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

Cuban, the relationship that I examine in Amy Tan’s The Kitchen God’s Wife is plagued 
by the secrets that both Winnie Louie and her daughter Pearl Brandt continue to keep 

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from one another, important secrets of debilitating illness, physical and sexual abuse, and 
dead children.
Once these memories are revealed, Winnie and Pearl can find common ground 
and repair the loss of closeness in their relationship. The distance that plagues their 
relationship dissipates with each detail that Winnie reveals about the life she has kept 
secret from her daughter. Winnie’s revelations inspire Pearl to divulge the secret of her 
illness as well. For the first time, mother and daughter have the relationship they have 
both longed for so desperately. In addition, Pearl has the reassurance that her mother 
does love her and a true understanding of the reason her mother has always watched her 
behavior so doggedly. 
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 in these examples, the 

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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. Several issues make the mother-daughter relationships 
discussed in this chapter 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 lessen the effectiveness of the negative circumstances under which 
mothering can take place. 
In this chapter, the mothers’ stories both begin in urban poverty, though the 
Boyce family quickly rises from that state in Paule Marshall’s Brown Girl, Brownstones. 
These mothering stories are saturated with issues of negative ethnic, socioeconomic and 
familial circumstances. Marshall’s novel also makes bold statements about the Black 
mother that contradicts stereotypical images of her as the mammy, whore, and the super-
strong Black mother when she portrays Silla Boyce as more than a one-dimensional 
character. Christian writes: 

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Few early Afro-American women’s novels focused on the black woman’s role as 
mother, because of the negative stereotype of the black woman as mammy that 
pervaded American society. But instead of de-emphasizing the black woman’s 
role as mother, Marshall probes the complexity. She portrays Silla Boyce as an 
embittered woman caught between her own personality and desires, and the life 
imposed on her as a mother who must destroy her unorthodox husband in order to 
have a stable family (as symbolized by the brownstone). (Christian, “Trajectories” 
239) 
Marshall explores the experiences, desires, disappointments, and choices of Silla Boyce 
as a complicated mother who is determined, forceful, and dedicated. Marshall creates a 
character who, despite her lack of nurturing ability, loves her daughters fiercely and she 
makes decisions that she hopes will guarantee them a positive future. However, her 
unrelenting demand for the respect of her position as their mother clouds the true motives 
behind her mothering acts. Marshall shows an example of an African-American mother 
who is as complex in her thoughts and actions as any other mother character might be. 
In comparison, Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn attacks the issues of 
immigrant status, wartime economics, and the plight of a single, widowed, working 
mother. Also comparable in characterization, Katie Nolan is a hard-working, determined, 
and sometimes distant mother, especially with her daughter Francie. Vivyan Adair 
comments on this family structure of poor, yet dignified characters with its mother head: 
We read these characters as good, honest, stabilizing forces because they valiantly 
and vigilantly manipulate their urban environment by monitoring and controlling 
their emotions and behaviors. Mrs. Nolan and her “worthy” culture have an 

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arsenal at their disposal that focuses on the concept of shame as a controlling and 
a curtailing emotion. In general, the Nolans take pride in the fact that they never 
forget “their proper place” in society and shame is the force that patrols their 
borders. (120-121) 
Like Selina’s, Francie’s maturation process involves a growing independence from her 
mother. These young women are the replicas of their strong mothers. They learn to be 
independent thinkers and separate individuals from the mothers with whom they have 
struggled for so long to find common ground. For both coming-of-age protagonists, 
leaving their mothers after growing up in the urban landscape is more difficult than they 
believed it would be and more fulfilling than they could have ever dreamed. Both women 
depart with their mother’s admirable, yet reluctant blessings and respect. These fictional 
mothers have been successful in their pursuits to rear women who can navigate the rough 
waters of a male-dominated society. 
If mothers could somehow, after the formative years of rearing the child have 
ended, go back and repair the parenting blunders and duplicate the successes without 
limitation; then all mothers would probably be considered good, fruitful mothers, at least 
“good enough” mothers. Then, if mothers, who are already marginalized by gender in 
our United States society, could eliminate the stigmas that accompany being a female 
parent, the playing field would finally be more level for them as parents. However, 
mothers do not get to mother in retrospect, because the job of mothering is so intricately 
important since it shapes human lives. The majority of mothers do not usually have the 
opportunity and/or the means to theorize about the circumstances under which parenting 
becomes problematic, fruitful, trying, successful, or failed. Mothers do not usually have 

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the opportunity to critically examine how race, social status, community support, the past, 
and male partners affect mothering, especially the mothering of daughters since the same-
sex identification issue seems so important in the majority of parenting situations. 
However, mothers may be able to rely on effective coping strategies in order to enhance 
their jobs of rearing children. 
From this point in the literary assessment of mothering in fictional works, 
scholars could definitely explore the same issues and questions in almost any other 
combination of works with variations among authors, works, ethnicities, and time frames. 
For example, this study does not examine any works written by Native Americans nor 
does it examine any works written by men. The possibilities to extend this research are 
endless, yet the need to continue to do so is absolutely mandatory. As the positions of 
women in the United States and other countries improve, remain, or decline in different 
areas, the voices of all women everywhere must be raised in order to imagine positive 
outcomes for women, and especially for mothers since they have the important 
occupation of rearing other women. 

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Notes
Introduction 
1
Caillouet, Hazel R. Reames. Among Women: Toni Morrison’s Mothers, Sisters,