Joyce Summers - Influence

Influence

Throughout the series, Buffy frequently expresses anxiety about being wanted and accepted. One of the most overt expressions of her concern is in the first season episode "Nightmares", where characters' nightmares come true. In Buffy's nightmare, her father cruelly tells her he no longer wants to spend any time with her because of her defects as a daughter. She further worries that her ostensible troubled behavior at school and disobedience at home may have been a significant reason for the ending of her parents' marriage. She pushes away her friends and family to protect them from what she must face, while simultaneously depending on their assistance. Psychologists writing about Buffy state that she is a candidate for an anxiety disorder, as most often people diagnosed with anxiety disorders worry and fixate on problems, behaviors which studies suggest are inherited. In this light, they analyze Joyce's actions as overprotective of Buffy in early seasons: her vigilance causes Buffy to need to sneak in and out of the house through her bedroom window. Joyce is also continually encouraging her to avoid badly-behaved classmates. Regardless of this, Joyce's nurturing of Buffy is cited as being one of the reasons Buffy has been able to live as long as she has — much longer than other Slayers, who historically have usually died very young — and is a source of Buffy's strength. Joyce and Giles often work in similar ways to guide Buffy morally and emotionally. Buffy's tragic love affair with Angel, a relationship that could bring neither of them any happiness, was broken off, in part, after Joyce's request that Angel be the one to end it.

According to Lorna Jowett, Joyce is a vehicle through which older viewers can judge the actions of the younger characters. Jowett sees Joyce as a "post-feminist matriarch": she is the head of a household that rarely requires the presence of men. Buffy, according to Jowett, descends from two female lines: the Slayer line and the Summers line. In opposition to Buffy, Joyce never expresses that she has been abandoned by men, and she retains feminine characteristics: she runs an art gallery, has other friends, and dates. Jess Battis argues that Joyce's role as Buffy's mother goes mostly unnoticed because of societal expectations audiences are expected to make about single mothers — at least until her death. Buffy's grief must coincide with Buffy becoming who Joyce was. In this process, Buffy struggles to fill Joyce's role, finding it more difficult than being a Slayer.