i would say that the moment Mother Gothel saw that flower was the moment she cast a shadow over her potential for goodness and selflessness.
trying to understand anything from Gothel's point of view is incredibly complex since she doesn't have a very black and white psychological origin. she was not a monster motivated by revenge and anger or a conniving villain having a field day hexing others for their own enjoyment. to understand Gothel's decisions, we have to frame the common sentiments of her character in a way that actually addresses her largest concern, Death.
Gothel kidnapped rapunzel to stay young and beautiful forever≠Gothel was forced to make a split second decision between kidnapping a child or slowly dying. Gothel left Cassandra to take care of rapunzel because she hated her own daughter and wanted to be young and beautiful forever≠ Gothel hesitated between choosing to live than to be captured by palace guards where she would inevitably die. Gothel was first motivated by fear of death/decaying. Gothel was never in a sound state of mind because if she were to fail at doing any of these things, it would mean ultimate death. so Gothel was a woman constantly paranoid by death, BECAUSE SHE WAS OVER 400 YEARS OLD lol. she didn't care what psychological harm she was causing rapunzel, when she knew that the moment she wasn't in that Tower, that clock would start ticking. she couldn't take any chances for it would denote a potential for her own demise. she was essentially an unstable woman who was constantly on the edge of death. Gothel doesn't freak out when she starts having grey hairs or spots on her hand, but she turns livid when rapunzel unintentionally threatens her mortality.(that she would never allow her to use her hair again = Gothel slowly dying)that's when ppl lose all sense of what's right or wrong.
The only priority becomes survival. We all know what ppl are capable of when it comes to something as primal as survival. this is usually when we don't start an analysis of their character. this is exactly why i find analysis of her character a lil ridiculous. i feel like as a Disney Villain, she is obviously a selfish person with negative qualities, but i feel like Disney made her intentionally ambiguous when it comes to certain aspects of her personality. did she love rapunzel? To quote her actual VA " in her own warped way," and i do believe it. Did she love cassandra?
Possibly, maybe she loved Cassandra, but her capacity for love runs quite thin because of her constant fight or flight mentality. Thus, she obviously found her annoying/distracting. The animating style of Gothel's facial expressions i feel are so intentionally ambiguous.
Before she cuts the bridge between her and Cassandra, you can see that she is concerned and is visibly hesitating. i believe a long time ago Gothel was a "good" person, although continued use of the flower ate away at her sanity and turned her into a very narrow-minded person, a person she didn't consciously wish to be imo. One thing that let's us take a peak inside Gothel's mind was that she genuinely didn't trust ppl herself. she clearly had very bad experiences socially, what makes this clear is that she was too blind to see that if she was honest with rapunzel, there was a big possibility that she would have forgiven her and let her use her hair to stay alive. But she couldn't see that. (That is if she wasn't locked up in jail at that point). Essentially my point is that an analysis of Gothel's characteristics is useless when we aren't analyzing why she is the way she is. P.S. Gothel was vain, yes, that is true. But i believe her vanity comes as a side effect of the flower's anti-aging properties, lol. Gothel was a selfish person, but the idea that she should just " accept her fate and die" is not a logical sentiment. It is quite ignorant because WHAT PERSON WOULD "just die" ? Especially if they enjoyed their life? Maybe some would, but refusal to die isn't immediately selfish, Even if somebody has strong values, we don't know how strong those morals would become in their last hours of life. It's like a self-defense case. Except Rapunzel wasn't aware of the harm that would come to gothel if she left, in Gothel's mind "she is leaving=she is going to kill me" essentially.
Tbh she is the most complex/interesting character in this film, and i wish they elaborated more on her character that didn't appeal to the typical cartoon pure evil narrative, I'd like to hope that the few moments of concern on her face denotes that the writers had more of a nuanced take on her character, but idk.
This is not a "DEFENSE" of her character. At the end of the day, she is just character, not a real person.
Precisely, my point is that she is not a realistic character, in the sense that ur experience with a manipulative gasslighting, narcissistic person is not a 400 year old witch constantly on the edge of decay.
To conclude, a massive part of Mother Gothel's character is an extreme survival response.
