Comparative View: Role of Mothers in Women’s Writings

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Since time in memorial, the role that women should play has been widely debated in many societies. There are those societies that feel that the woman’s place is in the kitchen while other believes that women should forever be under the authority of men. Societies have changed and women have taken greater roles in societies. It is with this greater concern that some writers have come out of the closet and written on women’s roles in the society. Even in the 20^th century, it is not surprising to note that the roles that are assigned or predetermined to be played by women in society have remained the same with few women taking up the challenge to engage in the male-dominated fields.

Taking a closer look at the writings of Naula O’Faolain, in her autobiography “Are you somebody”, we are left with no doubt that the experiences that her mother went through greatly influenced her writing. Though O’Faolain spent her life single and died childless, she expresses her loneliness which to her is better than ending up like her mother. She has struggled with the meaning of love and confesses in her autobiography that she found it hard to have long lasting relationships. The writer clearly brings out the theme of family which seems to be intertwined with love. The Irish tradition portray women in the traditional sense of being subordinate to men and their role as having children in the family. This is clearly brought out in the autobiography through way the her father treated her mother which makes O’Faolain, hate the traditional perception of Irish marriages and therefore struggles with searching for the meaning of love in life. Her resentments caused by her childhood experiences makes her to continually involve herself with both men and women with the hope of finding the right partner and inevitably love but she ends up not getting involved with anybody. The theme of family in the autobiography “Are you somebody” shows the state that women were subjected to in the Irish community. Women had no equality in the society and were constantly abused by their husbands and their role centered more on bearing children with a good illustration being that the mother of the author had nine children even with her good education. To further stress my point, some people regard O’Faolain, as a bitter writer who expresses her feelings of growing up in an abusive family in her writings by the mere fact that she did not have children of her own and died unmarried. The role of mothers in O’Faolain’s writings is vaguely brought out through the way she expresses her loneliness. In her autobiography, O’Faolain writes that at one time she wrote to her mother telling her that she was lonely only for the mother to reply to her in a very unloving manner (O’Faolain 58). We can therefore say that women should be role models to their children so that their children would be greater people in the society, unlike O’Faolain’s mother who engaged in alcohol making her children including the writer wanted to despise her. Though not directly portrayed in the novel, O’Faolain seems to live the life of her mother in the novel. Her life is filled up with a long search for love (O’Faolain 24) which does not end well for she died a lonely person just like the way her mother’s life ended in alcoholism. The style in O’Faolain is the collection of her real-life experiences commonly referred to as a memoir.

Mary Wollenstonecraft is another writer whose writing draws attention to women’s issues. In the novel “The wrongs of a woman’s”, the character Maria, self educates herself when she is locked up in an asylum by her husband. She befriended one of the attendants of the asylum who agreed to bring her books which she studied (Wollenstonecraft 17). Bringing my point closer home, Maria writes manuscripts in which she advises her daughter who was taken from her by her husband. Mary Wollenstonecraft therefore clearly shows that women’s roles should be educating their children. However, Wollenstonecraft portrays society as regarding women as inferior by not educating them. Interesting to note is that she does not argue for women’s equality with men and perhaps this can be attributed to the time context her novels are written in. The time frame that her novels are written in does not coincide with the time that feminism move was rampant and this clearly illustrates why she still regarded men as having a greater degree than women in her novels. My subjective conclusion, therefore, is that the time frame in which a particular literary piece of work on the way society portrays women is written is dependent on the timeframe that particular novel was written in. Modern writers on women issues have taken a more direct attack claiming on equality between men and women while writers in the 18th century saw no need to equate men to women. However, both sets of writers are not comfortable with the way society has treated women throughout time.

The injustices that women were subjected to in the 18^th century as indicated in the novel “The wrongs of a woman’s” are clearly brought out in the novel when Maria is forced into an asylum by the husband on claims that she was mad (Wollenstonecraft 8). The novel however utilizes the third person narration together with the first-person narration. The combination allows the characters in the novel to address each other freely between the first person persona and the third person persona and thereby making it easy for Maria to tell her story through a narrative to her daughter. Thus, the combination allows Maria to relate to her daughter directly.

George Eliot’s “Silas Marner” has an interesting twist on how societies portray women. The book is written by a woman who used a male name to camouflage that it was the work of a woman and therefore needless to say that even in the 19th century, women were oppressed in society. Geoffrey Cass is a character in the novel “Silas Marner” and who longs to have children but is married to a woman who only had one child. Cass involves himself with another woman by the name of Nancy to escape the wrath of being tied to a woman who cannot have many children (Eliot 17). This clearly shows that women were being valued with the number of children that they could give birth to in society. In addition, when Silas’ hope and love are restored to him when he found Eppie, he finds it’s hard to discipline the child when the child starts to become naughty. This also shows women were the ones to take care of their daughters and sons and discipline them for the men knew nothing about disciplining children, which further illustrates the role of women in society. The style used in this novel is imagery where the behavior of Silas is compared to a spider, an insect and also, an ant.

