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

Literary Perspectives on Mothering: An Outline of Chapters: 
In Chapter 1, “ Mothering as Dilemma in Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina and 
Toni Morrison’s Beloved,” I argue that these novels demonstrate how oppressive circumstances, 
such as social discrimination, the mothers’ childhoods, marital/love relationships, and abusive 
behaviors, can create the need for inner strength, mothering mentors, surrogate mothers, escape 
methods, and women-centered networks as coping strategies for the mother characters. In 
addition, I argue that examples in these novels show that when those circumstances are too 
overwhelming, the coping strategies may be rendered ineffective and result in failed mother-
daughter relationships. Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina and Toni Morrison’s Beloved 
are works that show how women’s lives can be oppressed by circumstances both beyond and 
within their control. Both novels tell fictional stories that examine women’s lives in the midst of 

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emotional pain and confusion. Examples in these novels show women whose relationships with 
their daughters are gravely affected by the dilemmas in which the mothers find themselves.
By dilemma, I mean a situation that involves a choice between equal but unsatisfactory 
alternatives. For Anney Boatwright Waddell in Bastard Out of Carolina, the dilemma is the 
choice between her oldest daughter and Anney’s husband, with neither of these alternatives 
being satisfactory since choosing one of them means she definitely cannot have the other in her 
life. In Beloved, Sethe Garner Suggs’ dilemma comes long before her children can understand 
the consequences of her choice. She must choose between living with her children under slavery 
or killing them and herself. Her choice of the latter alternative does not work out according to 
plan, and she spends much of her life paying for the unplanned outcome.
In Chapter 2, "Mothering as Difficulty in Dorothy West's The Wedding and Toni 
Morrison's Song of Solomon," I argue that these novels show how oppressive circumstances, 
such as childhood experiences, socioeconomic philosophies, social isolation, and family discord, 
can create the need for inner strength, mothering assumption, mothering mentors, surrogate 
mothers, and/or women-centered networks as coping strategies for the mothers. By mothering 
assumption, I refer to the taking over of or laying claim to the mothering responsibilities of a 
child. Examples in this chapter show at least two women (grandmothers) who assume the 
mothering responsibilities of rearing their granddaughters, because their daughters are portrayed 
as being incapable of fulfilling those mothering responsibilities alone or at all.
In this chapter, the works end with the relationships being somewhat more successful 
than those in Chapter 1. Although some of the mothering relationships end tragically, there 
remains a mutual love relationship that is also manifested by their physical togetherness. For 
example in one of the relationships in The Wedding, the mother and her daughters do not respect 

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each other’s choices and philosophical beliefs, but they do preserve their mother-daughter 
relationships and remain connected physically and emotionally. However, some of the 
oppressive circumstances that affect mothering lead to the dissatisfaction and depression of the 
daughters and some semblance of the mother-daughter relationship remains, in some instances, 
until death parts it. Although the relationships examined in this chapter do not show how 
effective coping strategies can be most successful for mothers who must combat oppressive 
circumstances, they do seem more successful than those relationships examined in Chapter 1. 
Their greater success seems to be predicated on, but not limited to, several aspects: 1) the 
management of different oppressive circumstances, 2) the absence of physical child abuse, and 
3) the perspectives of older adult daughters. However, these relationships are by no means as 
successful as they could be.
In Chapter 3, “Mothering Understood in Amy Tan’s The Kitchen God’s Wife and 
Christina García’s Dreaming in Cuban,” I argue that these novels show how oppressive 
circumstances, such as the mothers’ childhoods, abusive behavior, father-daughter bonds, and 
cultural barriers, can create the need for inner strength, secret sharing, therapeutic story-telling, 
and support networks as coping strategies for the mother characters. Although the mother 
characters in this chapter mother under some of the same oppressive circumstances as those in 
Chapters 1 and 2, the outcomes are more positive, but certainly not completely successful. For 
instance, the circumstances of abusive behavior in Chapter 1 and the mother’s negative 
childhood experience in Chapters 1 and 2 are also examined in Chapter 3.
However, almost all of the daughters are able to find a certain understanding of their 
mother’s rearing of her children. In Dreaming in Cuban, even when the daughter is not able to 
totally forgive her mother for her mothering mistakes, she is still left with a way to understand 

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the circumstances under which the mothering takes place, by evaluating her mother’s past. In 
The Kitchen God’s Wife, mother and daughter actually find common ground after they break 
down barriers and the mother tells her own story. Possible reasons for these more successful 
relationships may be: 1) the more intense connections between granddaughters and the 
grandmothers (even though the grandmother has serious problems in the relationship with her 
own daughter), 2) a more genuine interest in mothers and daughters communicating some 
understanding of the past, and 3) a real effort to explain the mother’s motives and actions 
through secret sharing and storytelling. 
In Chapter 4, “Mothering as Transition in Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and 
Paule Marshall's Brown Girl, Brownstones," I argue that oppressive circumstances, such as 
marital stress, socioeconomic issues, nurturance issues, and mother-daughter conflicts, create the 
need for inner strength, economic security, and women-centered networks as coping strategies 
for the mother characters. I analyze examples of mothering in stormy, but productive mother-
daughter relationships. By “mothering as transition,” I refer to the Bildungsroman experience of 
the daughter character in each work and how the work shows the positive development of the 
mother-daughter relationship through the stages of the daughter’s maturation from adolescence 
to her late teens. During that period, mother and daughter do not always agree. Actually, I refer 
to their relationships as a battle of wills that develops into a mutual respect for each woman’s 
strength. Throughout the progression of the stages, the mother-daughter relationship makes great 
gains in mutual understanding, respect, and love. 
In this final chapter, each mother-daughter pair comes to a mutually successful 
understanding of their relationship, as in The Kitchen God’s Wife, except that the daughters reach 
this point as very young women in the examples in Betty Smith’s and Paule Marshall’s novels.

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Several issues make these mother-daughter relationships more successful than those examples 
found in the previous chapters: 1) the mother characters discussed are extremely strong, 
ambitious, intelligent, hardworking, money-conscious women, 2) the daughter characters 
discussed are also strong, ambitious, intelligent, and hardworking, 3) the mother characters 
recognize their daughters as younger replicas of themselves, and 4) networks of othermothers are 
very effective in guiding the daughter to an understanding of her mother. The examples of 
successful mother-daughter relationships discussed in this chapter show how the right coping 
strategies can alleviate the negative circumstances under which mothering can take place. This 
balance is the effective management of mothering. 
On the topic of managing motherhood, Elizabeth Bourque Johnson writes: “What makes 
mothering a dynamic practice is the need to respond to changing situations. Children grow; to 
grow with them, mothers must be able to analyze what works and what doesn’t, a critical 
component of maternal practice that is less obvious than glancing or feeding but is no less 
integral to the ongoing work [of mothering]” (24). In other words, the management of mothering 
is as important as the act of mothering. In this study, examples of how that job of mothering 
exists under oppressive circumstances and survives due to coping strategies are examined. It is 
always understood that there can be no perfect mothers, only those who attempt to mother “good 
enough” by negotiating the everyday complications of mothering, those who attempt to manage 
motherhood with womanhood.

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