#9. Alice Walker: Walking Away from her Daughter?

I’ve been reflecting on the two pieces, In Search of our Mothers’ Gardens by Alice Walker, and Baby Love by Rebecca Walker, as well as the articles online about how Alice Walker disowned her daughter Rebecca. Perhaps the most provocative for me, however, was Rebecca Walker’s 2008 article, “How My Mother’s Fanatical Views Tore Us Apart.” Her essay was really emotional, inciting both my indignation and sorrow. I found myself feeling so sorry for Rebecca, as I imagined a fast-food-eating, sexually active, and lonely teenager. Stereotypical as it sounds, I thought, this is what happens to children who do not receive adequate parenting (or mothering, as we have been calling it). I found myself agreeing with Rebecca, with her views that it is a parent’s obligation to impose some restrictions, that being physically present to one’s children is vital. At the same time, I found myself judging Alice: if she did not want to actually raise her daughter, she should not have chosen to have a child in the first place.

In violating her duty to be present to her daughter, to raise her and support her, Alice Walker has fallen short. In addition to her maternal inaction, however, Walker has done worse: she ingrained the same ideology, that motherhood is bad and diminishing, in her daughter. This could have potentially ruined Rebecca’s future happiness, if she had waited any longer to have her child. Furthermore, after these two wrongs, Alice Walker acted it even worse. She disowned her daughter, cutting off the relationship with both Rebecca and her son. In my mind, this forms a kind of triple sin: her maternal inaction, her destructive teachings, and her definitive renunciation.

Alice Walker is completely entitled to believe her radical feminist ideology. Further, she is completely entitled to live a life of feminist liberation, writing as much as she wants, traveling, even divorcing if she so chooses. However, I think it is sad and unfair to bring a child into this situation. By imposing her radical beliefs on her daughter, Alice also drastically effected Rebecca’s future happiness as an adult. Alice Walker believed that motherhood was a kind of slavery, and Rebecca never questioned this belief until it was almost too late for her to physically bear children. (As I say this is unfair, however, I can’t help but wonder, is this much different from parents who raise their children to be the same religion as they themselves are? I would never fault a parent for raising a child to be Jewish or Catholic, for example. So perhaps I cannot fault her mother for instilling her own beliefs in her child. I just disagree with her beliefs in the first place.)

I know we are not supposed to judge mothers, especially without having been one. But can we judge mothers, if not on their maternal performance, at least on their performance within the family? After all, even though I have never been a mother, I have been a daughter and a member of a family. If any member of my family – a sibling, a father – was absent from my life, unsupportive of me, and downright hurtful, I would feel the effects. To me, this is a violation of family duty, if not just maternal duty. Rebecca Walker hits a strong note when she says, “I am my own woman and I have discovered what really matters – a happy family.” I don’t think her belief is necessarily anti-feminist. The concept of a happy family matters, or should matter, to both men and women. Both mothers and fathers can find great fulfillment in their family life.

#8: The Child As The “Other”

While reading our various mother-themed texts this year, I keep coming back to the mother’s relationship with herself and relationship with her children. In some of our last few novels, I have noticed the trend of a mother’s viewing her child as an “other.”

In The South, Katherine’s other-ing of Isona is particularly striking. She is so detached from her daughter, her own flesh and blood. Katherine does not refer to her newborn daughter by name; rather she references her in the impersonal, as simply “the baby.” Katherine’s mindset after birthing Isona is upsetting, perhaps because it seems so unnatural to us. She is completely repulsed by her daughter, and “she wanted the child to die” (Tobin 110). By showing Katherine’s unwillingness to tell anyone of her repulsion, Tobin acknowledges the unnaturalness of this sentiment: “She had not wanted to be diverted thus into caring for a child, feeding the child, nursing it…She could not tell anyone how much she believed the whole thing had diminished her” (Tobin 111).

In The Hours, Laura Brown manages to make her son Richie into an other as well. Like Katherine, she sometimes refers to Richie simply as “the child” (Cunningham 47). In her mind, he is a strange creature, completely foreign to her: “He cries mysteriously, makes indecipherable demands, courts her, pleads with her, ignores her” (Cunningham 47). Laura’s mindset reminds me of Frankenstein, in the sense that she makes him seem so completely alien. Her imagination runs wild, and Richie becomes more and more fantastical. She even thinks of him as an animal, “a mouse singing amorous ballads under the window of a giantess” (Cunningham 44). When she feels guilty for fleeing to the hotel, Laura tends to make Richie into an other again. In his eyes she “sees something there she can’t quite recognize,” and “he sounds frantic, foreign” (Cunningham 192). The language here conveys the interaction of two virtual strangers, not what one would expect from an intimate mother-son relationship. By other-ing instead of mothering Richie, perhaps Laura can justify herself, and not feel like she has failed her child’s emotional needs.

#7: Power Structure in A Doll’s House

     I read Ibsen’s A Doll’s House in my high school AP English class, but I really enjoyed revisiting the play now, with four years of college English behind me. I was very much struck by the language in the play, especially Helmer’s diction. I was appalled how many times he refers to Nora as a bird, an animal, a child. I know he is a product of his time, but I was still upset by it.

     Despite how many times Helmer puts Nora down in this final scene, I was happy to see how Nora somehow manages to reverse the roles at the end. Where her husband had been treating her like a child, she turns around and makes him into a child. I really liked her line where she questions his ability to ever change, to become a better man. She says, “Perhaps – when your doll is taken away from you” (186). This line calls attention to Helmer’s own immaturity and childishness. The subversion of authority works to empower Nora.

     The one thing that upset me in this play, especially after all our discussions about mothering this semester, is how unconcerned Nora seems about abandoning her children. I understand that she wants personal fulfillment, that Helmer has stifled her, that she has never been educated or truly loved her husband. However, I think that parents have a duty to their children. I do not hold this duty to mothers alone; I believe fathers are just as wrong to abandon their children as mothers. Nora even refuses to say goodbye: “I won’t go to the children. I know they are in better hands than mine. As I now am, I can be nothing to them” (187). This also bothered me, because Nora is telling her husband that he is better qualified to raise them than she is, which seems to demean her, rather than empower her. Instead of belittling her own mothering abilities, Nora might be more empowered if she could recognize how important she is in the molding of her children. However, like Helmer, she is also a product of her time. Society has taught her that servants do the day-to-day mothering, while the actual mother lives a life of show and appearances. Ibsen could not have picked a better title for his play; their home is a “Glass House,” and Nora is no more than a figurine.