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

Chapter 1 
 
Mothering as Dilemma in Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina 
and Toni Morrison’s Beloved 
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 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.
Bastard focuses mostly on Anney’s life leading up to her choice, and Beloved 
focuses, in great part, on Sethe’s life after the choice; however, both novels lend 
themselves to an in-depth exploration of the similar oppressive circumstances in these 
mothers’ lives and the coping strategies that fail to alleviate the effects of those 
circumstances. Even though these mothers differ in race, ethnicity, and locale, great 
similarities exist in the coping strategies in their lives. These similarities exist despite 

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their differences. In fact, one might argue that their differences are not that great since 
both women are (at one time) poor, uneducated, lonely teenage mothers. In addition, 
described by Appalachian Studies scholar David Reynolds as "white trash" (356), 
Anney’s faces much of the same discriminatory treatment that Sethe faces as an African-
American woman. In this chapter, 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. 
The importance of telling women’s stories or allowing women to tell their own 
stories directly affects the understanding of women’s mothering experiences. Analyzing 
these fictional accounts of mothering provides an opportunity to view how mothers may 
be able to rear their children in certain oppressive circumstances and how successful their 
coping strategies can be in those circumstances. Also, one must take into account the 
point of view from which the mother’s story is being told. For instance in Bastard Out of 
Carolina, Bone narrates the account of her own abuse and her mother’s reaction to her 
ordeal. This is a situation in which the narrator might be unreliable due to her own 
negative emotions about what took place. However, Bone seems quite reliable since she 
narrates the most horrific events but simultaneously seeks understanding of others’ 
actions and others’ reactions to her ordeal. In fact, the most heartfelt justification for 

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Anney’s choice comes from the daughter she leaves behind. Bone leaves her listeners 
with these thoughts on her mother’s choice:
Who had Mama been, what had she wanted to be or do before I was born? Once I 
was born, her hopes had turned, and I had climbed up her life like a flower 
reaching for the sun. Fourteen and terrified, fifteen and a mother, just past 
twenty-one when she married Glen. Her life had folded into mine. What would I 
be like when I was fifteen, twenty, thirty? Would I be as strong as she had been, 
as hungry for love, as desperate, determined, and ashamed? (Allison 309) 
Bone’s words echo the oppressive circumstances under which both these mothers lived.
In Beloved, Morrison takes the newspaper story of Margaret Garner (1856) and 
creates Sethe's fictional story.
1
Sethe's story is one in which she is the accused abuser of 
her own daughters, "murdering" the oldest daughter, Beloved, and isolating the youngest, 
Denver. Karla F.C. Holloway writes: “The narrative of Beloved is not entrusted to the 
single discourse of any of the three women implicated in the myth. Neither is it left to 
only one dimension. Instead, a collective telling validates the literate text. Each of the 
voices of the three women in this novel, Denver, Sethe, and Beloved, is distinct—a 
different kind of discourse” (174). This is basically true; however, Sethe relays her own 
version of the story through her "rememory" of the past and her place in the present after 
her daughter reappears in her life. Marianne Hirsch writes: "This novel does allow the 
mother to speak for herself, to speak her own name and the daughter's, to speak, after 
eighteen years, her unspeakable crime to her daughter. It allows Beloved to return so that 
mother and daughter can speak to each other" (8). It is within this journey of words with 
her daughters and her lover that Sethe reveals her belief that she saved her children by 

