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

Introduction: 
Mothering Modes:
A Survey of the Different Perspectives on Mothering 
Mothering is one of the most powerful acts that one can perform. When one chooses the 
position of mother, one chooses to give a large percentage of one’s life to the process of 
producing, guiding, and managing others’ lives. Mothering in United States society, as well as 
in most other countries, means mothering in a male-dominated society, which has historically 
and does systematically marginalize (limit or discriminate against) women and other minorities. 
Therefore, when scholars seek to analyze the multi-faceted act of mothering, they must explore 
the many forces that positively and/or negatively influence whether mothers will be constructive 
or destructive in the lives they choose to manage: their own lives and the lives of their children.
For the literary theorist, fiction can provide interesting examples for gauging the significance of 
these and many other debatable issues. 
For this study, the following novels have been chosen as examples of the many issues 
that are involved in mothering in United States society: Chapter 1: Dorothy Allison’s Bastard 
Out of Carolina and Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Chapter 2: Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon and 
Dorothy West’s The Wedding, Chapter 3: Amy Tan’s The Kitchen God’s Wife and Christina 
García’s Dreaming in Cuban, and Chapter 4: Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and 
Paule Marshall’s Brown Girl, Brownstones. For this study, the term “mothering” is specifically 
related to the rearing of children by the female parent. Rearing is defined as the bringing up of a 
child to maturity and at least to the legal age of eighteen. In “Mothers at Work: Representations 
of Maternal Practice in Literature” (2000), Elizabeth Bourque Johnson examines the following 
definition of mothering: “Mothering is a job, a kind of work. The word mother may also indicate 
a relationship or a title or a way of caring, but primarily a mother is a worker, a person who takes 

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responsibility for the care and development of a child” (22). In this dissertation, I argue that 
oppressive circumstances in these novels create similar coping strategies for the mother 
characters, especially when mothering daughters. In addition and contrary to what some might 
believe, those coping strategies are not confined exclusively to particular cultural groups. The 
chapters of this study show how different mothers who rear children under different negative 
circumstances may benefit from similar coping strategies, and they examine these coping 
strategies from the least to the greatest examples of their success. 
By oppressive circumstances, I refer to those burdensome forces that overwhelm the 
body, mind, and spirit and that complicate the act of mothering, usually rendering one helpless, 
inactive, and/or incapable. Examples of such forces are societal discriminations according to sex, 
race, ethnicity, and class (including slave and immigrant statuses). When using the term 
oppressive circumstances, I also refer to negative experiences during the mother character’s own 
childhood and to self-imposed circumstances such as her negative choice of a lover or husband.
By coping strategies, I make reference to those methods that aid the mother in attempting 
to deal with or to overcome those oppressive circumstances. Those coping strategies include the 
mother being a strong enough woman to defy the oppressive forces that would deter her 
mothering or the mother becoming associated with another strong woman who influences her 
defiance of those forces. This woman may be a relative, friend, and/or othermother.
Othermothers are “women who assist bloodmothers by sharing mothering responsibilities” 
(Collins, “Meaning of Motherhood” 47). Another coping strategy is the mother acting as an 
agent of positive self-transformation. In The Politics of (M)Othering: Womanhood, Identity, and