The Mother/Daughter Relationship in Toni …€¦ · Web viewTitle The Mother/Daughter Relationship in Toni Morrison's Sula and Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club Subject Master Thesis Author

The Mother/Daughter Relationship in Toni Morrison’s Sula and Amy Tan’s

The Joy Luck Club

Marleen du Pree, 0211109Master Thesis

Engels: Educatie & CommunicatieSupervisor: Roselinde Supheert

Second Reader: Nicole ReithJuly 2006

17,292 words

Master Thesis - Marleen du Pree, 0211109 i

PrefaceI would like to extend my gratitude to the following people: Derek Rubin and Nicole Reith, for the introduction into African-American and other ethnic minority literature and for helping me narrowing down my topic; Roselinde Supheert, for her time, accuracy, encouragement, and kindness; my parents and brothers, for their never-ending support, and the possibility to go to university; my boyfriend, for helping me decipher the mysterious and frustrating world of Microsoft Word and his patience and motivational words; and to the many people who listened to me and put up with me during these last few months.

Thank you,

Marleen du PreeJuly 2006

Master Thesis - Marleen du Pree, 0211109 ii

Table of Contents

Preface..................................................................................................... iTable of Contents.....................................................................................iiIntroduction.............................................................................................1Chapter 1 - Feminist Psychoanalytical Framework......................................4

1.1 - The Mother/Daughter and Mother/Son Relationship.....................................................61.2 - Race and Class in Psychoanalysis......................................................................................10

Chapter 2: The Mother/Daughter Relationship in Toni Morrison’s Sula.......132.1 - Outline of Sula...........................................................................................................................142.2 - Eva and Hannah Peace...........................................................................................................142.3 - Sula and Hannah Peace.........................................................................................................162.4 - The Wrights: Helene and Nel................................................................................................182.5 - Nel Wright and Sula Peace....................................................................................................202.6 - Sula’s Men...................................................................................................................................212.7 - Discussion and Conclusion....................................................................................................22

Chapter 3: Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club..................................................243.1 - Outline of the JLC......................................................................................................................253.2 - Jing-mei and Joy Luck..............................................................................................................263.3 - The Mothers: Stories of the Past.........................................................................................273.4 - The Daughters: Their Childhood.........................................................................................293.5 - The Daughters: Adult Life......................................................................................................313.6 - Mother and Daughter Connection......................................................................................33

Chapter 4 - Discussion............................................................................35Works Cited...........................................................................................42

Master Thesis - Marleen du Pree, 0211109 1

“… [Helen] rose grandly to the occasion of motherhood – grateful, deep down in her heart, that the child had not inherited the great beauty that was hers: that her skin had dusk in it, that her lashes were substantial but not undignified in their length, that she had taken the broad flat nose of Wiley (although Helene expected to improve it somewhat) and his generous lips. Under Helen’s hand the little girl became obedient and polite. Any enthusiasms that little Nel showed were calmed by the mother until she drove her daughter’s imagination underground…” (Toni Morrison – Sula – 18)

“…She can see all of this. And it annoys me that all she sees are the bad parts. But then I look around and everything she’s said is true. And this convinces me she can see what else is going on, between Harold and me. She knows what’s going to happen to us. Because I remember something else she saw when I was eight years old. My mother had looked in my rice bowl and told me I would marry a bad man…” (Amy Tan – The Joy Luck Club – 164)

Introduction

During the last few decades of the 20th century, minority literature took an uprise in the world of mainstream fiction in the United States. Many writers originating from a diversity of ethnic minorities have been sharing their thoughts, culture and background with the general public. The changing ethnic atmosphere in the United States, which meant more acceptance and integration of minority writers into mainstream fiction, created the possibility for these fiction writers to be accepted and integrated in the bookshelves during the last decades. Just like in mainstream literary fiction, the revival of minority literature contained a strong female component. Female writers such as Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Maxine Hong Kinston, and Amy Tan use fiction to express their connection to their culture and history and show a female perspective of the world. Moreover, another important common aspect of their fiction is their strong interest in the world of their mothers and grandmothers and how they are connected and influenced by that world.

In 60s and 70s, when the ethnic and female literature increased in popularity, another branch of sciences became more and more interested in the female perspective of the world. A new psychology of women emerged in the work of Nancy Chodorow and Carol Gilligan, to name a few. In this field of research the experiences and the views of women are the centre of investigation, as a counter-balance to the men-centred perspective from which research was mainly orientated before. One of the largest topics of interest in women psychology is the female identity development and the relationship between mothers and daughters. In The Reproduction of Mothering (1978), Nancy Chodorow provides a psychological analysis of the female identity derived from the Freudian Oedipus model, although she predominantly relies on object-relations psychology, which is based on the assumption that every individual’s psychological life is created in and through


personal relationships with others. Chodorow claims that female identity is primarily based on the connection and closeness to the mother and the placement of women in culture is defined by the bonding between mother and daughter (100). This notion will be discussed in chapter 1 below. With the emergence of female literature as well as female psychological theories, a whole new field developed. Not only is feminist psychoanalysis used for creating an understanding of the world in general, but it is also used as a framework from which reflections of the world could be analysed, such as literary fiction. Theorists like Marianne Hirsch used the work of Chodorow and Gilligan as a means to analyse female fiction.

Although there are many novels by female writers which could be analysed from a psychoanalytical or feminist angle, two novels have been selected for this study. These novels are Sula (1973) by the African-American writer Toni Morrison and The Joy Luck Club (1989) by the Chinese-American Amy Tan. Both writers have the gift to describe the relationship between mothers and daughters in a vivid way. Furthermore, they both indicate the influence of factors such as race and class on the mother/daughter relationship. Both novels contain a story about young females who are growing into adulthood and are in search of their own self and identity. Both stories are written from a female perspective and describe the profound influence of the mothers on the lives of the daughters, even when the daughters explicitly refuse to live accordingly the life style of their mothers. Although the novels have many similarities, there are also many significant differences to be found between them, especially with respect to ethnicity. In both novels, the mother/daughter relationship is influenced by social and cultural backgrounds, albeit in different ways. This influences the development of identity and self-determination of the protagonists.

Toni Morrison’s Sula tells the story of a black community in the fictional town Medallion, Ohio, where two girls grow up together and are formed by the influence of race, gender and society. The female relationships and especially the mother-daughter relationship prove to be highly important for the identity development of the female characters in the novel. The women are faced with severe consequences due to racism. The double marginality the characters encounter influences the mother-daughter relationship and subsequently their identity development.

Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club contains the story of four Chinese mothers and their second generation immigrant American daughters. Alternately, Amy Tan gives voice to either a daughter of a mother and her clear description of the mothers’ and daughters’ perspectives provides the opportunity to put the pieces of the puzzle together. The reader realises that their relationship is influenced by a generation gap which is not merely created because of age differences but also because of cultural


differences. The position of women in the Chinese culture influences the perception of female identity by the mothers and this clashes with the view of the daughters, who have been raised in a double culture.

In the first part of this study, a theoretical framework will be provided, based on the work of psychoanalysts such as Nancy Chodorow. The theory of her book The Reproduction of Mothering has been the starting point for many researchers in the field of feminism and in this study it will function as that as well. Chodorow’s theory will be discussed in the light of mother-daughter relationships and the theoretical framework will be completed by criticisms and revisions made by other analysts in later studies, such as the literary analyst Marianne Hirsch. After establishing a suitable framework, Toni Morrison’s Sula and Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club will be discussed with reference to the identity development of the female characters and the influence of the maternal lineage. Lastly, the novels will be compared and contrasted in a concluding discussion. The analyses based on Chodorow’s model on the relationship between mothers and daughters show that the mother-daughter relationship is the most important influence on the identity development of the female characters, despite the negative cultural and racial implications on that relationship in Toni Morrison’s Sula and Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club.


Chapter 1 - Feminist Psychoanalytical Framework

In this chapter, a psychoanalytical framework will be established with respect to the influences of feminist theorists Nancy Chodorow and Marianne Hirsch. The first part will indicate the position of Chodorow and Hirsch in the general field of feminist psychoanalysis and specify the general ideas of their theories. Second, both theories will be discussed with reference to the differences between the mother/daughter relationship and the mother/son relationship. Furthermore, the use of psychoanalysis for the analysis of literary fiction will be discussed. Third, the implications of societal factors, such as race and class, on the interpretation of psychoanalytical theories, will be discussed with respect to Chodorow and Hirsch.

Around the 1970s, a fundamental change went through the conventional fields of literary fiction and science. During the same period both the literary field as well as the field of psychoanalytical thought changed. Besides an uprise of minority and female fiction, the field of psychoanalytic thought received essential criticism from the corner of feminist writing and thinking. The patriarchal based psychoanalytic theories, created by humanists Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, were considered to be suppressing and degrading the position of women in society and culture in general. Therefore, theorists, like Juliet Mitchell in her Psychoanalysis and Feminism (1974), presented a mind frame based on Freudian and Lacanian thoughts, which regarded the positioning of women in society from a different point of view. This new feminist psychoanalysis did not place women in an oppressed position, but claimed that certain areas of a culture could be considered specifically gendered and therefore, valuable for the functioning of society as a whole (Hirsch 131). In this view, women are not oppressed, but valued for their participation in society in general.

A different approach was taken by Nancy Chodorow, an American feminist sociologist, who provided a framework for understanding gender by focusing on the mother-daughter relationship from an object-relation perspective in her book The Reproduction of Mothering (1978). Unlike the views of Mitchell and other theorists, like Nancy Friday and Marie Cardinal,1 Chodorow argues that female identity is characterised by closeness and connection to the mother, and not by distance from the mother or mother-hate (Hirsch 132). Although both Mitchell’s and Chodorow’s texts discuss very different views on psychoanalytic feminism, they both have had an immense influence on the broad range of future work (Barrett 455). 1 See Nancy Friday, My Mother/My Self: A Daughter’s Search for Identity. New York: Delacorte Press, 1977 and Mary Cardinal, The Words to Say It. Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1975.


In her article “Psychoanalysis and Feminism” (1992), Michele Barrett states that in the fields of feminism and feminist psychoanalysts “there is far more interest in literature and culture than in society and politics” (456). Soon after the work by Chodorow and Mitchell, psychoanalysis was not merely used to provide a feminine perspective of the world, but it was also used in other areas of science. According to Barrett, psychoanalysis became an interpretive framework for analyzing and criticizing fiction and film, and it is also much used in the field of cultural studies (459).

