The Jewish mother has been ridiculed and blamed before. In The Elected Member she is savaged—after her death, it is true, though the author still manages to score a bull's-eye by choosing the beloved and precocious son as victim and agent of all the suffering this perpetually "aggravated" mother is responsible for….

Norman is seen as the family's scapegoat, the receptacle all families create to contain their collective guilt and suffering. The receptacle has overflowed, and Norman has blasted more lives than his own. His mother hovers, almost comically, behind a youthful homosexual passion, which led to a suicide and to the youngest sister's sterile marriage. Jewishness as much as maternity is held accountable for the unrelieved tragedy and guilt. The mad are chosen as the Jews are chosen to remind the rest of human pain, and an introductory quotation from Dr. R. D. Laing comes as...