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

Historical-Political Perspectives on Mothering: 
The topic of this dissertation, which draws on work in the area of women’s studies as 
well as in American literature, is not only tied to historical and political struggle due to the issues 
that surround mothering, but is also politically charged because it deals with women’s issues at 
all. The historical chronology of even establishing Women’s Studies programs in universities 
across this country was and is a struggle worthy of comment. Edited by renowned women’s 

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studies pioneer Florence Howe, The Politics of Women’s Studies: Testimony from Thirty 
Founding Mothers (2000) is a testament to that fact. Because of these founding “mothers” and 
their efforts, there is a voluminous body of work that has been composed concerning the 
historical-political and socioeconomic reasons for the oppressed existence of women in society. 
It is quite valuable to view the debate on the topic of mothering in the United States Women’s 
Movement. 
In We Are Our Mothers’ Daughters (1998), political analyst and news correspondent 
Cokie Roberts declares that one of the hottest topics for the past four to five decades has been the 
following: “What is woman’s place?” She also notes that a huge societal problem for women is 
that “women make each other’s lives harder by trying to impose their own choices on their 
sisters” (186). This statement is a portion of her commentary on the biggest argument about 
mothering today: stay-at-home mothers versus working mothers. She cites the following as 
support for her own opinion: “A few years ago the New York Times published a poll which 
revealed that two thirds of all women aged eighteen to fifty-five work outside the home, half said 
they provided at least half the family income, and almost 20 percent were the sole providers. 
Regardless of job, 90 percent said they were the principle caretakers for their families” (191). 
Such statistics only show that regardless of the increasing numbers of women in the workplace, 
the traditional domestic duties of women have changed little over time. The increase in the 
number of working mothers only makes rearing children that much more complicated and 
finding successful coping strategies even more important. 
It would seem that the increase in the number of working mothers would make the stay-
at-home mothers versus working mothers debate lose most of its steam. However, the debate 
about which mother is the “good mother” still goes on; in fact, the debate becomes even more 

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heated when it is viewed within the arguments of feminists versus anti-feminists. In Good 
Enough Mothers: Changing Expectations for Ourselves (1993), Melinda M. Marshall interviews 
contemporary mothers (working outside the home and inside the home) in order to analyze 
feminist and anti-feminist sentiments about mothering. She supports “good enough mothering” 
(a phrase she borrows from pediatrician-turned-psychotherapist D. W. Winnicott) as being able 
to excel at compromise in a mother’s life (xiv). Marshall comments on the attitude that society 
perpetuates about the working mother: “There is something heroic about a woman who puts 
bread on the table, something not so heroic about one who works to afford a nicer table. The 
former warrants our sympathy; the latter, our condemnation” (xv). Consequently, this does not 
take into account the stigma placed on all working mothers when compared to those middle class 
mothers who choose to stay at home. Ladd-Taylor and Umansky write: “Wage-earning mothers, 
single mothers, slave mothers—in short, everyone except middle-class whites—fall outside the 
narrow good-mother ideal” (3). This categorization only adds to the oppressive state of the 
mother who has to manage (due to economics or personal fulfillment) an outside job along with 
the job of rearing her children. In addition, historically, the poverty level of ethnic and poor 
white families in the United States has required a great majority of the mothers in those families 
to work outside the home. So, they have always overwhelmingly fallen outside of the good-
mother ideal and have had to develop coping strategies to manage the responsibilities in their 
lives. 
Marshall also cites the gender gap and ideas about work and how women allow 
themselves to be trapped into venues of guilt: 
Men accept work as a given, a nonchoice, and yet manage to exercise plenty of free will 
in structuring their personal goals and ambitions around this mandate. But women, 

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despite overwhelming evidence that they’re in the work force to stay, insist on tormenting 
themselves or antagonizing each other with ‘ideal’ scenarios in which work plays no part, 
as though any kind of job outside the home were automatically a detraction from a 
mother’s job within it. (xvi) 
Some of the examples in this study show daughters who do not fault their mothers for their work 
outside the home, but have the opposite reaction to their employment. Regardless of the battle-
filled relationships between mother and daughter pairs in both novels in Chapter 4, the daughters 
greatly respect their mothers as hard workers. In Brown Girl, Selina is in awe of Silla’s ability to 
perform such a powerful job in the factory. In Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Francie wants to do all 
she can to help her mother’s job of cleaning the apartment house less of a burden.
Labeling herself a feminist for the ‘90s, Melinda Marshall questions the mothering debate 
further: “Who speaks for us, if antifeminists cannot appreciate the lure of the workplace and 
feminists cannot understand the primacy of motherhood? How can we make choices when all 
around us insist we are leading a less compromised life that denies us choice, that we are victims 
of our sex differences and ‘feminine’ predilections” because we mother? (11). A search for 
answers to these questions requires a look at previous literature on the subject. 
In her 1986 work, A Lesser Life: The Myth of Women’s Liberation in America, 
sociologist Sylvia Ann Hewlett discusses that fact that both feminists and antifeminists refuse to 
recognize the needs of working mothers. Sharing her own scenario in which her hard-core 
feminist peers at Barnard College denied her tenure due to the fact that she devoted potential 
working hours to mothering instead, Hewlett attests to the fact that feminists refuse to see the 
special needs of working mothers; and finds that just as harsh as the fact that the anti-feminists 
refuse to see the need of some mothers to work. She writes: “Motherhood is the problem that 

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modern feminists cannot face. The modern women’s movement has not just been anti-men; it has 
also been profoundly anti-children and anti-motherhood” (185). Hewlett argues that women’s 
freedom of choice is predicated on economic security, therefore signifying on the fact that 
women have yet to secure such freedom: “Neither the feminist movement nor the antifeminist 
movement has yet had much success in improving women’s economic security” (334). In my 
opinion, the status of women in economic arenas has been advanced via the feminist movement; 
however, the disparity between the positions of men and women in those arenas has shifted little 
over the decades. It is still a rarity to boast about when women, like Oprah Winfrey (who is not 
a mother), beat all odds and outweigh the majority of her male counterparts. 
Of course, Hewlett has her opposition. Considered “feminist heir apparent” by many, 
sociopolitical feminist Susan Faludi’s 1991 work, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against 
American Women charges the holders of views like Hewlett’s as the backlashers who halted the 
real progress of the Women’s Movement. In contradiction to Hewlett’s assertion, Faludi asserts 
that “when feminists pushed for women’s rights in other areas—employment opportunities, pay 
equity, credit rights, women’s health—mothers and their children benefited, too” (316). 
Here, Faludi takes the attitude that mothers should be grateful for benefiting from the 
movement, even if only indirectly. However, Faludi’s definition of feminism encompasses the 
beliefs of Hewlett: “Women should be free to define themselves—instead of having their identity 
defined for them, time and again, by their culture and their men” (xxiii). I admit that I find 
myself in agreement with Faludi’s statement; except, I would add that a woman’s identity and 
her mothering methods should not be defined by other women either. 

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