A female theorist, who has used psychoanalysis for criticizing and analyzing literary fiction is Marianne Hirsch in her book The Mother/Daughter Plot: Narrative, Psychoanalysis, Feminism (1989). In the introduction, Hirsch states that she does not consider theoretical texts to be universally true, but that she will view them as theoretical fictions alongside literary fictions (Hirsch 11). This indicates that in her notion one fictional text can provide a framework for understanding another and it could, therefore, be seen as a interpretation of reality, instead of the interpretation. Furthermore, for analyzing narrative, she relies on the essence of certain psychoanalytical definitions, which are reshaped for a broader application. An example of this is “the family romance.” In the original Freudian plot, the family romance stands for the imaginary replacement of the parent with another authority figure. Hirsch has applied the family romance to a wider context: “the family romance is the story we tell ourselves about the social and psychological reality of the family in which we find ourselves and about the patterns of desire that motivate the interaction among its members” (9). Not only does the parent-child relationship influence this romance, but society also plays an important in this imaginary story. The influence of society on the mother/daughter relationship will be discussed in section 1.1 below.

Besides relying on many other theorists, Hirsch also relies on the analytical framework provided by Chodorow. In traditional psychoanalytical theory the mother/daughter relationship is mainly discussed from the position of the daughter. By doing this, the daughter is always seen as the subject of the analysis, and the story is told from her perspective, whereas the mother is considered the object and is merely analysed through the eyes of the daughter. The mother’s subject perspective is never displayed in relation to her daughter; the mother’s point of view is only discussed when she is seeing herself as a daughter in relation to her own mother. Then also, the mother-figure is still discussed from an object perspective. Over the years, there has been debate on how to display the perspectives of both mothers and daughters. Whereas Chodorow’s theory seems to be primarily based on an object


perspective of the mother in which the voice of the daughter seems most important, Hirsch’s stresses the importance of looking for the mother’s subject representation in literary fiction in order to complete the view on the relationship between mother and daughter (Hirsch 163).

In the following section a critical review will be given of Chodorow’s and Hirsch’s theories as expressed in the books mentioned above. Furthermore, using psychoanalytical thought in the analysis of literary fiction will be addressed, as well as certain (inter-)cultural complications it entails.

1.1 - The Mother/Daughter and Mother/Son Relationship

A mother’s relationship to her son is evidently different from her relationship with her daughter and the underlying explanation has been the topic of debate in many discussions. In her book The Reproduction of Mothering, Nancy Chodorow asks why it is that mainly mothers mother and why fathers do not or, at least, much less. Moreover, she explains how the mother/child relationship influences the identity development of both boys and girls. The answer to this question lies in the assumption that there are systematic biological differences between boys and girls. Chodorow bases her notions on an object-relations theory, which starts from the assumption that every individual’s psychological life is created in and through personal relationships with others. She starts her book by explaining the process of being mothered, which is significantly different for boys and girls. Although initially they are both emotionally attached to their mother, this changes when the children enter their pre-school phase. Around that period of their lives, boys start to identify with their fathers, and girls continue to identify with their mothers. The identification with the father results in the denial of the boys’ attachment to the mother, whereas the girls will maintain their attachment to her, because of the mother’s role model position. The different attachment to father and mother is a result of the fact that fathers are often more occupied outside the home than mothers are. Another determining factor for the differences between boys and girls is the importance of the interpersonal relationships for boys. These interactions with other men and boys make the boys socially differently orientated than girls. Boys learn about masculinity through their father and, more importantly, by the culture and society around them, whereas girls form their identity through the relationship and identification with their mother. Consequently, the relationship between mothers and daughters will automatically be more intense and personal than the relationship between father and son. The result of the more impersonal connection to the mother is that boys will


become less attached to family relations than girls, and will therefore be more outwardly orientated. Girls will be more inwardly orientated in family relations, because they are connected to the mother, who is considered the core of family life. The intense and personal relationship between mother and daughter will prepare girls to mother for themselves. In contrast, boys do not experience the same personal involvement, either with their father or their mother, and will thereby be prepared to become a father figure themselves, who can distance himself from the family life in order to create a way to provide for the family. The different roles men and women are expected to play are illustrated in Chodorow’s words: “Women in our society are primarily defined as wives and mothers, thus in particularistic relation to someone else, whereas men are defined primarily in universalistic occupational terms” (178). In connection to this, Chodorow says that the most significant difference between males and females is to what extent they see themselves in connection and relation to others: “The basic feminine sense of self is connected to the world; the basic masculine sense of self is separate” (169).

For both the identity development of girls and boys, the mother plays a significant role. However, the mother is responsible for the way her children grow up and how they participate in the mothering process:

An account of the early mother-infant relationship in contemporary Western society reveals the overwhelming importance of the mother in everyone’s psychological development, in their sense of self, and in their basic relational stance. It reveals that becoming a person is the same as becoming a person in relationship and in social context. (76)

Besides the personal relationship between mother and child, the social context into which children are taken care of by their mother is highly important as well: “Women’s mothering does not exist in isolation” (32). Girls do not only learn how to be a mother merely through gender roles; it is mediated through their own mothers. Furthermore, the mothering aspect of women is “informed by her relationship to her husband, her experience of financial dependence, her expectations of marital inequality, and her expectations about gender roles” (86). Chodorow suggests that, in essence, the majority of societies are constructed on the notion that women are primarily part of a private, domestic world, whereas men are part of a public, social world (174). However, she does acknowledge that “[w]omen’s mothering is not an unchanging transcultural universal” (32). This indicates that when the social construct of the society in general changes, the responsibilities of mothers preparing their children change as well. The mother’s expectations about gender roles will be passed on to her children through the social context in which the mothering occurs:


“[T]he kind of development they unconsciously and consciously encourage in their children will depend on the particular requirements of the world in which they live and for which they must prepare the children” (Spelman 87).2 One of these requirements could be the influence of variables such as race and class on the construct of society, and the influences these variables could have on the mothering process. This notion will be discussed in section 1.2 below.

As shown above, the role of the mother in the development of the children is highly important. Another notion which Chodorow stresses is the importance of the mother-child relationship for the mother herself. Where in earlier feminine thought the attachment to a male figure was highly important and imperative, in the 1970s the role of men in the family structure was downplayed, since the relationship of a child to the mother was considered to be the most emotionally forming and important one (Hirsch 133). The emphasis on the mother/daughter relationship and on the importance of female relationships in general only leaves a secondary role for men. Marianne Hirsch, a theorist who relies, among others, on Chodorow’s theory for analysing literary fiction, claims that in Chodorow’s analysis the father’s presence could at best provide an alternative for the mother’s. Hirsch continues by stating that the adult female/male relationship is “so fundamentally unsatisfying that it insures what [Chodorow] has called the ‘reproduction of mothering’. Unable to relive with her husband the primal symbiotic connection she shared with her mother in infancy, the adult women needs a child with whom she might relive that bond as a mother” (Hirsch 133). The mother needs the relationship with her child to relive the relationship she experienced with her mother, and the possible lack thereof.

Unlike the daughter-based theory of Chodorow, Hirsch tries to establish a framework in which the motherly female aspect is analysed more profoundly. In The Mother/Daughter Plot: Narrative, Psychoanalysis, Feminism (1989), she discusses many novels in the light of mother/daughter relations. Despite the fact that Chodorow provides a purely theoretical framework of psychoanalysis, Hirsch interprets these theories and analyses feminist discourse novels. In her book, she discusses novels from the 19th century, such as Jane Austen and the Brontës, after which she works her way through modernism and postmodernism, and ends with the work of black writers, such as Toni Morrison and Alice Walker.

2 It should be noted here that Chodorow’s theory is written in 1978 and could be considered outdated in the modern view of society. Obviously, the views on the position of mothering in society have changed and are still changing, but in the light of this study the current views will not be thoroughly discussed. The novels by Toni Morrison and Amy Tan, which will be analysed and discussed in the following chapters according to Chodorow’s and Hirsh’s theories, are set in the same period the theories were created or slightly before that time. This justifies the use of these theories for analyzing the novels.


In general, Hirsch criticizes feminist psychoanalysts for speaking too much from the subject position of the daughter, placing the mother in an object position: “Feminist writing and scholarship, continuing in large part to adopt daughterly perspectives, can be said to collude with patriarchy in placing mothers into the position of object – thereby keeping mothering outside of representation and maternal discourse a theoretical impossibility” (163). Hirsch continues by stating that the fine line between what is called “feminist discourse” and “maternal discourse” should be more clearly defined. This clear distinction should be made in order to “envision a feminist family romance of mothers and daughters, both subjects, speaking to each other and living in familial and communal contexts which enable the subjectivity of each member” (163). Furthermore, Hirsch’s intention is to perceive the differences among women not from a biological and idealizing point of view, but from a perspective of experience to underscore the differences between women. She wants to view women as part of a social, historical and subjective reality in which the mother is also seen from the subject position as well as the object position, which is in contrast with the traditional psychoanalytical view of analysing mothers from an object position only. Psychoanalytical feminists have been able to depict the female child next to the male, but they have not managed to display the perspective of the adult female, which merely exists in relation to her child and never receives attention as the main subject: “And in her maternal function, she remains an object, always distanced, always idealized or denigrated, always mystified, always represented through the small child’s point of view” (Hirsch 167).

Furthermore, Hirsch states that in psychoanalysis, the child will only reach independence and a sense of self through a hostile break from the mother. As stated before Chodorow’s view on this matter is quite different, because she states that for the identity development of the daughter, she needs to remain close to the mother. However, she does acknowledge the importance for the child, either male of female, to undergo a process of separation to find self. Hirsch criticizes the fact that this view does not change the perspective of the mother, as it was originally depicted in Freud’s work. Still, the mother is depicted as someone who is “overly invested in her child, powerless in the world, a constraining rather than an enabling force in the girl’s development, and an inadequate and disappointing object of identification” (Hirsch 169). Although theorists like Chodorow have somewhat changed the original outline, the theories are still based on the child’s point of view and not on the mother’s perspective.

