Ed Gein was responsible for committing so obsessive crimes that they influenced the kind of horror for the decades to come. But as explores “Monster: The Ed Gein Story” by Netflix, many of these crimes arise from the complicated relationship of Gein with his strict mother, Augusta Gein.
George and Augusta Gein were the parents of two children, Henry and Edward. In an article in 1957, Augusta was described as “dominating” and deeply religious. She was particularly obsessed with promiscuity and reprimands women who had sex outside of marriage as well as the interest of her sons for women. He was well known that Ed was his favorite son, and many said that he was fiercely devoted to his mother. As for his father, George was known to be a violent alcoholic who would withdraw his assault on his sons. The family of the four members lived on the family farm in Gein, a frame house without electricity or plumbing in Plainville.
George Gein was the first member of the little family of Wisconsin to die. In 1940, he died of heart failure at the age of 66. Four years later, Henry followed. A marsh fire on the property has become uncontrollable. When the flames fell, Henry’s body was found and was declared a victim of the fire. However, the official cause of Henry’s death was asphyxiation, and he had bruises on his head and no trace. Even more suspect, Ed seemed to know exactly where to find his brother’s body.
Shortly after Henry’s death, Augusta had a paralyzing stroke, which forced Ed to become his mother’s goalkeeper. She died in December 1945 after her second stroke, who had occurred while she called a woman living with a neighbor a prostitute. It was then that Ed Gein began to collapse mentally.
Gein committed his crimes, which included the murder of Mary Hogan and Bernice Worden as well as exhumed at least nine tombs, in the years following the death of his mother. He targeted older women who were roughly the age of his mother and made objects like lampshades and a trash can. Gein later said that he was trying to make a suit of women’s skin that he could wear himself.
From the time, psychiatrists stressed that frequent and religiously religiously motivated denuncies of the gein of female promiscuity as a major reason for gein crimes. They said that Gein had struck both with a deep love and a secret hatred of his mother as well as a deep hatred and a secret hatred of other women. This, associated with its mental instability, led to these history crimes. Psychiatrists also said that the reduction of the bodies of women who reminded him of his mother let gein achieve two contradictory impulses: destroy her mother and try to bring her back to life.
In the end, Gein’s complicated relationship with Augusta came to inspire one of the most seminal works in the history of horror: “psycho” by Alfred Hitchcock. Although the film nominated at Hitchcock Oscars was an adaptation of Robert Bloch’s suspense novel in 1959 of the same name, Bloch’s work was inspired by the Gein affair.
