Siblings

I don't get a husband/wife vibe, just a comfortable relationship between two people who know one another well, and have the best interests of the other at heart.

I admit a bias -- the brother-sister relationship is one of my favorite things in this film.

I think that whether family members remained close and lived together varied back then, as it does now. There were certainly people who, once they had work, left their parents' home while still single back then.

I do see some things that would make it likely for these two to live together and watch out for one another.

These two siblings had already lost their parents, and didn't seem to have other family - that might make them stick together. It also means that living with one another was just "living with family," which you might not have seen as so unusual if there were other siblings, grandparents, parents, a family homestead, etc.

The Depression would have been likely to limit their financial options and the availability of housing.

Also, although they don't seem like very traditional people, they might have had a traditional view of marriage being the point at which one leaves their family of birth, regardless of employment, other adventures, or how much family is left.

I think it was just the writer Dorothy Macardle's choice to make the protagonists close siblings. It lets us see two love stories unfold as they both find sweethearts, which is fun.

My mom was born in 1934. She had an aunt and uncle who each never married and lived together in the house they inherited from their mother. Both had jobs, neither was a bum, but they lived together until the uncle died in the mid 1970's. I have known a few other brother/sister combos who lived together, including a guy from my generation who lived with his formerly-married sister in a house they inherited from their parents.

Figure, human sexuality being what it is, some brother/sister combos were likely incestuous, but many likely didn't involve sex, just arrangements of convenience.

It's interesting Pamela did not appear to have a job of any kind. I imagine Roderick was happy to see Alan Napier take a shine to her.

My great-aunt and great-uncle lived together in their childhood home until he passed away in the 70s. Both were single their entire lives. They just...never moved out, as their four siblings did when they married.

I wonder how much of any viewer's interpretation grows out of their own experience of sibling relationships.

Most similar pairings out of my huge family would have ended up in one throwing the other off that cliff. ;)

But seriously: I suspect if you've known this kind of sibling relationship from experience or observation, it's easy to accept, and less so if not.

_______________

Nothing to see here, move along.

There doesn't seem to be a reason for the brother and sister to be so close in this movie. That sort of situation happens usually when one sibling has a life-long dependency on the other for a reason. I know a man who looks after his blind sister. They live together and seem inseparable.

A BTW thought has just occurred to me about the closeness of the siblings in this haunted house story. Poe's haunted house story 'The Fall of the House of Usher' has a closely-linked brother and sister living together where the brother's name is Roderick.