Another factor which Hirsch addresses is the model of female friendship in feminist discourse. Throughout the 1970s, sisterhood and female friendship have


been referred to as functioning as surrogate motherhood in feminist discourse. Again this attention for female friendship could be the result of the desire of the daughter to break free from the mother and create her own identity by doing so: “With its possibilities of mutuality and its desire to avoid power, the paradigm of sisterhood has the advantage of freeing women from the biological function of giving birth, even while offering a specifically feminine relational model” (Hirsch 164). However, the friendship between females could substitute the mothering process, since a mutual mothering process can take place. Also, where the normal mother/daughter relationship does not provide sufficient room for the daughter to become autonomous, the female friendship does allow just that: “[T]he ideal of sisterhood and of reciprocal surrogate motherhood highlights the maternal as function, but rejects and makes invisible the actual mother, who, it is implied, infantilizes the daughter and fails to encourage autonomy” (164).

1.2 - Race and Class in Psychoanalysis

Over the years, psychoanalysis in general, and, more specifically, the related feminist models have received criticism from many corners. Many have questioned the reliance on certain aspects of the Freudian model, the differences in definitions of certain key notions, such as the distinction between “public” and “private” spheres in Chodorow’s work and the assumption of the heterosexuality of women (Spelman 85). Although these different forms of criticism are all valuable and worth discussing, in this study the main focus will be on a different point of criticism, namely the notion that the models proposed by Chodorow and others are predominantly based on white, Western ideals. Using the model in a different racial and cultural context could generate complications. Special criticism about the lack of attention to race and gender in feminist psychoanalytical theory in general and especially in Chodorow’s theory is stated by Elizabeth V. Spelman in her book Inessential Women: Problems of Exclusion in Feminist Thought (1988). She stresses the importance of discussing gender in a context of other variables, such as race and class. Spelman states that “[m]uch of feminist theory has proceeded on the assumption that gender is indeed a variable of human identity independent of other variables such as race and class, that whatever one is a woman is unaffected by what class of race one is” (81). Also, despite Chodorow’s claim to view the variables separately, “she goes on to suggest ways in which the sexist oppression intimately connected to gender differences is related to racism and classism” (81). Although Spelman acknowledges the importance of Chodorow’s work, and considers it to be compelling and essential, she claims that treating variables as gender, race and class as separate processes is


highly problematic, because in her opinion these factors are tightly intertwined and their relationship more complicated than many would suspect (82).

One aspect of criticism is Chodorow’s placement of the mothering process in a social context, in which the relationship of the woman to the man, economic dependence, and male dominance are the most important variables. The subtitle of Chodorow’s book The Reproduction of Mothering – “Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender” – shows the culture-bound aspect of the book and its dependency on trends in societies and psychological theories (Levin 81) and this indicates that Chodorow’s theory can only apply to one specific culture at one time and does not lend itself to be applied to different cultures and societies simultaneously. Spelman stresses that the social male/female relationship cannot merely be confined to these elements. Most societies are also characterised by other social relationships, which are influenced by elements of race and class. Not only is women’s mothering formed by the relationship to the male dominated society, but also by the relation to people of other races and classes and the personal experience and interpretation of these relationships by the mothers (85).

Another aspect in which race and class are of great importance is family life. Obviously, family life and society are tightly intertwined and therefore families cannot be separated from the racial, class and ethnic elements that influence them. Spelman points to Chodorow’s assumption that it is the family’s duty to create children who are “gendered, heterosexual, and ready to marry” (85) and asks whether these are the only aspects the family should take into account when raising children. Although Chodorow does not explicitly state the importance of paying more attention to race and class, she does state that the mothering of children should result in the reproduction of society and “must lead to the assimilation and internal organization of generalized capacities for the participation in a hierarchical and differentiated social world” (32). The mother has the responsibility to raise and prepare her children to face a world in which people will have certain expectations of them and that this is influenced by factors such as race and culture. This shows that Chodorow is not unaware of other dominating forces than sexism; she merely tends to view the different processes as separate.

Another factor which is important in the context of the influence of race and gender is Chodorow’s claim that “women’s mothering is one of the few universal and enduring elements of the sexual division of labor” (3). With these words she indicates that although different cultures differ in the interpretation of the male/female labour division, mothering is always done by women. Simultaneously, Chodorow is aware of the fact that mothering “is not an unchanging transcultural universal” (32). This


indicates that the way mothers mother depends on the social and cultural context in which the mothering occurs. Mothers are expected to provide the children with “affective bonds and a diffuse, multifaceted, ongoing personal relationship” (33) in which the mother needs to prepare her children for a life in which the children will come across specific conditions and requirements. Mothering is not only meant for bringing up the children by means of feeding and clothing them, but also by providing proper psychological equipment with which they can prepare themselves for the world they are expected to live in. The specific interpretation of the mothering process will be different according to racial, ethnic and class background. A working middle-class family will depend on different conditions which the children will need in future life than a higher-class family. The same could be said for differences in racial backgrounds. Families from an African-American background will provide a different basis for children than an Asian-American family.

In the next section, novels of two ethnic female writers will be discussed with reference to the importance of the mother/daughter relationship, and its implications on the identity development of the female characters. The novels in question are Toni Morrison’s Sula and Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club.


Chapter 2: The Mother/Daughter Relationship in Toni Morrison’s Sula

In the last chapter, a general psychoanalytical framework was established in which it became clear that the mother/child relationship and the father/child relationship influence the identity development of the children differently. Nancy Chodorow’s theory was explained with special attention to the mother/daughter relationship and the importance of the closeness to the mother of the daughter. Furthermore, Marianne Hirsch’s interpretation of psychoanalysis and feminism was discussed with reference to using it as an interpretive framework for analyzing literary fiction. In this section, the novel Sula (1973) by the African-American female writer Toni Morrison will be analysed in the light of the Chodorow’s and Hirsch’s theories. The tradition of the black American female writers has fronted the mother in many diverse and complex ways. The traditional oral past and the strong connection to the maternal line and history have inspired black female writers to view their artistic self as connected to generations of women before them: “Even when they write in the voices of daughters rather than mothers, the black feminist writers in this tradition tend to find it necessary, much more than white feminist writers, to ‘think back through their mothers’ in order to define themselves identifiably in their own voices as subjects” (Hirsch 177). The importance of the connection between mother and daughter is underscored here as well. In Fabrication of Selves: Girls of Color Coming of Age (2005), Babs Boter emphasizes Hirsch’s statement that in the black family romance, mothers and daughters share the experiences of racist and sexist oppression and live their lives continuously connected to and intertwined with each other (120). The influence of the mothers on the identity development, and life of the daughters is one of the main themes of Sula. Before the mothers and daughters of the novel will be discussed, an outline of the novel and characters will be given first. Then, the relationship between Eva and Hannah Peace will be discussed, after which the relationship between Hannah and Sula Peace will be analysed. Furthermore, the mother/daughter relationship between Helene and Nel Wright will be discussed, continuing with the friendship between Sula and Nel. In order to complete the view on the different mother/daughter relationships, some insight will be given in the male characters of the novel. This section will be concluded with a discussion.


2.1 - Outline of Sula

The story of the novel Sula is set between 1919 and 1965, and it describes the lives of the women in two matriarchal households in the neighbourhood The Bottom in the fictional town of Medallion, Ohio. The Wrights are a conventional, middle class family, living according to expected traditions and morals, whereas the Peaces have a rather unconventional household, where tradition and moral are unfamiliar notions. The friendship between Nel Wright and Sula Peace, who represent the new generations of the two families, is the central aspect of the novel. Nel’s calm and balanced disposition, and Sula’s more fiery and rigid character, shows the distinction between the two girls. The girls’ dissimilar social backgrounds within the black community, underline their individual difference as well. However, because of these differences, they complement each other. Besides containing a story of friendship, the novel also discusses the complicated interactions between the mothers and daughters of the Peace and the Wright families. These complications already show in the relationship between Eva and Hannah Peace, respectively Sula’s grandmother and mother, and between Nel’s mother, Helene Wright and her mother. Sula and Nel are depicted from early adolescence until old age. As young women, both Sula and Nel want to construct their own lives, stand up against the conventions of their time and create new stories for themselves. As they grow up, the protagonists learn about the possibilities and, especially, the limits of their lives. The combination of opposite characters, different social backgrounds and the interaction with the maternal history inevitably leads to Nel and Sula’s identities: “their development and their friendship, and the text itself, revolve around their relationships to the powerful maternal figures who come to represent a female past and around their attitude to maternity itself” (Hirsch 178). The mothers and daughters in Sula represent the connection between the future and the past.

2.2 - Eva and Hannah Peace

Long before Sula and Nel enter the story, Morrison thoroughly describes the ancestral line of both the Peaces and the Wrights. By doing this, Morrison creates anticipation for the protagonists and shows the importance of the influential maternal history. The most dominant maternal figure in the story is Eva Peace, Sula’s grandmother and owner of a gigantic house in which both Sula and Nel spend a great part of their childhoods. In the house, there is plenty of room for tenants, stray people, newly weds and orphan children. Eva is portrayed as a very powerful and strong presence


and this is emphasised by Eva’s physical absence. Early on in the story it becomes clear that young Eva’s marriage to her husband BoyBoy will not last forever. After Eva is abandoned by BoyBoy, she takes drastic measures to ensure the survival of her three children and herself. Morrison tells the story of Eva who has to endure a miserable winter with three children and no money to provide for them. After having sacrificed the last piece of lard on relieving the constipated bowels of her baby son Plum, and contemplating the misery she is in, she realises that something has to be done: “She shook her head as though to juggle her brains around, then said aloud, ‘Uh uh. Nooo’. […] As the grateful Plum slept, the silence allowed her to think. Two days later she left all of her children with Mrs. Suggs, saying she would be back the next day” (Sula 34). Then the narrative contains a gap, and the reader meets Eva again, eighteen months later, with a pocketbook full of money, but with one missing leg. The importance of absence is stressed here literally, through the physical incompleteness of Eva’s body. Furthermore, absence is stressed through the style of narration. Throughout the story, the mystery surrounding Eva’s amputated leg remains the source of endless narrative for the inhabitants of the Bottom and the details are never shared. Later, Eva again takes a dramatic decision to rescue one of her children. She releases her son Plum from his heroine addiction by setting him on fire and thereby killing him.

