How does the decision to send Amory to boarding school affect her and her relationships with her family?

Amory is sent to boarding school and is not told that she is privileged to go because of an inheritance. How does this affect her and her relationships with her family?

She feels that she is the child that is unloved. Her parents should have told her about the aunt that left this money so she could be educated. Then perhaps she would have felt like the special one.

Amory has no idea of why she was sent to boarding school. She assumes her parents sent her away because of something she does that is wrong. Her siblings also do not understand and they think of her as the favorite child. The family dynamics are very strange from the beginning of the story.

I've never understood the practice of sending young children away to school. Anyone I've known who experienced it has expressed a feeling of having been " sent away!" and though they sometimes say they got a good education, met good friends etc, there has always been the sense of the parents' need to have them out from under their feet.--a sense of abandonment that colors everything else in their lives. Amory certainly felt like she'd somehow done something that caused the family to banish her.

Since she does not understand why she is sent to school, she feels unloved and distanced from her family - as though she has done something wrong. This feeling is reinforced when her father tries to drown her (along with himself, as it turns out) by driving her into a lake. That may well play into her tendency to seek out unstable relationships, particularly with men, as she matures. Commitment doesn't seem to be her thing.

Agree with above posters - and I would always make sure this is what my child wanted if I were to send a child to live away from me! There would have to be an understanding that the reason we are doing this is....(whatever) and that the child understood and it was what the child wanted! Even if the child wants this - they will always feel "sent away" if the family does not reassure them that they will be very much missed!

Sending Amory to boarding school heightened her need to approval-seek from absolutely everyone - her parents, her teachers and every single man in her life.