Mother’s Day is here!
It’s time to celebrate moms in literature and off the page!
Mother’s Day celebrates that very important person in our lives who has been with us even before we were born. Each mother is unique and leaves a lasting effect on their children, even the absence of a mother leaves a lasting effect on a child. They can be loving and kind, hateful and mean, or anywhere in between.
And in life as it is in literature—some mothers are absolutely unforgettable!
Oh, My Dear! — Archetypes of Mothers in Literature
Literature is filled with unique mother characters, ranging from the stereotypical “perfect” mother to the complicated, dark evil mothers that make life messy. Motherhood is fertile ground in a plot. These archetypes of mothers in literature offer amazing opportunities for intriguing creative arcs and the emotional impact provide can be as heavy as you want it to be. We love them, we leave them, we hate them, we suffer from them, but they are sometimes the most compelling part of a story.
This Mother’s Day let’s explore common archetypes of mothers in literature and consider all the ways they are depicted in some of our favorite novels!
The Iconic Mother
When we think of the ideal mother, we imagine one with infinite patience, unending kindness, and a love that will last forever. She’s there when we need her and always looking out for us.
In The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. Mrs. Lancaster adores her cancer-stricken daughter, taking care her and trying to protect her as much as she can from the realities of her diagnosis. She is always there, always reliable, and always comforting.
Ruth Jamison from Fannie Flagg’s Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe is determined to protect her child, too. Ruth leaves an abusive husband to set up home with her friend, Idgie. Together, they raise Buddy Junior, run a cafe, fight racial prejudice, and ultimately protect Buddy from his father.
The Conflicted Mother
The tragic mother is a complex, interesting character, and represent the human frailties found in all of us, as represented through the lens of motherhood. Their list of flaws is long and varied. Distant, narcissistic, emotionally unstable; they are often presented in a negative light, but there is a spark of real humanity that keeps them from becoming truly malevolent.
The Glass Castle, the Jeannette Walls memoir, retells her memories of living her young nomadic life in the American Southwest with mother, Rose Mary. Crippled by mental illness, Rose Mary couldn’t deal with the responsibility of providing for her family. She was addicted to excitement, and when the family’s money ran out, they settled in a dismal West Virginia mining town. Walls eventually finds her mother homeless on the streets of New York. While the intentions of the mother weren’t to be harmful to her children, her mental illness kept her from being a positive force in their lives.
In Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews, Corrine, a mother to four children, sacrifices their well-being in order to collect on an inheritance. Her greed and narcissistic behavior leads to neglect that forces the children to fend for themselves and eventually leads to a tragedy that no good mother would wish on anyone. Yes, the story is tragic, but the cause of the tragedy comes from common character flaws taken too far.
An example of a truly tragic mother is seen in Sophie Zawistowska, William Styron’s main character in Sophie’s Choice. A Polish survivor of the Holocaust, she is forced to choose which one of her two children will die in a Nazi gas chamber. The memories she tells show a lifetime of trauma as she deals with the guilt of this act. The utter cruelty exhibited by her Nazi captors cuts her soul in two, using the love she has for her children as the knife.
The Evil Mother
A mother’s love runs deep. So, when that love is missing, there is a deep, dark hole in their heart that is blacker than night. They are abusive, hateful, deranged, and so many other horrible things that to be in their heads when reading is taking a trip down a very dark path.
Stephen King’s Carrie provides us with the ultimate crazy mother. Whipped up into a religious fervor, she mentally, emotionally, and spiritually abuses her daughter until, in great Stephen Kin signature style, the devil opens the doors to Hades and all hell breaks loose. We see a true psychotic break (and probably other things) in Carrie’s mother, Margaret.
In John Steinbeck’s classic East of Eden, Motherhood clearly means little to Cathy Ames, a mother of twin teenage boys. She shoots her husband in the arm and abandons her children at their birth. She is the owner of a sadistic, drug den of a brothel and revels in the shame her boys feel about her life. There are many other things to dislike about Cathy Ames, but her lack of mother instincts and purposely stomping on the love of two innocent boys puts her firmly in the evil mom category.
Characters with Endless Inspiration
In literature we get to explore the complexity of motherhood from every angle—the good, the bad, and the downright dangerous. Mother tropes are interesting, fun, crazy, and sometimes completely disturbed disrupters or enablers. And, thus, mothers of every type lead to endless inspiration for authors.
Start exploring the different archetypes of mothers with Chanticleer authors and the mothers they incorporate into their stories
Operation Mom
By Reenita Malhotra Hora
Grand Prize CIBA winner in the Chatelaine Division
Master storyteller Reenita Malhotra Hora’s YA romance Operation Mom: My Plan to Get My Mom a Life and a Man takes us on a charming journey through the life of one teen, Ila Isham.