Although all Eva’s actions are the result of intense motherly love, this is very difficult to understand for her other children, especially for her daughter Hannah, Sula’s mother. The eighteen month separation has severely influenced the emotional bonding between mother and daughter. Eva’s reasons for her actions are never explicitly shared between mother and daughter Hannah or in the story in general. At one point Hannah asks “Mamma, did you ever love us?” (Sula 58). The poverty in which the Peaces were forced to live, threatened the survival of Eva and her children. To deal with this threat practically, Eva must detach herself emotionally from her children. To Eva the knowledge that she gave up many things to ensure the survival of her children, should be sufficient proof of her motherly love. In reply to Hannah’s question, Eva says: “You settin’ here with your healthy-ass self and ax me did I love you? Them big old eyes in you head would a been two holes full of maggots if I hadn’t” (68). However, to Hannah, providing material needs does not add up to her definition a loving mother: “I didn’t mean that, Mamma. I know you fed us and all. I was talkin’ ‘bout something else. Like. Like. Playin’ with us? Did you ever, you know, play with us?” (68). Obviously, for Hannah personal attention from and engagement with her mother is imperative for feeling loved and connected to her mother, although for Eva her love is evident from everything she has done and sacrificed for


her children. In response to Hannah’s question for acknowledgment and love, Eva can only respond in terms of how she tried everything to secure their survival. She can only tell “stories that fail to fit into the mythology of motherhood to which Hannah wants to subscribe” (Hirsch 180).

Then Hannah asks why Eva killed Plum, and when Eva finally answers, it is: “[l]ike two people were talking at the same time, saying the same thing, one a fraction of a second behind the other” (71). In this part of the novel, Eva is not only portrayed from a subject perspective, but also from her perspective as a mother. The narrative reflects Eva’s double identity and it signals: “the self-division that by necessity characterizes and distinguishes maternal discourse” (Hirsch 181). Eva explains that she could not live with seeing her son deteriorate and behaving like an infant again, due to the drug addiction: “I done everything I could to make him leave me and go on and live and be a man but he couldn’t and I had to keep him out so I just thought of a way he could die like a man not all scrunched up inside my womb, but like a man” (72). Hannah does not reply to this confession and goes on with her chores as if nothing happened. Although both women attempt to discuss important issues, the “[m]aternal speech is sparse in this novel: mothers and daughters never quite succeed in addressing each other directly, mothers fail to communicate the stories they wish to tell” (Hirsch 179-180). Both Eva and Hannah do not receive the acknowledgement and understanding they both seek. The failed communication between mother and daughter, and the lack of motherly love, influence Hannah’s ideas of mothering and the perception of herself: “Although Hannah is herself a mother, her discourse is circumscribed by her daughterly relation to Eva and by conventional and clearly inapplicable conceptions of motherhood and maternal love” (Hirsch 180). As a result, Hannah does not know how to mother her own child.

2.3 - Sula and Hannah Peace

Sula, the next generation of the Peace line, takes after her grandmother and mother. Sula’s birthmark, which looks like many things, depending on who perceives it, distinguishes her from other women and forces her to acknowledge her vulnerability. Just like Eva had to fight against her powerlessness and vulnerability, because her husband had left her with nothing, Sula has to fight against the town’s prejudice against her and her family. Being raised in the unconventional household, which is the exact opposite of what the town’s people consider the norm, because of the sexual morale Hannah Peace lives by, Sula has to disguise her difference, just like her grandmother had to. Furthermore, Eva’s drastic measure, as an act of survival and


denial of powerlessness and vulnerability is repeated by Sula early on in the story. During their walks home from school, Nel and Sula are regularly threatened by some boys. At one time Sula takes a knife, and cuts off part of her finger, saying: “If I can do that to myself, what you suppose I’ll do to you?” (54-55). Hirsch comments: “This act is Sula’s own moment of self-recognition, of her affiliation with Eva and the world of her maternal ancestors” (182). Here, Sula understands that she has to fight against her own vulnerability, and establish her identity, hereby following her grandmother Eva’s example. However, this moment of self-recognition does show her inner strength, but it can never truly disguise her being different from the rest. Just like Eva and Hannah, Sula continues the inescapable maternal line of rebelling against the conventions and traditions of gender roles, but lacks the “capacities for emotional nurturing, empathy and connection” (Gillespie et al 40). Eva’s independent attitude and withdrawal from personal, caring and mothering aspects leave her daughter and granddaughter with few caretaking skills to be learned. This results in Sula’s clumsy caretaking of Nel in their friendship, which is, in the light of the contexts, highly inappropriate and unnecessary, but understandable because Sula has never learned ordinary and conventional means to solve problems. Although Sula is connected to her family in the sense that she behaves similar to her grandmother and mother, she does feel disconnected on a personal level, because: “Eva bequeaths to Hannah, and Hannah in turn bequeaths to Sula, a capacity for emotional distance which allows for the creation of the female self” (Gillespie et al 36). Although, this will enhance her ability to establish a self, it will decrease her ability to care for others and to be cared for herself.

The question of maternal love is also shared between Hannah and Sula, just as it is shared between Eva and Hannah. However, different from the direct confrontation between the latter two, the confrontation between Hannah and Sula is indirect. Sula overhears her mother discussing her children with two friends, and hears her state that she does love Sula, but simply does not like her (Sula 57). The denial of unconditional motherly love leaves Sula deeply hurt until Nel calls her to come and play by the water. There, they meet town-boy Chicken Little and are involved in his accidental drowning, and for Sula, these are the two most formative events in her life: “The first experience taught her there was no other that you could count on; the second that there was no self to count on either” (Sula 103).

2.4 - The Wrights: Helene and Nel


Although the Wright family differs from the Peace family in terms of class and status, the mother-daughter relationships show similar complications. Where Eva breaks with social convention by claiming autonomy through amputating her leg, Helene can be characterised as someone who tries everything in her power to live up to the expectations imposed on her by her upbringing and environment. Being born the daughter of a New Orleans prostitute and raised by her grandmother, Helene flees to the north by marrying an outsider to the community. Once fled to and established in the Bottom, she tries to live up to the virtuous expectations her grandmother imposed on her: “[Helene Wright was a] women who won all social battles with presence and a conviction of the legitimacy of her authority. […] She lost one battle – the pronunciation of her name. The people of the Bottom refused to say Helene. They called her Helen Wright and left it at that” (18). By refusing to pronounce her French name properly, the people in the neighbourhood refuse to fully adjust to Helene’s standards, because she insults the Bottom “by setting new standards of ‘proper’ behaviour” (Lounsberry et al 126). Not only does Helene take on social and religious responsibilities, she also manipulates her family, to feel as distant from her family and background as possible: “[She] enjoyed manipulating her daughter and her husband. She would sigh sometimes just before falling asleep, thinking that she had indeed come far enough away from the Sundown House” (19). This way, Helene can escape the feelings of shame and live her life as moral as possible. However, her intentions are not genuine and “represent the meltdown of the self that occurs when women unconsciously adhere to social convention”. (Gillespie & Kubitschek 23). Helene leads a moral and respectable life because it is motivated by her own fear of rejection by society. Her life “seems more a denial of a former life than an affirmation of an improved one” (Carmean 33). Helene’s behaviour and identity is influenced by the lack of a relationship with her mother, and this has forced her into the manipulated life she leads in the Bottom. The attempts to control her life do not influence Helene alone, but they especially influence her daughter, Nel. All her life Helene has tried to manipulate her and made her aware of her plain looks: “[She was grateful] that the child had not inherited the great beauty that was hers: […] [Nel] had taken the broad flat nose of Wiley (although Helene expected to improve it somewhat) and his generous lips” (Sula 18). Helene does not accept her daughter’s looks for what they are and forces Nel to pull her nose with a clothespin. Through this, Helene creates a barrier between her and her daughter and influences Nel’s perception of herself.

Not only do Eva and Hannah Peace fail in directly communicating with each other, the miscommunication between mother and daughter is also apparent in the


situation of Helene and Nel Wright. At one point, Helene and Nel undertake a tiring train ride down south, to attend the funeral of Nel’s great-grandmother. During the train ride, Nel becomes aware that although her mother tries to live a respectable life, respectability is a relative notion and that it can easily be demolished by certain variables, such as racism. It is striking that Morrison continues the story from Nel’s perspective and shows how Nel perceives her mother after this experience. By this perspective, the reader does not only discover the feelings of Helene, but also the effect of the experience on Nel. The scene clearly shows the effect of the mother’s behaviour on the daughter, but also the influence of societal and racial factors on the overall status in society. It is striking that the insulting remarks of the white conductor is not the most demeaning one, but it is the reaction of the fellow black travellers which intensifies the racist remarks of the conductor. Helene’s reaction to the conductor’s insult raises silent hatred among the Black men in the coach. Morrison reflects this situation through Nel’s eyes: “She [Nel] saw the muscles of their faces tighten, a movement under the skin from blood to marble. No change in the expression of the eyes, but a hard wetness that veiled them as they looked at the stretch of her mother’s foolish smile” (Sula 21-22). By Helene’s attempt to live a life above the standards of the Bottom, she is not only discriminated by whites, but also by her own community.

In New Orleans, Nel, who does not understand a word of Creole her grandmother speaks to her, finds out that her own mother also does not know Creole. Being raised by her grandmother, Helene has never learned to communicate with her own mother and, consequently, Helene has never taught Nel to communicate with her. Nel, deeply influenced by the experiences of the trip, understands that she has changed. The trip to New Orleans, the humiliation of her mother by both the white conductor as well as the black men, the emotional distance between her mother and grandmother, makes her begin a new life: “I’m me. I’m not their daughter. I’m not Nel. I’m me” (Sula 24). Nel sees her mother fail in many ways; in the adoption of middle-class values, in manipulation Nel and her father, in connecting to her own mother: “Nel’s image of her mother as formless custard barely contained by her heavy velvet dress makes it imperative that she identifies herself as separate, different from her maternal heritage, as a very definite ‘me’” (Hirsch 180). However, Morrison explains that “that was before she met Sula” (Sula 29). In Sula, Nel finds a friend, who can show her a different view on the world, which will free her from the orderliness of her maternal home and will offer support and reflection in Nel’s process of defining her own life.


