stoic. Alfred insists that, if Thomas Wayne had a secret life, Alfred would have known, and also that Thomas Wayne was a good man. “Even good men have secrets,” says Bruce, and sets out to find them in his father’s study.

He doesn’t even think about his mother, who was also murdered. Did she know what was going on at Wayne Enterprises? Was she a good woman? Did she share Thomas’s secrets? Did she have secrets of her own?

Apparently that’s too absurd to even be considered. I’m not even talking about the fact that the plot points ceaselessly at Thomas Wayne, as Bruce adds his father’s picture to the Murder Wall and searches through his books. The plot will go where the plot will go. It’s that Bruce, and Alfred, and Selina, and, of course, the show itself doesn’t take out a single moment to suggest, hey, Martha Wayne was also killed, maybe we should think about the possibility - if only briefly - that it had something to do with her. Even if that line of investigation leads nowhere, shouldn’t it be on the Wall?

We get a glimpse of Martha Wayne’s life from Bruce. When his father was in the study, the door locked and everyone forbidden to disturb him (and when, it turned out, he was descending into his secret Batcave), “Mom and I would read books or play board games until he was done.” In this scenario Martha is quite precisely reduced to the level of a child, doing the same things as her pre-teen son while her husband, a Master of the Universe, pursues his important and hidden goals. Although maybe she was reading a more sophisticated book. Maybe.

Thomas Wayne actually had a very busy public life. He was a medical doctor - I don’t know what kind of practice he had, but it’s hard to imagine him letting his M.D. go unused while there were people out there who needed treatment. And he was the CEO of a major multinational corporation - the number of meetings and business trips that implies is enormous. Let’s just imagine the possibility that Martha Wayne, in her free time - after young Bruce went to sleep, or while the highly reliable butler was watching him - had a secret life all her own. Maybe she investigated the nefarious dealings of Wayne Enterprises, while her husband maintained a false front to keep his criminal executives distracted and unsuspecting. Or maybe Thomas is building equipment for her down there in the cave, and at night she goes out as a vigilante, protecting the poor people of Gotham from the crime and corruption that infects her beloved city. Maybe this is what got her killed (with her husband as collateral damage), and she is the good, stoic, determined, secretive hero that Bruce should aspire to be. Imagine!

But that’s silly. She’s just someone’s mom.

And Mother... Mother!... Where did you leave the meatloaf recipe?