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this mothering act. The complicated acts of mothering for both women are discussed in 
terms of the circumstances that challenge their mothering and the strategies that attempt 
to help them manage the job of mothering.
Issues such as social discrimination can affect mothering in profound and 
irreversible ways. According to Patricia Hill Collins in “Shifting the Center: Race, Class, 
and Feminist Theorizing about Motherhood”: "Racial domination and economic 
exploitation profoundly shape the mothering context for all women" (45). This is 
accurate because we live in a society in which race and economics are acceptable tools 
for measuring success. Poor women are expected to be less than "good" mothers in our 
society. They are barred by sex and economic status already; and if race becomes 
another barrier for women who are negotiating their way in this patriarchal, white, 
middle-class dominated society, it only exacerbates the mothering situation. Because 
society reifies the social discrimination under which Anney and Sethe rear their 
daughters, our society should acknowledge what Evelyn Nakano Glenn calls, “the 
differing cultural contexts and material conditions under which mothering [must be] 
carried out” (5), but this is often not the case. In most cases, the mother is painted as the 
guilty party whenever she strays from the idea of the “normal mother,” rather than one 
who mothers according to her resources, limitations, and coping strategies. 
Because “normal” mothering instincts are considered natural by societal 
standards, any mother who does not seem "naturally inclined" to mother is often labeled a 
"bad" mother. Glenn reminds us that "mothering is constructed through men's and 
women's actions within specific historical circumstances. Thus agency is central to an 
understanding of mothering as a social, rather than biological, construct" (3). Because 

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mothering is affected by social conditions, which shape the mother's actions toward her 
child, especially her daughter to whom she has the social responsibility of being a female 
role model and the “protector/shaper of her womanhood,” discrimination contributes to 
the undermining of mothering in the United States. This is indeed connected to the fact 
that both women’s mothering is affected by their negative childhood as well, since both 
women are mothered by women who lived and mothered under the some of the same 
circumstances under which they live and mother.
Also, common to both women’s stories are the analyses that her lover fulfills a 
great need when he comes into her life, that his coming interferes with her mothering 
either in her and/or her daughter(s)’ opinions, that he has a disturbing rivalry and/or 
deviant sexual relationship with at least one daughter, and that the mother, either by 
choice or default, is still with him at the close of the work. The need fulfilled by the male 
lovers seems to center around their actual occupying of space in the mothers’ lives: 
physically, sexually, and emotionally. Similarly, the issue that Paul D and Glen both 
consume space is the first good and bad point that surrounds their coming into the 
women’s lives. 
When they enter these mothers’ lives, these men are also either directly (Glen) or 
indirectly (Paul D) linked to the issue of abusive or obsessive behavior that occurs in 
these mothering stories. Eventually though, the mothers are examined as perpetrators. By 
the end of the works, both women suffer the loss of a child(ren). Sethe’s loss of her 
daughters and Anney’s loss of Bone are outcomes for which some textual figures and 
many critical theorists blame the mothers and by which both groups further implicate 
them as either abusive mothers or abusive enablers. Perhaps, these two groups’ reactions 

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are grounded in the beliefs of the authors themselves. Morrison says of Sethe’s sacrificial 
act: Sethe did “the right thing, but she had no right to do it” (Book TV). Allison, in an 
interview with Carolyn E. Megan, says, "[Anney] is going to pay for what she does by 
the place she puts herself into at the end of the book. It's just, but it's hard" (76). It is 
obvious that such overwhelming oppressive circumstances would make the job of 
mothering an extremely difficult one to manage. This would definitely bring about the 
need for coping strategies. However, the fictional stories of these mothers demonstrate 
just how coping strategies can fail when the circumstances are too overwhelming. 
Although the mothers rely on inner strength, mentors/surrogates, escape, and networks to 
help them manage their task, it is only the support networks that save the daughters in the 
end when the mother-daughter relationships are lost. 
These mothers’ rough choices are somewhat padded from their full blunt force by 
other women in the textual community (women-centered networks), who step forth to 
help the daughters cope with their experiences. For the good of the daughters and the 
mothers, these circles of women, some of whom may be considered othermothers and/or 
community othermothers, step in when they are needed in the mother-daughter 
relationships. Othermothers are defined as those who play “central roles in defusing the 
emotional intensity of relationships between bloodmothers and their [children]” (Collins, 
“Meaning” 56). “Sometimes […] ‘othermothers’ are grandmothers, aunts, or cousins, 
united by kinship with the bloodmother,” and sometimes they assume kinship by choice 
(Troester 163). Their jobs are very important in both these women’s mothering stories. 
In