Liesl with her "head in the clouds"

Just a warning: this is a long post! (A super long post!!) (Also this sort of also could go in the fanfiction section... but I wasn't quite sure if it fit better here or there)

So I've read a lot of fanfiction in the past month or so and I find the way Liesl is often characterised to be quite troubling, but this has led me to really consider deeply what we are presented with in the film as a basis of characterisation to work with.

I have found that people generally paint Liesl in one of two ways:

1) Most prominently, people paint Liesl as being a naïve, silly, teenager with her head frequently swimming in the clouds. This being reflected not only in her choices, interactions with Maria and dialogue but also reflected a lot in the way Georg is written to think about her. A lot of the time people write Georg as being greatly concerned about Liesl's apparently inability to make good decisions.

2) The other main way, although to a lesser degree, that I've noticed Liesl is painted is that she is mature beyond her years due to the trauma she went through when her mother died and as such people write that she has a very close friendship on equal terms with Maria (either with Maria as a governess or as her mother).

I find these both problematic.

The second characterisation I find problematic because it is revealed quite plainly in the film that though she likes to think of herself as very grown up, she still has much to learn about life. The scene when Maria returns home from her honeymoon and the reprise of sixteen going on seventeen is exactly what this is about.
It is completely plausible that in the way she interacts with her siblings she is probably quite mature and responsible compared to a lot of other teenagers (evidenced in her carrying Gretl in such a motherly way up the stairs at the end of So Long, Farewell and in the way she leads her siblings to properly greet Elsa as their new mother after the news of the engagement is broken- here she chooses to put aside her clear distress in order to do the right thing and lead her siblings). However there are also so many conversations that show that as a young woman entering the real adult world she still has so much to learn about life.

Her life in some respects, the trauma of losing her mother aside, has been very sheltered compared to a lot of people of a similar age in that time. Certainly more sheltered than I believe Maria would have been at that age. Wealth to the degree that she had it meant that she never had to work to help provide for her family, never had to experience interacting with many different types of people, it also just physically kept her sheltered from the world. Though she went to a school, it no doubt was likely with students from similar backgrounds (do we have information on this? I feel that surely as children from the aristocracy they would have been in a more prestigious type of schooling)? She obviously spent her summers housebound, under the care of a governess with her siblings as her only source of interaction. I don't think this type of upbringing would replicate the experience of many other teenagers in Austria (unless they too were of noble blood). So with that sheltering in mind and taking into account the rapid way in which Austria was changing in the film, I think Liesl certainly cannot be characterised as wise enough to have a relationship with Maria that is on par and equal.

The first characterisation is more complex. I don't feel it is an entirely wrong picture, I just feel that it is painted without much thought behind why she is driven to behave in such a way. Her romance with Rolfe is a clear teenage, "head in the clouds" type infatuation. I always couldn't understand how she got to know someone who simply came to deliver telegrams well enough to form a relationship with (he arrives, presumably delivers the telegram to Franz and leaves again. Where do they exactly actually first meet in this scenario? How is their interaction enough to form an ongoing relationship? Some people address this in fanfiction by talking about their meeting at school. But again, a young boy who is clearly from another social class background- would they really have been in school together?)
Liesl's romanticism is also portrayed in the film in her constant spoken desire to be treated like an adult- in her romanticised view of what that means (the infamous "I'd like to stay and taste my first champagne" and her initial insistance upon not needing a governess).

However I'd say that her infatuation with Rolfe is a clear and understandable outworking of her very wounded heart. A heart that has been wounded deeply by the loss of her mother and further by the neglect of her father.

Her romance is a subconcious act of rebellion against her father. She is the one to inform Maria that they play such awful tricks on people to "get father's attention." Here she gives away the fact that even as the mature 16 year old she claims herself to be, underneath it all she is a girl desperately seeking her father's affection and attention. What better way to get back at your father, who is never home and barely can stand to be around you when he is, than to go sneaking off with an older boy of a much lower social standing who harbours the very political convictions your father hates? I feel it's also a way to test her father's love. To see if he actually loves her. She is certainly not very subtle about sneaking out. She blantantly asks Franz who delivered the telegram and promptly asks to leave the table, a request to which her father never actually says yes. To some degree (again subconsciously) I think she wants to test her father to see if he cares enough to ring her neck for acting in such a foolish manner and jeopardising her virtue (something I feel would be of concern to an aristocrat in the 1930s).

Secondly and most understandably, Rolfe offers her affection that she is simply just desperate for. Who can not understand that? Her infatuation might seem juvenile and silly to us, but for her it is one of the only forms of affection (I won't say love because I'm not sure it's as deep as that) that she is receiving. Her dreaming about a future with men who will tell her she's "sweet", is her only real, plausible chance at escape from her loveless, lifeless home which is overwhelmed by the ghost of a trauma that she will always harbour in her heart to some degree for the rest of her life. It is a no-brainer, something we see all around us all the time. So many people are so damaged by their parents and I think the impact of Georg's neglect of the children is most profoundly demonstrated here in Liesl. It's almost a foreshadow of how things might continue to go if nothing were to change.

I know for us in the 21st century sneaking out after dark to go meet a boy and dance around a gazebo with him might seem quite frivolous and harmless, but I think the implications in this context are far greater. She is jeopardising her future, her social standing, all for the affection of this boy. I can't help but wonder if Georg had never gotten together with Maria and if Rolfe had never given Liesl the cold shoulder, would she have eloped with him? I feel it's plausible. The damage Georg did to her I feel was quite great. I feel at 16, when Maria does enter the picture, she was really at the crux in her relationship with her father and if things hadn't soon changed she may have found it much more difficult to ever trust her father with her heart again, let alone forgive him.

Liesl's head in the clouds is real, but it is an escape for her (in the same way books were for Brigitta) and something I think would have been slowly remedied with the restoration of her relationship with her father.

So sorry for the long post but this has been plaguing my mind. Please don't take offence if you're someone that has written Liesl in one of these ways. Writing is so difficult and we get the benefit of reading. I'm so very grateful to everyone who contributes to the fandom in this way.

I just really wanted to highlight how complex her character actually is (hence why she is difficult to write), because I feel it is often overlooked.

I'd really appreciate any thoughts!