Hora introduces Ila and her best friend Deepali, two boy-crazy teens on a summer quest. Readers will fall in love with the smart, sassy, angst-filled, rebellious Ila. A typical teenage girl, Ila lives in Mumbai with her mom and Sakkubai, their house manager. Ila’s mother calls her obsessed, but that seems unfair. Is she obsessed just because her every waking minute is spent thinking of Ali Zafar, famous pop icon, singer, and heartthrob? Or is she obsessed with fellow classmate Dev?
No, Ila couldn’t be taken with Dev because he’s one of three young men that her best friend Deepali is juggling in her summer experiment of exploring her “feminine mystique.” This turn of phrase becomes just one of many opportunities for Hora’s humor to shine as Ila remarks, “That’s a book by Gloria Steinem… no Betty Friedan.” Deepali’s response? “Yaar. Don’t be so literal.” The delightful balance between Ila’s book smarts versus Deepali’s street smarts carries us through Hora’s expertly crafted story.
The Adventure of the Murdered Midwife (The Early Case Files of Sherlock Holmes, Book 1)
By Liese Sherwood-Fabre
First Prize CIBA winner in the Mystery and Mayhem Division
The game is afoot! It’s years before Sherlock Holmes’ ponderings from 221B Baker Street. Sherlock is a teenager when challenged to solve his first case, The Adventure of the Murdered Midwife by Liese Sherwood-Fabre.
The stakes are among the highest. Sherlock’s beloved mother is the accused killer when he and his infamous brother Mycroft are summoned home from their boarding schools. The family reunites to a single purpose. They must prove Violette Holmes’s innocence. They soon discover that proving her innocence will not be enough to restore her standing in the court of public opinion. They can only clear her name by also finding the actual killer. That investigation involves a dangerous pursuit that requires detailed observation, logic, and action. Young Sherlock Holmes will also need to watch his back.
The adventure begins with a brief glimpse into Sherlock’s school days.
Remedy for a Broken Angel
By Toni Ann Johnson
Remedy for a Broken Angel by Toni Ann Johnson is an intense examination of the troubled personal histories of two beautiful and talented women of color.
Their stories are told in alternating chapters which reveal the mother’s and her daughter’s attempts to reclaim and understand their broken pasts. Each chapter is a revelation into the pain and damage caused by unknown family secrets. Both women struggle with a legacy of shame and self-blame for the price they’re paying for never hearing the truth. Each must learn the lessons found in past years of failure to communicate.
The beautiful mother, Serena, is a successful Bermudian jazz singer and songwriter who is consumed by anger over feeling unloved as a child. Years later, her hurt and confusion over being abandoned by her family cause her to repeat the past by leaving her own marriage and abandoning her twelve-year-old daughter.
Fly Safe: Letters from the Gulf War and Reflections from Back Home
By Vicki Cody
Not many people can capture the emotions that coincide with war, but Vicki Cody joins the ranks of those who do in her wartime memoir, Fly Safe: Letters from the Gulf War and Reflections from Back Home.
This powerful memoir shows us the behind-the-scenes lives of the women, children, and families left at home while their soldiers set off for war, bringing us close to their raw vulnerability. Fly Safe fascinates as it informs readers of what one wife experiences as her commander husband leads his battalion to the middle east.
Cody takes us back in time to the early 1990s when the first President Bush called up troops in an operation called “Desert Shield,” which turned into Desert Storm. She captures the events that led up to our first conflict in the middle east, but far from being strictly pedantic and historical, centers on the warmth, love, and fears that most of the wives were experiencing. Her letters from her husband – and her journal entries read like daily affirmations and blend well in telling this story.
The memoir shines as a first-person account of the ins-and-outs of a military family’s life during war.
Guided
By Kirsten Throneberry
First Prize CIBA winner in the Journey Division
In her stunning memoir, Guided: Lost Love, Hidden Realms, and the Open Road,Kirsten Throneberry weaves together the highs and lows of a road trip packed with life wisdom, where she explores grief, spirituality, and rekindled hope.
Throneberry’s achingly vulnerable memoir splits its readers’ hearts and tenderly sews them back together.
In the aftermath of the devastating loss of her husband, Kirsten sells her home and takes her two small sons, two elderly pups, and eccentric mother on a year-long road trip around the United States in their new-to-them Bigfoot RV.
Encouraged by the same spirit guides whose earlier advice for her husband’s health left her broken and untrusting, Kirsten must learn to face the open road with an equally open heart and mind.
We would like to wish all mothers, mothers-to-be, stand-in mothers, and those who possess the mothering instinct, a very Happy Mother’s Day!
Thank you for joining us in celebrating the Mothers in our life!
Has your book captured the complexity of motherhood? Showcase your storytelling through a Chanticleer Editorial Review!
