Pulling himself out of the depths of some unknown abyss, James Joyce had this to say about mothers:
"Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother's love is not."
A backhanded compliment if ever there was one. And now here we are heading for that Sunday in May when we honor those ethereal and heavenly creatures we call "Mom". What better time, then, to review some of the more memorable mothers in literature?
A Small Sampling:
Some literary Mamas are those sweet, loving creatures who live and die for their adorable, and always perfect, progeny. No matter what. Others don't seem to quite get it right and their kids are the first to pop up and start pointing fingers as soon as they can find their way around a keyboard. And then there are the monsters, the mythic battle axes who create cringing, warped offspring who terrorize the rest of us rather than face up to Mother and settle things.
The Victorian era seemed to produce a lot of those mothers we'd all like to come home to when the going gets rough. Remember these?
The Sweethearts
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Marmee - Maybe the most wonderful, supportive, unconditional-loving mother of all time; from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.
- A huge percentage of the mothers in the novels of Jane Austen are of the loving, nurturing variety - although as a group they do seem to be plagued with an overabundance of ditziness and are vicariously boy-crazy to an alarming degree. They are also financial ignoramuses who scurry around sniffing out single men of means for their poverty-stricken but lovable daughters. But still, they are soft and sweet and well-intentioned.
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And, a real- life mother of note: Evelyn Ryan- the heroine of The Prize-Winner of Defiance, Ohio: How My Mother Raised 10 Kids in 25 Words or Less. Daughter Terry Ryan tells the story of her mother's struggle to keep their large family fed and clothed while dealing with an alcoholic husband who couldn't quite pull himself together. Mama Ryan kept things afloat, even saved their home from re-possession, by entering and winning a bunch of contests. She had a surprising knack for jingle-writing and that's what kept her brood going. This story was told in a 2005 movie starring Julianne Moore as Evelyn, now available on DVD.
Mothers With Issues
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Anna Karenina in Leo Tolstoy's unparalleled masterpiece of the same name. Driven by misery, hormones, and undying love for another man, Anna leaves her home, husband, and child for even more misery and hormones. A sad story of a woman's anguish.
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Sophie Zawistowska - Protagonist of William Styron's classic Sophie's Choice and probably one of the most anguished mothers in literary history. Meryl Streep gave a stunning performance as Sophie in the 1982 movie version of this wrenching story.
- Laura Brown - The troubled young mother in Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Hours. Like Anna Karenina, Laura abandons her home, her husband, and her beautiful young son. But, unlike Anna, there is no other man on the other side - just an oppressive and dangerous depression that puts the whole family at risk.
And now..........The Monsters!
- You probably don't even remember the novel by Robert Bloch but you can hardly forget the movie Psycho. While we don't even know her name, the very thought of Norman Bates' mother gives us the willies. For a character with no speaking part, she certainly holds her own on the list of Memorable Mothers.
- And the Mother of all Mothers - Sophie Portnoy, Mama to Alex, stereotypical Jewish Mother run amok, and the object of Portnoy"s Complaint by Philip Roth.
- From the "Truth is Stranger than Fiction Department", how about Joan Crawford, the monstrous Mom unmasked in Mommie Dearest by daughter Christina Crawford?
- Finally, for a look at those extra-special, out-of-this-world SuperMoms, try Mother's Day by science fiction legend Isaac Asimov.This is an anthology compiled from the pages of Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine that will make your own mother look like June Cleaver by comparison.
A few more literary quotes to mull over:
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Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own....Aristotle
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No matter how old a mother is, she watches her middle-aged children for signs of improvement....Florida Scott-Maxwell
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Good Grief, It's Mother's Day!....Charlie Brown
The copyright of the article Mothers in Literature in American Fiction is owned by Colleen Preston. Permission to republish Mothers in Literature in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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