Throughout the novel, The Glass Castle, we see many aspects of Mrs. Walls’s personality through her actions and her speech. Jeannette Walls - the second daughter of Rex and Rose Walls and the author of this memoir - recalled how her mother was artistic - in her own way - how she encouraged learning by experience instead of discipline, how she believed in independence from a young age, and how she believed in her own way of thinking, rather than the thinking of the professionals. We start seeing parts of her artistic side very early on. In her novel, Jeannette remembers that, while her family was living in Midland, her “Mom painted dozens of variations… of the Joshua tree” (38). Also, later in the novel, she devoted the whole front of one of her mother’s houses into an art studio and gallery (97). She used her inheritance “to make regular shopping expeditions to the [art] store, bringing home rolls of canvas… oil paints, watercolors, acrylics, gesso, a silk-screening fram, india ink, paint brushes and pen nibs, charcoal pencils, pastels, fancy rag paper for pastel drawings, and even wooden mannequin with movable joints… who, Mom said, would pose for her when we kids were off at school” (97). Through her actions, Jeannette’s mom proves that she is - and can be - artistic …show more content…
[Me] and some of [my] air force buddies were on a cliff of the canyon, trying to work up the nerve to dive into the lake forty feet below, when Mom and a friend drove up… She looked just a movie star… but hell, [I’d] met lots of beautiful women before, and none of them had ever made [me] weak in the knees… Mom walked ip to [us] and told them that diving off the cliff was no big deal, she’d been doing it since she was little… so Mom went right to the edge of the cliff and did a perfect swan dive into the water below. Dad jumped in after her”