Mothering modes: analyzing mother roles in novels by twentieth-century United States women writers

Wedding and Song of Solomon, the mother’s childhood experience is an important one. 
The major mother characters’ discussed in this chapter, Caroline “Gram” Shelby and 
Corinne Coles in The Wedding and Pilate and Ruth Dead in Song of Solomon, all have 
daughterhoods characterized by absent natural mothers and strong, ambitious fathers. 
Linked to their childhoods is the powerful influence that socioeconomic philosophies has 
on their mothering. Issues of race and class essentialism plague the legacies of the 
families in both novels and directly influence the life philosophies with which the mother 
characters rear their daughters. 
Critics, such as Herb Boyd and Sharon Fitzgerald, assess the following about the 
treatment of race and class in Dorothy West’s body of work: “To West, racism and 
classism formed a lariat that ensnared all American values. Whether worn by blacks or 
whites, its strength, empowered by pretense and ignorance, strangled any possibility of 
joy and humanity” (33). However, because of her positive portrayal of Black bourgeois 

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culture, West has been criticized, in the words of Dorothy Clark, “for her seeming 
dismissal of the pervasive specter of racism that haunts blacks in America” (47). On the 
other hand, many theorists clearly see her indictment of race, color, and class elitism in 
works like The Wedding.
1
It is more than evident that stereotypically informed beliefs 
about race and color shape the mothering of Gram, Josephine, and Corinne in West’s 
novel. Like her characters in the Oval, West herself was born into the black bourgeois 
culture of Martha’s Vineyard. In addition, being one of the darker-skinned members of 
such a cultural circle must have inspired her continuous treatment of the subject well past 
the era, the pre-1960s Black pride era, when such issues were so publicly pervasive. 
However, the fact that such subjects were still able to draw such a large end-of-the-
twentieth century reading audience (and a large television audience for the movie which 
followed) speaks volumes about the fascination of contemporary Americans with race 
and color discrimination.
2
In Song of Solomon, Morrison’s treatment of class distinction between the two 
Dead households is just as compelling as West’s discussion of color prejudice. Ruth 
Dead’s family fits into that same culture of class elitism as the Coles family, but Pilate 
Dead is a prime example of how one can choose to live outside of the socioeconomic 
holds of society with surprising success (for herself, but not for her granddaughter). 
Barbara Christian makes the following assertion about Morrison’s power of character 
creation: “Morrison’s dramatization of human societies emphasizes the tension between 
the natural order and the unnatural points of discrimination—race, sex, money, class—
employed by human societies” (“Community” 62). However, it is the reality of social 
isolation that encourages Pilate to live by such a lasting socioeconomic philosophy. 

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Social isolation is yet another complication for mothering in these novels, whether 
it is self-imposed or societal-imposed. In some of the relationships, isolation is connected 
to issues of race and class, as is the oppressive circumstance of family discord. These 
novels show how such circumstances can create the need for coping strategies. The 
coping strategies of inner strength, mothering assumption, mother mentors/surrogate 
mothers, and women-centered networks can work together to eliminate some of the 
negativity of the oppressive circumstances that affect the mother’s rearing of their 
children, especially when rearing daughters.
These mothers are strong in their beliefs about how to negotiate one’s way 
through life, and they attempt to protect their children even if it is against the child’s 
wishes. Concerning Ruth Dead, who seems to be a predominantly weak mother 
character, she even has situations in which she displays sheer determination. Gram 
Shelby and Pilate Dead also assume the role of primary parent (mother) to their 
granddaughters when the need arises. In order to provide support for the mother 
characters, the need for a mothering mentor and/or surrogate mother is also a coping 
strategy, along with women-centered networks. Contrary to the networks discussed in 
Chapter 1, the networks in these chapters seem to be relegated to households that these 
mothers and their adult daughters share at certain points in their relationships, in triads in