2.5 - Nel Wright and Sula Peace

The friendship between Nel and Sula has been analysed as a way to substitute the lack the girls experience in their relationships with their mothers (Gillespie et al 41). Both girls have been raised in different milieus. Nel has been raised in a middle-class family, whereas Sula has been raised in a highly unconventional lower-class household, which has depleted her from experiencing traditional care. With the friendship of Sula, Nel finds the strength to separate from her mother, whereas Sula finds a replacement for the disconnectedness in her family. During their childhood friendship they are mutually dependent on each other and therefore take equal part in the relationship: “both Sula’s freedom of self-expression and Nel’s consistent regard for others are necessities for authenticity” (Gillespie et al 41). As their images of themselves are changed by societal factors in the course of their lives, so is their friendship. The girls are intertwined until their adolescence, when Nel marries and Sula leaves Medallion. When they meet again several years later, everything has changed.

During the lives of Nel and Sula, their identity developments have been deeply influenced by the maternal line of the two families. Despite their attempts to live their lives differently from their mothers and grandmothers, Nel and Sula eventually find themselves living according to expectation. Nel eventually leads the conventional middle-class life her mother wanted her to lead and Sula is leading the independent life her mother and grandmother lived, with the lack of caring and mothering. As a result, Nel and Sula’s views on traditional gender roles are different. When Nel and Sula meet again as adult, Nel warns the free-fought Sula: “You can’t do it all. You a woman and a colored woman at that. You can’t act like a man” (Sula 142). To Nel, the main distinction between men and women are children. Women can act like men, but they can never walk away from their children without being scolded. Men, according to Nel, have more freedom and choice than black women in that time.

2.6 - Sula’s Men

Although Sula is primarily based on the description of powerful women, the men in the novel are used to highlight the strength of the female characters. The description of the male characters and their view on society is important to complete the full analysis of the female characters and their underlying relationships. The male characters in the novel seem to fit Chodorow’s suggestion that “for boys, identification processes and masculine role learning are not likely to be embedded in


relationship with their fathers or men but rather to involve the denial of affective relationship to their mothers” (177). The search for separation creates male identities and as a result, they are less able to experience intimacy and interdependency. The position of Nel’s father in the family life is symbolised by his profession as a seaman. As a result of his job, he is absent in the family life. The other prominent male figures in the novel, BoyBoy, husband of Eva Peace, Jude, husband of Nel and Ajax, Sula’s lover, all leave their neighbourhood in Medallion when their relationships become problematic. The men in the novel who do not separate themselves from their mothers or the replacing mother figure seem to be unable to maintain a strong independent identity. The most prominent example is the three Deweys who live in Eva’s house. At the beginning of the novel it is explained that Eva took in children, who lived under terrible circumstances, and took care of them. However, Eva ignored the children’s names and called all three Dewey. After a while, the identities of the three boys merged into one, and no one could tell them apart afterwards. The Deweys remain boys during the course of the book, because when Sula returns to Medallion, they still live in Eva’s house and still need to be taken care of. They never grow up to be adult men and never detach themselves from Eva. Besides the Deweys, Eva’s house harbours more men, namely Tar Baby and son Plum. Like Plum, Tar Baby is addicted, and because of this never turns into an independent adult male. Morrison’s women-centred description leaves nearly all man “impoverished in their ability to relate to others” (Gillespie 26). The men in the novel only play a secondary role. One exception to this rule is Shadrack, the opening character of the book and the village idiot. He, unlike the other male characters, does take part in the community, but from a respective distance, and without addressing the other inhabitants directly.

2.7 - Discussion and Conclusion

Besides being a novel about the relationship between mothers and daughters, and future and past, the novel “offers a view of female psychological development that defies traditional male-centered interpretations of female development and calls out for an expansion of the women-centered paradigms” (Gillespie et al 21). As stated before, the majority of feminist psychoanalytical theories focus on the experiences of white middle-class women. In recent discussions, an ethnic dimension has been added, and this has also been reflected in the work of black novelists. Although these novelist are not participating in the psychoanalysis, their texts suggest affiliation with


these theories. In this context, it seems that Toni Morrison implicitly criticizes the white generalization by writing novels about doubly marginalized protagonists, who are both female and black. Many of her novels delineate the negative influence of racism and poverty on the mother-daughter relationship. In stressing this subject, Morrison’s texts open the discussion on how the gendered, individual self is the result of an inescapable social context and stress the importance of society in the identity developments of the protagonists, which is similar to the theories, as created by Chodorow. However, Morrison’s novels suggest that the influence of society on the mothering process occurs differently from what the theories claim. As mentioned before, there is disagreement on how societal, racial and class factors are related to the development of the identities of men and women. Some theorists argue that these variables could be considered separately, whereas others state that race and class are tightly intertwined in the mothering process. The influence of variables such as race and class in society in general, is considered to be of great importance to the development of identity and mother/daughter relationship of the female protagonists in the novel. In Sula, Morrison depicts the influence of class by exploring the mother-daughter relationship in a middle-class family, the Wrights, and a lower class family, the Peaces. In both families, the mother/daughter relationships suffer from the problems that race and class bring about. Eva Peace cannot provide the motherly love that her daughter Hannah needs. In a society where circumstances are harsh for a mother without a husband, let alone for a black mother, survival is prioritised. Because of the influences of race and class, Eva could not completely focus on the mothering process, which infected the personal involvement with her daughter, Hannah. Hannah, in turn, never learned how to mother herself and fails to connect with her own daughter, continuing the same process in Sula.

The Wrights’ situation is also a reflection of the influence of race and class on the mother/daughter relationship. Helene also fails in truly connecting with her daughter, due to her attempts to live up to her own moral expectations. By doing this, she imposes her expectations on Nel, trying to change her constantly. Hereby, Nel can never live up to her mother standards and lacks full acknowledgment and love. Despite her intention to live a different life than her mother, she eventually finds herself doing just that. Not only are the lives of Nel and Sula influenced by their maternal history: “the novel’s portrayal of the mother-daughter relationships is firmly contextualised in the larger society” (Gillespie et al 23). The novel does not explain whether Nel and Sula could have lived their lives differently, were their racial backgrounds different than they are in the story.


The lives of the mothers and daughters in Sula are, perhaps unwillingly, tightly intertwined. Although nearly all daughters in the novel at one time in their lives wanted to become different than their mothers, eventually they’ve come to realise they have not succeeded. Only Sula manages to break the circle of mothering by not having children, but eventually her relationship with Ajax opens her desire for a conventional life. Nel, once eager to create stories of her, eventually finds herself stranded in a life established according to convention and expectation. Limited by race and class she finds no means to break the mothering process. Despite the attempts of the female characters to establish their self independently, the mother/daughter relationship influences by race and class proves to be the most determining factor on their identity development.


Chapter 3: Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club

In the last chapter, it was established that although the theories by Chodorow and Hirsch could suffice for analysing the mother/daughter relationship of the writings of women of colour, variables such as race, class and gender should be taken into account as well. Although most critics have primarily analysed writings by African – Americans, it should be noted that the influence of race, gender and class is not confined to merely one group. Incorporating race, gender and class into the discussion is important for better understanding of the maternal discourse as Heung points out: “[A]lthough matrilineage remains a consistent and powerful concern in the female tradition, the recognition of culturally and historically specific conditions in women’s lives requires that we appropriately contextualize, and thereby refine, our readings of individual texts” (597). Although African – American fiction has taken the lead in the female minority writing discourse, Asian – American fiction has taken an uprise as well. Several works by writers such as Maxine Hong Kingston and Chuang Hua have been analysed and discussed wit regard to the relationship between mother and daughter. A striking similarity between these works is that “each of these works depicts how a daughter struggles toward self-definition by working through the mother-daughter dyad” (Heung 598). This indicates that these writings can also be placed in the tradition depicted by Marianne Hirsch. The daughter remains the subject in the subject-object relation, whereas the protagonists as mothers remain in the object position as Heung points out: “Daughter and mother are separated and forever trapped by the institution, the function of motherhood. They are forever kept apart by the text’s daughterly perspective and signature” (598).

As has been stated above, the theories by both Hirsch and Chodorow are useful for analysing female writings, but they are not universally applicable. Hirsch does acknowledge the implications of race and class for analysing the mother/daughter relationship for African – Americans, but Chodorow’s white, middle-class and Western theory needs to be reconsidered in the light of incorporating different historical and cultural backgrounds. Such historical and cultural alterations to Chodorow’s theory should also be taken into account in relation to the Chinese – American community. Despite the fact that African – American women are doubly marginalised due to gender and race, the historical cultural and social position of Chinese – American women seems to be more aggravating. Because of the devaluated position of Chinese women, which is deeply entrenched in history, they are “regarded as disposable property or detachable appendages despite their crucial role in maintaining the family line through childbearing” (Heung 561). The resulting


marginal status of these women reveals itself through the bargaining of which they are the objects. The arranged marriages, concubinage, forced departure to unknown families and adoption, are all indicators of the position of women in China. Their status is dependent on their families’ economic position, the sons they bear and the influence of the authority figures in their lives.

In this section the mother/daughter relationships in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club (henceforth referred to as the JLC) will be analysed. To generate coherence between the analysis of Sula and the JLC, the structure of the analyses will be outlined in similar ways, except for a few minor differences. First, the analysis will be placed in context and an overview of the novel will be given. Then the themes of the novel and the notion of “the Joy Luck Club” are discussed. After that, the childhoods of the Chinese mothers will be discussed, with reference to the influence of the mother/daughter relationship on their lives. Then the relationship between the Chinese mothers and their American daughters is discussed. Lastly, the mothers’ attempts to connect the past with the present and their own lives with that of their daughters will be discussed.

3.1 - Outline of the JLC

Amy Tan’s the JLC, published in 1989, depicts the lives of four Chinese immigrant mothers and their Chinese – American daughters. Divided into four sections and sixteen chapters, the voices and stories of four daughters and three mothers are shared in turns. This novel is remarkable because of the fact that both the voices of the mothers as those of the daughters are described. Each mother and daughter tell two stories, with the exception of Jing-mei (American name June) Woo, who tells four stories and functions as a connecting thread between the lives of the women. The stories of the mothers are mostly concerned with their pre-1949 past in China, whereas the daughters tell stories about their childhood and their adult relationship with their mothers. The lives of the mothers revolve around “the Joy Luck Club,” a Chinese custom reinvented on American ground by Jing-mei’s mother, Suyuan Woo. In this club, the four mothers focus on the positive things in life, by celebrating their joy and luck. Although the novel does not have a central plot, the stories of the mothers and daughters of the different families are connected, due to the mothers’ participation in the club.

