Controversial Gothic Novel 'Flowers in the Attic' Keeps Its Origins Shrouded in Mystery

June 2024 · 3 minute read

A brand new 'Flowers in the Attic' adaptation is coming to Lifetime, which makes audience wonder: is the premise according to a real story? Here's the scoop.

Source: Lifetime

The 1979 Gothic novel Flowers in the Attic through Virginia "V.C." Andrews has long sparked controversy and debate for its macabre subject matter. The story, which follows siblings Chris, Cathy, Carrie, and Cory after their mom locks them in an attic bedroom for 3 years, was at one level advertised as "based on a true story."

Flowers in the Attic is the first in a ebook sequence through Andrews however the most effective book that has been tailored right into a feature film two times. Now, Lifetime's Flowers in the Attic: The Origin will premiere on TV, and viewers are wondering if the e book is actually in response to a true story. Here's what you want to find out about the guide, the TV restricted series, and the creator herself.

Source: Lifetime

Is 'Flowers in the Attic' in line with a real tale?

According to The Guardian in 2019, Andrews' authentic pitch letter for Flowers in the Attic claimed that the tale was once a "fictionalised version of a true story," which sparked long-lasting rumors about the tale's origins. V.C. Andrews' website additionally claims the story is primarily based in reality, the place an unidentified relative suggests that the tale was once inspired by means of a tender physician at the University of Virginia health facility where V.C. had been a affected person.

Recently, biographers have drawn parallels between the Dollanganger children of the tale, who are imprisoned through their gorgeous but conniving and murderous mom, and Andrews' own existence. A biography printed in January 2022 about Andrews known as The Woman Beyond the Attic talks about her debilitating rheumatoid arthritis. As an adolescent, she underwent a surgical procedure that left her wheelchair-bound and at the mercy of her mom.

Source: Lifetime

As a consequence, the biography claims that when Andrews was once disobedient or rebellious, her mother would lock her in her bed room with out meals. Anderson's ghostwriter and biographer Andrew Neiderman told The Guardian, "Her mother would lock her in her room and not give her dinner if she got angry at her. She controlled who Virginia could see, what she could do, and punished her for not doing what she wanted."

Neiderman was Andrews' ghost author when she gave up the ghost from breast cancer in 1989. He completed her unfinished manuscripts and wrote Ninety six novels in her title with the approval of her property.

Source: Lifetime

Neiderman maintains the trust that Flowers in the Attic is moderately impressed by way of truth, both reinforcing the story about the University of Virginia sanatorium doctor and explaining that Andrews "felt so trapped by her illness – and was so incarcerated by her mother sometimes – that she could understand how children would feel locked up in an attic."

The new lifetime miniseries Flowers in the Attic: The Origin seeks to serve as a prequel to the authentic tale, specializing in the grandmother of the kids, Olivia Winfield Foxworth. The miniseries is in accordance with the e book Garden of Shadows, which focuses on Olivia and the way she got here into her wealth sooner than the events of Flowers in the Attic. The display and the e-book are set in the early 1900s.

Flowers in the Attic: The Origin premieres on Lifetime on July 9, 2022, at Eight p.m. ET.

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