In Joyce Carol Oates’s “We Were the Mulvaneys”; the narrator clearly introduces us to a cheerful family which has a common element that joins them together as the Mulvaneys. The narrator introduces the theme of the family in a clear manner and goes on to narrate how the family finally disintegrates following their misfortunes which started with the rape of their daughter, Marianne at a Valentine’s Day dance. In the novel, the narrator, Judd Mulvaney, tells us of how the family was widely known in the rural setting of New York but later on lost its status and its brightest moments after sad events started to happen to the family (Oates 15). The narrator tells us how the father felt defeated for failing to avenge when his daughter was raped and thereby settling to alcoholism. Judd tells us that Marianne was sent far away from the family after the mother realized that she had a duty to her husband bringing us to the shift in focus on the role of motherhood in the novel. It is sad to note that after the parents sent off Marianne, the family slowly fragmented with some of the siblings opting to live far away from home. It is when the mother committed herself fully to caring for her husband that she lost focus in the family. In Joyce Carol Oates’s novel “We Were the Mulvaneys”, the theme of the family stands out the most with regard to the way the narrator tells the story. Corrine’s character portrays a woman who is living her dream of being a mother to a happy family before the family falls apart and that’s why she could not believe that Marianne had betrayed her through her innocence and kept quiet about her rape ordeal. Through Joyce Carol Oates’s work, we get a glimpse of society’s expectations of women through Corrine’s character. The novel portrays women to be caring, warm and a woman who loves their children though she prefers looking at the husband at the expense of the child (Marianne) to maintain the family image. Therefore, the novel shows how women desire to be good mothers and a mother can only be truly happy like Corrine if they have a happy family. The style commonly used in the novel is the denouement, where the story unravels and unfolds right as the reader continues to read the novel to an end that seems calculated to a climax, in this case, the death of the father who shattered the family through his indulgence in alcoholism, Michael Mulvaney.

Relating Naula O’Faolain, autobiography “Are you somebody” to Joyce Carol Oates’s novel “We Were the Mulvaneys”, the striking similarity is that the two are written by people who experienced family breakups. For instance, “Are you somebody” is an autobiography by O’Faolain and in Joyce Oates’s novel; the narrator is Judd Mulvaney, who is the youngest of the Mulvaneys.

Frankenstein is a fiction novel by the writer Mary Shelley. The novel revolves around romance and love. Frankenstein creates a monster which makes him disgusted for the monster turned out to be ugly. Frankenstein makes the mistake of leaving the monster with the hope that the monster would not resurface in his life. He is mistaken to think that the monster would disappear after he abandoned it for the monster comes haunting Frankenstein through murdering his loved ones (Shelley 13). The monster feels lonely and alienated and asks Frankenstein to make him a female companion. When Frankenstein refuses the idea of creating a female companion, the monster gets angry and murders Elizabeth who Frankenstein had married. Through Shelly’s novel, women are depicted as companions for their male counterparts and this is evidenced by the monster avenging because Frankenstein did not create a female companion for him. Frankenstein also failed to create a female companion for the monster because he thought that the two monsters would procreate and there would be many monsters (Shelley 46). This further tells us that society views women as child-bearers and this becomes the value that is attached to a woman. A major theme in Shelly’s novel is relationships. It is through the loss of Elizabeth who he loved that Frankenstein finally decides to go on a mission to kill the monster (Shelley 19). Feminism is also evident in the novel where the females involved in the novel are suffering at the hands of the monster. Females in the novel are therefore submissive and rely on their male counterparts to rescue them for example in the case of Elizabeth who died for she was unable to defend herself from the monster’s wrath. The style in Shelly’s Frankenstein is in epistolary form for she has used letters written between Walton and the sister to tell us the story of the monster and Victor. The novel “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelly utilizes gothic style through the introduction of the monster to bring the horrifying experiences and therefore is very different from the others for instance Joyce Carol Oates “We Were the Mulvaneys”.

We also cannot fail to note that while the authors of these novels greatly featured family themes, romance and love, Joyce Carol Oates and Naula O’Faolain did not marry and had no children of their own though they portray the family as the center of love and care for the children.

In summary, the time periods that the novels were written do nothing to elude the fact that men are seen as superior to women. Taking the example of Mary Shelly’s work, all the characters who die at the hand of the monster are women. In addition, the daughter of the great feminist Mary Wollenstonecraft continues to depict women in her novel as passive and thereby projecting the way society has continually viewed women as lesser beings in comparison to men.

Just like O’Faoliain, Wollenstonecraft’s childhood experiences revolve around an abusive father who beat her mother and therefore not surprising to note that she took the role of challenging society’s commonly held beliefs of women. To my conclusion, the women who have taken up the role of writing on the role of motherhood in women’s writings have been directly affected through their childhood experiences. Their fathers used to abuse their mothers and as a result, these writers in conveying the information to all women in the world have also used the experiences to document their childhood life experiences. Yes, to some people, these women have conveyed their bitter feelings for not getting married and others may read their novels with the conclusion that they never had families of their own and therefore not in a position to write on the role of motherhood in society and the way society portray women. Nevertheless, these brave women have shown that society has a long way to go in accepting women and regarding them with dignity.

Works Cited

Eliot, George. Silas Marner. New York. Bantam Classics, 1981

Oates, Joyce Carol. We Were the Mulvaneys. The UK, E P Dutton (HB) & G P Putnam’s Son’s (PB), 1996.

O’Faolain, Naula. Are You Somebody: The Accidental Memoir of a Dublin Woman? New York. Henry Holt & Company, 1996.

Shelly, Mary. Frankenstein; Or the Modern Prometheus: Oxford, Oxford University Press. 1818.

Wollenstonecraft, Mary. The Wrongs of Woman, or Maria: New York, Norton: Ed. Moria Ferguson. 1975.

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Comparative View: Role of Mothers in Women’s Writings

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