The first section, “Feathers from a Thousand Li Away,” contains the stories of daughter Jing-mei and of the three mothers, An-Mei Hsu, Lindo Jong and Ying-Ying St. Clair. In Jing-mei’s story, the reader learns that Suyuan Woo has passed away and


that Jing-mei has been asked to replace her in the Joy Luck Club. Jing-mei also replaces her mother’s space in the structure of the narrative, because she tells four stories, instead of two, thereby also telling the stories of her mother. The stories of the mothers in this section, explain their childhood experiences in China and their relationship with their mothers. In the second section, “The Twenty-six Malignant Gates,” it is the daughters who tell stories. Taking turns, Waverly Jong, Lena St. Clair, Rose Hsu Jordan and Jing-Mei Woo individually tell about their childhoods in the United States and the influence of their mothers. The third section, “American Translation,” again contains stories of daughters, but now they connect their childhoods’ experiences to their present adult situation and life. In the last section of the novel, “Queen mother of the Western Skies,” the mothers try to connect their past to the lives of their daughters.

3.2 - Jing-mei and Joy Luck

In the opening chapter of the novel, daughter Jing-mei Woo explains to the reader that she has been asked to replace her deceased mother in the club. Being the only American-born daughter among Chinese mothers, Jing-mei’s story introduces the themes of the novel: disconnected mothers and daughters, estrangement from as well as familiarity with each other and the hope of finding a way to connect. Moreover, the importance of her story is represented in the other stories of the mothers and daughters. The outline of Jing-mei’s opening story is important for the understanding of the other stories. It reveals her discovery of her mother’s secrets and her realisation of how little she knew about her. This realisation sets the tone for the novel and Jing-mei recalls her mother telling stories about how the Joy Luck Club was invented in China and how her mother had to leave during the war with the Japanese. Jing-mei always considered these stories to be fictional Chinese fairy tales. Then her mother mentions two babies, she had to leave behind and the story becomes reality. During her participation in the club, Jing-mei finds out that her mother had been searching for her two other daughters for her entire life, without ever speaking about it to her or her father. Now, after her death, the girls are finally found and it is Jing-mei’s duty to tell them about their mother. However, Jing-mei feels insecure and says she does not know what to tell them. Jing-mei also feels she can never be a suitable replacement for her mother and remembers something from the past: “A friend once told me that my mother and I were alike […]. When I shyly told my mother this, she seemed insulted and said, ‘You don’t even know little percent of me! How can you be me? And she’s right. How can I be my mother at Joy


Luck?” (15). When the mothers react with disbelief: “Imagine, a daughter not knowing her own mother!” (31), Jing-mei realises that the mothers are afraid:

In me, they see their own daughters, just as ignorant, just as unmindful of all the truths and hopes they have brought to America. They see daughters who grow impatient when their mothers talk in Chinese, who think they are stupid when they explain things in fractured English. […] They see daughters who will bear grandchildren born without any connecting hope passed from generation to generation. (JLC 31)

Seeing their own daughters reflected in Jing-mei and realising how little she knew about her own mother’s past and intentions, the mothers realise the relationships with their daughters are the same and their stories need to be told, before it is too late. In the novel, the communication between the mothers and daughters is not only disturbed by generational differences. Most important is the barrier of two cultures clashing; the older Chinese culture and the present American culture (Shear 194). Moreover, the mothers and daughters have to overcome the class difference that has come between them. The Chinese mothers have always been manual labourers, whereas the daughters have had the opportunity to educate themselves and climb the social ladder. Therefore, racial, cultural, and class differences between mother and daughter influence their individual interpretation of situations and cause miscommunication and misunderstanding.

3.3 - The Mothers: Stories of the Past

The mothers’ relationships with their own mothers have influenced their notions of motherhood. In the mothers’ stories of the past a pattern of disrupted families and disconnection with the maternal line of the families, due to the cultural notions of class and gender relations, is revealed. In the first section of the book, An-mei Hsu, Lindo Jong and Ying-Ying St. Clair explain childhood experiences and the relationships with their mothers, which they consider important for their daughters to know. An-mei Hsu was raised by her grandmother, having only vague memories of her mother, who is the third concubine of a wealthy merchant and leads a life full of disgrace. When her grandmother is dying, her mother returns and An-mei realises the strength of the maternal line between her and her mother, but also between her mother and her grandmother. Even though An-mei has not seen her mother in years, she feels drawn to her: “Here is how I came to love my mother. How I saw in her my own true nature. What was beneath my skin. Inside my bones” (40). Despite the fact that An-mei’s grandmother does not acknowledge her daughter’s presence, their relationship


still shows the deep connection between mother and daughter. After An-mei’s mother attempted to save her mother by adding her own flesh to a Chinese herbs and medicine soup, An-mei realises: “This is how a daughter honors her mother. It is shou so deep it is in your bones” (41). From the relationship between her mother and grandmother, An-mei realises that the mother-daughter connection cannot be denied.

Lindo Jong’s story also reflects her disconnection from her family, albeit in a different manner. At age two, Lindo is matched to a young boy from an unknown family and forced to marry him at age sixteen. From the moment the marriage is arranged, Lindo is treated as if she already belongs to the other family. Her mother constantly reminds her of the family she is to marry into and refers to her as the mother-in-law’s daughter, but Lindo says: “My mother did not treat me this way because she didn’t love me. She would say this biting back her tongue, so she wouldn’t wish for something that was no longer hers” (45). Although her mother’s behaviour gives Lindo a sense of rejection, she realises that her mother acts out of self-preservation, because the mother/daughter connection will soon end.

These stories of disruption and the need to adapt the perceptions of changing family life constantly, make An-mei, Lindo and Ying-Ying search for identification and bonding with their families, and especially their mothers. In the original, psychoanalytical “family romance” of the daughter, as mentioned in chapter 1, the relationship between mother and daughter is characterised by the generational conflict and separation from the mother. However, in the stories of An-Mei, Lindo and Ying-Ying, a search for connecting to and identifying with their mothers is described (Heung 601). When An-Mei looks into her mother’s face, after many years of separation, she says: “I saw my own face looking back at me” (37). A similar process of identification happens to Lindo. When her mother agrees with the arranged marriage and she has to live with her future-husband’s family, Lindo is not angry, but decides to behave like a proper daughter-in-law, to honour her mother’s reputation. Despite the fact that Ying-Ying was raised by a nursemaid, an amah, and Ying-Ying’s relationship with her resembles a mother/daughter relationship more than the connection to her actual mother, she still identifies with her true mother: “I was like her. That was why she named me Ying-Ying, Clear Reflection” (276).

3.4 - The Daughters: Their Childhood

Whereas the mothers were literally and physically detached and separated from their maternal ancestry due to cultural implications, the daughters in JLC are figuratively


disconnected from their mothers due to other racial, cultural and generational differences. Therefore, the mother/daughter relationships depicted from the daughters’ perspective are organised differently from those of the mothers. One important aspect of the cultural differences between the mothers and daughters is the fact that they are torn between two linguistic worlds and do not speak the same language. Despite the fact that the daughters grew up with the Chinese language, they cannot understand the words of the mothers properly. Chinese is not their language of expression, because it was not the main language spoken at home, due to the fact that the families depicted in the novel were not created in China, but in the United States. The fathers and mothers came from different Chinese linguistic backgrounds and only had broken English as a common language. Therefore, the language spoken at home has become a mixture of two Chinese dialects and English.

Throughout the novel, the differences between mother and daughter are stressed by the linguistic discrepancy. These differences between mother and daughter are most evidently reflected in the Chinese stories the mothers tell. The mothers’ stories mostly reflect a world which is unknown and fairy tale-like to the daughters. Therefore, the daughters are unable to fully grasp the meaning of what is told by their mothers, also because the mothers’ broken English does not allow the stories to be translated in proper English. Ying-Ying’s daughter, Lena St. Clair explains: “I could understand the words perfectly, but not the meanings. One thought led to another without connection” (JLC 109). Jing-mei Woo realises that: “My mother and I never really understood one another. We translated each other’s meanings and I seemed to hear less than what was said, while my mother heard more” (27). Rose Hsu Jordan, daughter of An-mei Hsu says that she believed everything her mother said, even though she could not understand her meaning (206). Also, her mother’s creation of the Old Mr. Chou, the man who holds all the dreams, scares and confuses Rose as a child and keeps inspiring Rose’s nightmares, until she is an adult. The linguistic differences between mother and daughter do not allow complete understanding.

Not only do the mothers tell their stories in Chinese, their mother tongue is also used strategically. Whenever strong emotions are expressed, such as anger and joy or when the scene becomes personal, the mothers tend to switch from English to Chinese, which emphasises their emotions. Jing-mei Woo’s mother scolds her young daughter for not trying enough at the piano: “‘So ungrateful’, I heard her mutter in Chinese. ‘If she had as much talent as she has temper, she would be famous now’” (146). Ying-Ying, married to an American man who does not speak Chinese and with


whom she does not speak in a language, but in moods and gestures, resents the English words he puts in her mouth and deliberately speaks Chinese to her daughter.

The language the mothers and daughters speak reflects their cultural awareness in society. The Chinese-born mothers, unable and unwilling to leave behind their past and culture, inadequately adapt to the American way of life. The daughters, on the other hand, born in America, are unable to grasp the importance of their mothers’ culture and do not understand the metaphors and expressions the mothers use. Furthermore, they are embarrassed about the broken English their mothers speak and their Chinese customs in public, like Lena St. Clair, who often lies when she has to translate for her mother (JLC 109). Both are unable to translate each other’s words and are left confused and excluded from each other’s culture. For the mothers, the exchange between cultures and generations is highly important, because according to Chinese customs, the mother’s spirit strengthens the daughter’s spirit. At one point, Jing-mei understands that the mothers fear the loss of their family history and knowledge after their deaths: “They see that joy and luck do not mean the same to their daughters, that to these closed American-born minds ‘joy luck’ is not a word, it does not exist. They see daughters who will bear grandchildren born without any connecting hope from generation to generation” (31). The mothers’ and daughters’ lack of proper vocabulary to communicate with each other hides the mothers in maternal silence. Although the mothers do speak to their daughters, they fail to share their histories and inner feelings and leave their daughters unaware of their struggle.

