r/HouseOfCards • u/tooobsessedwithgames • 12h ago
A kind of analysis of Frank’s background
Hooray, analysis content (also first time I’m posting here wow)!
So, I’ve been rewatching the series and I can’t help but notice one thing — while Claire gets a lot of looks at her background, we don’t really get that with Frank. Claire has all the flashbacks (Ah, what S6 could have been), the arcs revolving around things that happened to her, we just know a lot. Frank doesn’t really have that, all we know for certain is he had an abusive father, grew up in poverty and attended the Sentinel. Everything about Frank’s backstory is much more dripped slowly than Claire’s. And personally? I love Frank’s character, I love learning and speculating about him. I wish they did more.
Except they might have. I propose the suggestion that the show has told us all we need to know him. So I dug a bit into the show and dialogue, and I present to you: a little look of a pre-canon Frank Underwood.
Here’s what I think:
- Even past all the obvious, Calvin Underwood is shown as an abusive father. I don’t think there’s any getting around that, I don’t think he had any redeeming factors apart from a will to survive (which is the only thing Frank admired about him and since took as one of his own traits). I think there were two parts of Calvin though and neither of them were pleasant. Frank seems to treat Calvin as only really becoming abusive after the incident in the barn (“The next seven years were hell for my father, but even more hell for my mother and me.”) but before this he seemed to be a lot more quiet and lonesome, perhaps scared for his family which is what led him to drink. In 1x03, Frank describes Calvin as “quiet, timid, almost invisible”, which seems a contrast to the much more violent man we hear about later, so the idea of him behaving like that before that point does make sense. And yet as a foil, Frank is loud, voices his opinions, makes himself known. There’s definitely a fear of a cycle of abuse. As he says to Russo during a very rare heart-to-heart that does seem like Frank at a genuine level, “You see, no person avoids pain. And I just didn’t think it was right to bring a child in knowing that.”
– Also regarding Calvin, his marriage to Frank's mother comes across as a little hesitant. She clearly didn’t want to marry him and neither did her parents. Frank says this off the bat (“My mother didn’t think much of him. My mother’s mother hated him.“) thus begging the question - why on earth did they marry in the first place? My personal theory is simple: Frank was conceived out of wedlock and they married to hide it. It makes the most logical sense as to why they’re married and also particularly why they were so young. By my calculations, Calvin would have been 24 when Frank was born. His mother would have been around the same age or younger most likely. I think perhaps this might have shifted Frank’s views on children. At the same time, Frank's mother seemed at times to be just as much responsible for money as Calvin. While Calvin managed the farm, Frank's mother was a maid who would steal from her employers and sell things. In a way she was much better than him - doing the wrong thing for a cause (looking after her family). Bad for the greater good, anyone?
– Let’s do a turn to religion because I think it’s important to understanding Frank’s distorted morality, The violence of his youth obviously shaped Frank, and it truly brought on his will to survive no matter what, as mentioned above. But I think it also brought along a lack of understanding of kindness. He’s had to fight to survive his entire life, he doesn’t want to be seen as a charity case. Look at the scene with the Jesus statue for instance. When he’s talking with the priest he says the following: “I understand the Old Testament God, whose power is absolute, who rules through fear, but… him.“ He understands violence more than kindness and I think there’s a little part of him who fears that. Personally I think there’s some religious trauma mixed in based on what he says specifically about God from time to time, e.g. “It’s God that has no faith in us.” I think he’s not an atheist but rather a dystheist (e.g. someone who believes God exists, but that God is evil). He definitely believes in God, but something happened to him that shifted his beliefs and made him believe there’s no point believing God will help. That’s also why he understands the Old Testament God more - the Old Testament God fits his definition of God more - but he fails to understand Jesus or the New Testament God. He doesn’t understand the idea of God being good because he has been failed before. Perhaps something happened in his childhood to cement this view. But I think that’s what he meant by “Love? That’s what you’re saying? Well, I don’t buy it.” It’s just hypocritical nature to him. They’re all bad.
– And now let’s combine all these elements. Even before the barn scene, I do still believe that Calvin was at least abusive enough to the extent of making Frank severely traumatised. And I think this surfaces the most in the Wryson aside. For those who don’t remember that scene, it’s an aside from S4 where Frank tells the story of a boy called Walter Wryson who was his childhood friend. Wryson came from a good home with loving parents, but he ran away a lot to the farm of the Underwoods. One day, he climbed a tree in the back and refused to come down at all. The next morning, Frank brings him some food but he still refuses to climb down - causing Frank to snap. “That boy had a good house, a good family, the sort I would’ve killed for, and he didn’t even realise it.” He gets an axe from a shed, says to Walter, “You want to know what it’s really like to live at my house?” and whacks at the tree until Walter runs down all the way back home. Now that is disturbing behaviour for a child especially, and I think psychology wise it makes sense, though correct me if I’m wrong. I think this is the prime example of a cycle of abuse that Frank may be trying to avoid. He’s emulating his father’s abuse but in a way that also exercises his frustration and mental state at it - thus why he demonstrates it as what it’s like to live at the Underwoods. It’s a thinly veiled warning disguised as a loud violent expression of his hatred and anger. Also I think it properly demonstrates just how bad Frank had it growing up, as an impoverished kid living slightly less than hand-to-mouth who couldn’t catch a break. Perhaps that’s why we never had any flashbacks - it would have just been too brutal.
TLDR: Calvin Underwood fucking sucks, man.