In this context, it is important to note that the maternal silence does not merely affect the relationship with the daughters. Strikingly, the stories of the past are not even shared among the mothers, and therefore, the mothers are alone in their secrets and their behaviour misunderstood. Jing-mei Woo recalls her mother saying that An-mei Hsu has no spine and does not think before she acts (18). The reason behind An-mei’s behaviour becomes clear in the novel, but is never shared with the other mothers. The tendency to keep the inner stories secret is also evident in the lives of the daughters. The daughters do not communicate with their mothers, but the daughters do not communicate with each other either, just like the mothers do not communicate with each other similarly. Although all daughters know one another, there is no direct communication. This may be the result of growing up in the American culture, because it could: “convey a basic lack of cultural confidence on the part of the daughters” (Shear 195). Jing-mei says: “Even though Lena and I are still friends, we have grown naturally cautious about telling each other too much. Still, what little we say to one another often comes back in another guise. It’s the


same old game, everybody talking in circles” (28). Just like the mothers, the daughters do not share their inner feelings.

3.5 - The Daughters: Adult Life

The silence surrounding the mothers and daughters continues even in the adult life of the daughters. In the chapter “Double Face” Lindo Jong, the mother, tells an anecdote about the relationship between her and her daughter. Written from the perspective of the mother, the scene depicts the “limits of viewing identification as an issue problematic for the daughter alone” (Hueng 962). The motif in this scene is a mirror, reflecting both mother and daughter. Lindo is seated in front of a mirror as her daughter Waverly and the hairdresser, Mr. Rory, decide what to do with Lindo’s hair. While doing this, Waverly and Mr. Rory seem to forget the mother is there. Although Lindo understands English very well, Waverly continues to translate everything for her mother, leaving her feeling embarrassed of the shame Lindo sees on her daughter’s face. Because Lindo’s perspective is depicted here, the reader notices how the daughterly behaviour infects the mother’s attitude towards Americans and Americanism. In her silence she scrutinises the interaction between Waverly and Mr. Rory: “Americans don’t really look at one another when talking” (JLC 290). Also, she alternates between her “Chinese face” and her “American face”, which is “the face Americans think is Chinese, the one they cannot understand” (JLC 291). Here, the complications for the communication between the immigrant Chinese women and their America-born daughters are depicted from a motherly perspective.

The scene suddenly changes, when Mr. Rory remarks the striking similarity between Lindo and Waverly reflected in the mirror. Lindo notices Waverly’s discomfort and watches her daughter taking in Mr. Rory’s remark. As mother and daughter examine each other closely in the mirror, the story written from the maternal perspective allows the reader to identify with the mother. Although Lindo is aware of Waverly’s negative response, she is simultaneously moved by their resemblance: “The same happiness, the same sadness, the same good fortune, the same faults. I am seeing myself and my mother, back in China, when I was a young girl” (292). She is reminded of her childhood in China, when she and her own mother had the same form of identification. Heung states that this is Lindo’s sense of ethnic identity, which enables her to close the bridge between past and present and between different cultures (601).

For the mothers, seeing their own lives reflected in the lives of their daughters, is a reason to open the communication barrier and eventually tell their stories. Lindo Jong introduces her story of the past, as if she told it directly to her


daughter Waverly: “It’s too late to change you, but I’m telling you this because I worry about your baby. I worry that someday she will […] forget she has a grandmother” (42-43). Ying-Ying St. Clair breaks the maternal silence, because she notices the disconnection between them: “For all these years I kept my mouth closed so selfish desires would not fall out. And because I remained quiet for so long now my daughter does not hear me. […] And because I moved so secretly now my daughter does not see me” (64). She also realises that, although her daughter does not see her, they are the same: “We are lost, she and I, unseen and not seeing, unheard and not hearing, unknown by others” (64). Another mother, An-mei Hsu, was raised to be humble and swallow her misery and realises that: “[E]ven though I taught my daughter the opposite, still she came out the same way! Maybe it is because she was born to me and she was born a girl. And I was born to my mother and was born a girl” (241). According to Chinese beliefs, the spirit of the mother fuses with the spirit of the daughter. In this respect, all mothers feel they have failed in giving their daughters great strength and spirit so far and need to make amends. Their individual decision to tell the stories and let the daughters in on their secrets and histories, is their last attempt to bridge the gap between cultures, generations and language and restore the brittle mother/daughter relationship.


3.6 - Mother and Daughter Connection

Like the mothers are aware of the disrupted and disconnected relationship between them and their daughters, the daughters also notice the mysteries that surround their relationships. From their childhoods on, the daughters’ identities have been influenced by their mothers’ Chinese customs, which were in contrast with the world around them. Ying-Ying St. Clair says that she has “always known a thing before it happens” (275) and although her daughter Lena has always known her mother’s ability, she explains: “She sees only bad things that affect our family. And she knows what causes them. But now she laments that she never did anything to stop them” (161). Ying-Ying says that she has to make her daughter aware of her painful past in China and explain how her spirit was destroyed in the past and how she needs to bring back her fierceness in the present: “I will use this sharp pain to penetrate my daughter’s tough skin and cut her tiger spirit loose. […] But I will win and give her my spirit, because this is the way a mother loves her daughter” (286).

The Chinese conventions of Lindo Jong also influenced Waverly’s perception of her mother/daughter relationship. As a girl, Waverly is told to “bite back your tongue” (89) and learns how to use her invisible strength, which she thinks is the secret of her success in her chess competitions. When she notices her mother is taking all the credit for her talent, Waverly decides not to play anymore. Then, when her mother ignores her silent warfare, Waverly notices her mother’s own ability to use these same tactics and loses the power struggle between them. Throughout her life, Waverly feels inadequate and small when she is confronted with her mother’s perfectionist attitude towards her. It is only when she decides to stand up to her mother and wants to tell her she can take decisions for herself, that she unexpectedly is confronted with her constant misinterpretations of her mother’s intentions. When Waverly wants a reason for her mother’s so-called intentional demeaning remarks, Lindo says: “You think I have a secret meaning. But it is you who has this meaning” (201). Then, Waverly finally sees who her mother really is: “an old woman, […] getting a little crabby as she waited patiently for her daughter to invite her in” (204). All her life, she had feared her mother unnecessarily, letting the cultural, linguistic and generational barrier stand between them.

Daughter Rose Hsu Jordan was influenced by the Chinese notions of her mother as well. In her childhood Rose had heard her mother An-mei say that: “A girl is like a young tree […] You must stand tall and listen to your mother standing next to you. That is the only way to grow strong and straight” (213). Unfortunately, Rose


says that her mother’s words came too late and that she had already begun to bend and in her life, she has always lived according the opinions of others. When Rose’s husband is filing for divorce, Rose realises she has been living in his shadow, unable to make decisions for herself. Only after her mother asks her why she does not stand up for herself, and Rose realises her husband wants to cut her from his life disrespectfully, she notices that: “[for] the first time in months, after being in limbo all that time, everything stopped. All the questions: gone” (217). After she has made a decision, her nightmares about Old Mr. Chou and her mother finally disappear. All her life, Jing-mei Woo, has felt inadequate and unable to live up to her mother’s wishes and expectations.

Entangled in a boasting competition between her mother and Lindo Jong, Jing-mei never felt she could live up to chess champion Waverly Jong, even in her adult life. When Jing-mei’s mother gives her a jade pendant and adds: “See, I wore this on my skin, so when you put it on your skin, then you know my meaning. This is your life’s importance” (235), she realises her mother appreciates her more than she always anticipated. When Jing-mei arrives in China to meet her two half-sisters and tell them about their mother, she starts to feel different: “I can feel the skin on my forehead tingling, my blood rushing trough a new course, my bones aching with a familiar old pain. And I think, My mother was right. I am becoming Chinese” ( 306). Eventually, when she meets her half-sisters, together they are like their mother: “I know we all see it: Together we look like our mother. Her same eyes, her same mouth, open in surprise to see, at last, her long-cherished wish” (332). Although Jing-mei’s connection to her mother does not occur in real life, she does connect to her mother, in connecting to her past.

In Amy Tan’s novel, the mothers/daughter relationship is influenced by cultural and racial factors. Although the mothers and daughters both notice the disturbed relationship due to the inability to communicate, literally and figuratively, eventually they find a way to connect. The mothers’ connection to their mothers was tainted by factors such as gender, class and culture, whereas the daughters’ connection to the mothers was influenced by the clash between the old Chinese culture and the new American culture, with all its complications.


Chapter 4 - Discussion

In the previous chapters, the mother/daughter relationships in Toni Morrison’s Sula and Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club have been analysed and discussed, with reference to the psychoanalytical theories by Chodorow and the literary analysis of Hirsch. The analyses show that both novels give insight into the mother/daughter relationship in general and its profound influence on the identity developments of the daughters. Although the novels discuss similar themes, namely the connection between mothers and daughters and the influence of race, class and gender on that relationship, both novels address these aspects differently. In this section, the most important aspects of the mother/daughter relationships in the novels are discussed. Before the contents of the novels will be discussed, the theoretical frameworks used for the analyses will be pin-pointed first. The theories of Chodorow and Hirsch will be further discussed with reference to their usability for analyzing fiction and the implications of using Chodorow’s white, middle-class, and Western-based theory for the analysis of ethnic minority literature. Next, the daughterly perspective in the novels and the representation of the mothers’ perspectives will be discussed. Lastly, the influences of factors such as race, class, cultural and generational implications on the communication between the mothers and daughters as they are described in the novels will be discussed.

Over the years, the feminist psychoanalytical theory created by Chodorow has been characterised as compelling and essential, but her work also received important criticism on several aspects. Several important points of criticism are the notions that Chodorow’s theory is merely based on white, middle-class and Western ideas and her assumption that her theory can be applied to all societies, leaving ample room for incorporating the influence of other cultures onto the framework. As stated in the first chapter, the mothering process as described by Chodorow is a gendered process which is deeply enrooted in society. Also, Chodorow suggests that the social and gendered process of mothering can be detached from other processes, such as the influence of race and class. Many have questioned the possibility of separating the analyses of society, gender, race and class and have stressed the importance of analyzing the relationship between these factors.3 Others suggest that Chodorow’s application of Western ideas on all possible constructions of societies limits its usefulness to analyse and study societies that are based on non-Western racial and cultural assumptions (Levin 82).

3See the work of Levin; Spelman; and Lorber et al.


Despite the fact that Chodorow suggests that the influence on society of gender, race, and class could be considered separately, this does not indicate that Chodorow does not acknowledge the relationship between these factors. Chodorow’s advise to look at the social context in which mothering takes place leads to the understanding that: “gender identity is not neatly separable from other aspects of identity such as race and class” (Spelman 82). The relationship between race, class, and gender is essentially what constructs the diversities of societies and should be taken into consideration when discussing the mother/daughter relationship. In analyzing other ethnic cultures and societies, one should be highly sensitive to the possibility that gender roles and notions of motherhood can differ among cultures and cannot be brought back to Western theories in one single step. Furthermore, the traditional feminist analysis of motherhood, which, in fact, reflects an idealized and perfect situation, shows that even in a generalized model, the mothering process and the mother/child relationship proves to be highly complicated. When race and class are added to the picture, the analysis is complicated even further. In a reaction on the criticism on her book, Chodorow acknowledges the relationship between gender, and culture in society and she claims that if she were to write a new Reproduction of Mothering, she would incorporate these factors (Lorber et al. 514).

In contrast to Chodorow’s approach, in her adaptation of psychoanalysis for the analyses of literary fiction, Hirsch does take into account the influence of race and class on the mothering process and the implications they have on the gender construct. Interestingly, Hirsch does so only with reference to the African-American society. Although later writers have found Hirsch’s ideas reflected in other ethnic minority literature,4 her findings need to be reconsidered in the light of the other cultural and racial context, too. In the perspective of the novels analysed in this study, the situation of African-American women and Chinese-American women seem to be similar at a superficial level, but a great difference can be established between the situations of the women. Where the African-American mothers in Sula are doubly marginalized, because they are black and female and people from outside their own community constantly remind them of this marginalization, the Chinese mothers in the JLC have experienced inferiority laid upon them from within their community during their childhood in China. The implications of this marginalization cannot be detached from the social aspect of mothering. The analyses of the novels show that the influence of race, gender and class on the mothering process as well as the

4 For the adaptation of Hirsch’s theory in Chinese-American literary fiction see: Heung, M. “Daughter-text/Mother-text: Matrilineage in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club” Feminist Studies 19.3 (September 1993): 597-617.


construct of society are deeply intertwined and cannot be easily separated. In general, it can be concluded that Chodorow’s work can be considered an adequate and sufficient framework for the understanding of the mothering process in general. However, the influence of race and class on this process should be taken into careful consideration and Chodorow’s theory should not be used to generalize the mothering process across cultures and races. Over the years, Chodorow’s and Hirsch’s works have been used as building blocks from which other analysts and theorists departed and created their own theories. Theories need to be reconsidered as societies, cultures and their dynamics change.

Although the plotlines of Morrison’s Sula and Tan’s JLC differ significantly, and the stories describe different cultures, and different timeframes, the novels contain several similarities with regard to the construction of the mother/daughter relationships. When analyzing the novels it becomes clear that in both novels the daughterly perspective obtains great emphasis. This is in correspondence with the psychoanalytical theories of Chodorow and others, which also tend to discuss the mothering process from the position of the daughter instead of that of the mother. Despite the assumption that in describing the daughterly perspective, the influence of the mother on the daughter is also clearly depicted, the maternal side of the mothering process is not overtly present in the novels.

In her book, Hirsch criticizes this aspect of the psychoanalytical framework by Chodorow and others, and she wonders whether the maternal point of view, while absent in the traditional theories, can be found in literary fiction. In Sula, nearly all narrative is presented from a daughterly perspective, in which the reader gets insight in the daughter’s feelings about the connection to her mother, but never learns how the mother truly feels about the connection to her daughter. This shows from the structure of the narrative, which is primarily based on the identity development of the main protagonists, Nel and Sula, who are daughters, and their perceptions of the mother/daughter relationship. The viewpoint of the mothers is not clearly depicted and they are the object of the narrative for most of the novel. Furthermore, during the few occasions when the mothers of Nel and Sula are the subject instead of the object of the narrative, they are depicted in relation to their relationship with their own mothers and are, therefore, still depicted from a daughterly perspective. For example, when Hannah Peace, mother of Sula, becomes the subject of the narrative when she confronts her mother Eva with her unhappy childhood, her position in the novel is not that of mother of Sula, but of daughter of Eva. However, in Sula, one instant can be found in which a maternal side is reflected, when Hannah Peace asks mother Eva Peace for the reason of killing her son Plum. When Eva answers, she is


depicted in two ways: as an individual subject and as a mother. The double identity with which the narrative continues, signals “the self-division that by necessity characterizes and distinguishes maternal discourse” (Hirsch 181). In her explanation, Eva seems to reflect the situation from the perspective of a victim more than she does from a motherly perspective. It seems as if Eva’s action springs from self-defense more than from maternal interference. Eva’s moment of lament is one of the sparse moments in which a mother’s viewpoint is shared, and because of the double identity of her story the maternal side is not clear.

In the JLC, the daughters’ perspectives are also more present than the mothers’ perspectives. The majority of the chapters contain stories of the daughters about their mothers’ influence during their childhoods and their remaining influence on their adult lives. Despite the fact that the structure of the novel leaves sufficient space for the mothers to tell stories of themselves, the maternal point of view is meagerly shared, albeit more than in Sula. In the JLC, the mothers tell stories about their past in China and all stories depict the relationship they had with their own mothers. Although the intention of the mothers of telling their childhood stories is generating a closer bond with their daughters and this is stated in the introductions to their stories, when telling the actual stories, the mothers are speaking from a daughterly position and their motherly side is not reflected. In the introductions the maternal perspectives, reflecting their own lives and that of the daughters, give insight in the maternal aspect of these women. However, like in Sula, the maternal discourse is sparsely present and cannot give full insight into the balance between the perspectives on the mother/daughter relationship of both mothers and daughters. In general, the overall emphasis on the daughter and making her the subject of the narrative, while the mother remains the object, does not provide enough insight in the maternal part of the story. It could be the writers’ intentions to structure the narratives in this way and focus on the daughterly perspectives. This choice even enhances the themes of the novels and could make the stories more powerful to the reader. Providing the reader with the daughterly perspective more than the motherly perspective could enforce the sense of estrangement between the mother and daughter characters to the reader. In Sula the motherly perspective is meagerly shared and the daughterly perspective is most evident. In the JLC, the reader gets insight into the motherly perspective as well as the daughter’s, but realizes through the structure of the novel that these stories are told to the reader as an internal dialogue but not shared between mother and daughter.

Whether the novel’s structure has been chosen deliberately or not, the fact remains that the analyses of the mother/daughter relationship gives ample insight


into the maternal side of the daughter-based psychoanalytical theories. From the daughterly perspective from which these novels are written, Hirsch’s quest for the motherly perspective in fiction seems to fail partially. It remains difficult to gather a complete view on the mother/daughter relationship, because the daughterly perspective is represented more clearly than that of the mother.

Next to similarities in the narrative of the novels, the mother/daughter relationships in Sula and the JLC contain similar complications. To the reader it becomes clear that in both novels, the relationships between the mothers and daughters are obscured by racial, cultural and generational differences and therefore, the identity developments of the daughters are also negatively influenced. The discrepancies between the mothers and daughters are shown in their different view on society, which is more evident in the JLC than in Sula. Obviously, the Chinese-born mothers and the American-born daughters experience cultural and generational differences, because of the fact that they grew up in very different cultures and countries. Furthermore, the mothers and daughters also differ greatly with respect to class. The Chinese-born mothers are manual labourers, whereas the daughters have completed higher education and moved up the social ladder. Therefore, a great discrepancy can be established between the perceptions of the world in general of the mothers and daughters. In Sula this distinction is less clear. The difference between the mothers and daughters in Sula is shown in the fact that the daughters represent a newer generation, which wants to create stories for themselves.

The disturbed relationships are also depicted through the lack of communication between the mothers and daughters, because they do not know how to communicate with each other and/or they simply cannot, due to linguistic differences. In both novels, the mothers and daughters fail to communicate in a direct way and thereby fail to bridge the gap created by race, class and cultural differences. The mothers and daughters fail to connect in a way that is necessary for a full development of the mother/daughter relationship and the identity development of the daughters. In Sula, the lack of communication between mother and daughter is shown in the confrontation between Hannah and Eva Peace. Although Hannah tries to connect to her mother, Eva fails to fulfill Hannah’s need and does not succeed in explaining her side of the paradigm to her daughter. As a consequence of her inability to connect to her mother, Hannah fails to connect with her own daughter, Sula. The only time when motherhood is the subject of conversation, Sula has to overhear her mother’s opinion of her and never hears that directly from her mother. In the JLC, the mothers and daughters, for the largest part of the book, also fail to


communicate directly to each other. In this novel, the stories the mothers and daughters tell are presented separately and their stories are not explicitly shared between them.

Not only do the mothers and daughter not know how to communicate, the mothers and daughters in the JLC have break through a language barrier as well. The Chinese-born mothers and their American-born mothers have different mother tongues due to the cultural gap that lies between them. Therefore, they experience difficulty in fully understanding each other. Despite the fact that they can speak the language of the other, they lack the proficiency to communicate with each other and this influences the mother/daughter relationship and the identity development of the daughter. As the analysis of the JLC showed, eventually the mothers and daughters find a way to connect and revive the mother/daughter relationship. The language barrier can also be found in Sula in the situation of Helene Wright. Being raised by her grandmother instead of her birthmother, she never learned to speak the Creole her mother speaks and never learned to communicate with her properly. Where in the JLC the mothers and daughters eventually find a way to connect, Helene fails to connect with her mother. The generational, cultural, and racial differences between the mothers and daughters complicate their relationship through the different perceptions of the world and especially through the inability to communicate for the mothers and daughters.

The mother/daughter relationship as described in Morrison’s Sula and Tan’s The Joy Luck Club can be analysed according the theories provided by Chodorow and Hirsch. However, when using these theories, one should always carefully consider the implications of race, class and culture and their influence on the Western-based theories. The contents of the novels show that the main focus of the novels is on the daughterly perspective and that the maternal side of the mother/daughter relationship is scarcely shared. Moreover, when the mothers are depicted in the subject position, their perspective is not always truly maternal, creating an unbalance between the motherly and daughterly point of view. The mother/daughter relationship is influenced by different racial, cultural and generational perceptions and also by their complicating influences on the communication between mother and daughter. From all these factors it can be concluded that the mother/daughter relationship in Sula and the JLC is one of the main influences on the identity development of the daughters and that this relationship suffers from racial, cultural and generational differences.



Works Cited

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