Mother Daughter Relationships in literature

In literature mothers are often presented as manipulative in their relationship with their daughter.
The central tenant of the relationships between mothers and their daughters in these texts seems to be about the passing on of the mother’s knowledge and understanding of the world to the next generation. They all seem to share a view that marriage is key to a woman’s achievement and aspirations in society irrespective of what period of time or culture the authors were writing in. The opinion of the mothers is the same from the sixteenth century of Shakespeare’s time, the nineteenth century of Austen to the more modern times of the twentieth century of Williams’ writing. There seems to be a common view that their daughters must appreciate the rules of the game and use marriage to gain a position in society or maintain the one their mothers have won. The women uphold the view that love and romantic feeling is not to be considered part of this argument, as Austin states through Mrs Bennet, “Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.” The mothers represented in these texts appear to have a jaded and cynical view of love and marriage. They seem to believe it is their responsibility and duty to inform and aid their daughters to make decisions based on their understanding of marriage. Their manipulative and scheming approaches underpin their relationship with their daughters.
This engineering of marriage by mothers over their daughters is seen strongly in the relationships between Mrs Bennet and her daughters in Pride and Prejudice. Austen exposes this by opening her novel with the statement that,
‘…a single man in possession of a fortune, must be in want of a wife…’
In fact the whole structure of the novel follows the machinations of Mrs Bennet to control her daughter’s choices and their resistance to this female stratagem.
Lady Capulet in Romeo and Juliet is presented as the controlling force behind the intention to bring together the families of two noble lineages in the marriage of Juliet and Paris. She is portrayed as a mother without overtly maternal feelings towards her daughter. This is evident in an exchange at the beginning of the play in Act 1 Scene 3 where she summons her daughter to inform her of Paris’ interest in marriage to her. She is hesitant to conduct the interview without the presence of the Nurse whom she dismisses then calls back saying, “…I have remembered me, thou’s hear our counsel…” It is as though she recognises that the Nurse knows Juliet as a mother would and that her own relationship is more distant. The Nurse is eloquent about her own deeply maternal feelings towards Juliet as she reminisces about her growing up, “…And she was weaned – I shall never forget it -…” Lady Capulet is not interested in these remembrances and stops her with, “Enough of this. I pray thee hold thy peace.” She demonstrates that she is formal in her relationship with Juliet and it contrasts sharply with that of the Nurse. Juliet reciprocates this emotion and calls her mother “Madam” an address which reinforces the distance between them. Lady Capulet uses the Nurse to communicate the importance of marriage and to remind Juliet of what her up-bringing has been for. As a mother, she demonstrates that she is capable of manipulating others to her advantage. She leaves Juliet with the command,
Lady Capulet: This night you will behold him at our feast…
So shall you share all that he doth possess,
By having him make yourself no less.
Lady Capulet engineers the Nurse’s dialogue to serve her own purposes. It is an operation also adopted by the mother Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie. She offers a different perspective on manipulation as she uses her own son to control her daughter. Amanda Wingfield has ‘driven away’ her husband and she has a strong authoritative voice over her son and daughter and she is determined to use it. Through her son she hopes to provide an escape for her daughter in marriage to one of his friends. Amanda depicts marriage as a ticket to respectability and acceptance into society and this is evident from anecdotes of her early life. We are led to believe that she was well sought after by the men in her community and she repeatedly refers to her many ‘Gentlemen callers’,
Amanda: One Sunday afternoon in Blue Mountain – your mother received – seventeen! – gentlemen callers!
Her bitterness is evident as describes how all of her ‘gentlemen callers’ went off with their partners and made fortunes. Whereas the ‘gentlemen caller’ that she chose to marry made a very small amount of money then fled from the family leaving Amanda with two children. We strongly get the feeling that Amanda resents picking the husband that she did and this is supported by Williams’ use of exclamation marks to accentuate her frustration and exasperation,
Amanda I could have been Mrs Duncan J. Fitzhugh, mind you! But – I picked your father!
The contrast of Mrs Wingfield’s younger life with her daughter is one of Amanda Wingfield’s strongest argument and she uses it to expose her daughter,
Amanda: Not one gentlemen caller? It can’t be true! There must have been a flood, there must have been a tornado.
Laura: It isn’t a flood, it’s not a tornado, Mother. I’m just not popular like you were in Blue Mountain...
Laura is unable to fight her mother’s past and suffers in comparison with her. Mrs Winfield uses this weakness and sets out to prevent her daughter making the same mistakes she did. In this play Williams describes his characters as though each of them burns "with the slow and implacable fires of human desperation." Amanda’s desperation to escape the past leads her to demanding from her children a life that is not tenable and that is as fragile and illusionary as her own daughter’s obsession with glass animals.
The mothers in the texts need to collude with others in order to manoeuvre their plans into action. Like Lady Capulet uses the Nurse and Amanda Wingfield her son, Mrs Bennet in Pride and Prejudice has to appeal to her husband to help her. With the arrival of a prospective husband in the village for one of her girls she entreats Mr Bennet to visit Mr Bingley and invite him back to meet them.
“But my dear you must indeed go and see Mr Bingley when he comes into the neighbourhood.”
“It is more than I engage for, I assure you.”
“But consider your daughters. Only think what an establishment would be for one of them.”
Mr Bennet appears to put up great resistance and Austen uses the exchange to reveal how his mind seems to be superior to that of his wife, ‘an odd mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve and caprice.’ Whereas Mrs Bennet had a mind that was ‘less difficult to develop’. We would be forgiven in believing that Mrs Bennet had not been able to use Mr Bennet to manipulate her daughters’ future at the end of Chapter One. However, Chapter Two opens with,
‘Mr Bennet was among one of the earliest of those who waited upon Mr Bingley. He had always intended to visit him…’
Austen uses the irony here to allow the reader to evaluate the extent of Mrs Bennet’s interference. As an authorial voice Austen makes a strong statement about the relationships between mothers and daughters and the function of marriage in society. As a passing comment she also exposes the role fathers play in the machinations of their wives’ enterprises.
In Romeo and Juliet, Juliet could have had the direction from her father and avoided her mother’s control. Lord Capulet encourages Lady Capulet to talk to Juliet and to consider Paris but without pressure. His voice is absent in any direct address with Juliet at the start of the play and his influence on a choice of partner is similar to that of Laura Wingfield’s father in The Glass Menagerie, who is given no voice and Mr Bennet in Pride and Prejudice who seems not to be interested in the detail of romance. It is tragically the death of Juliet’s cousin Tybalt that escalates the need for her to marry and her father disregards his initial indulgence to consider Paris and issues the command that she marries him on the Wednesday,
Capulet: I think she will be ruled in all respects by me…
Wife go you to her ere you go to bed…
And bid her – mark you or me?
Once again, his address is not given to Juliet but via her mother who is to deliver the command. Lord Capulet does not seem to expect that Juliet might disobey him. However, Lady Capulet may have more of an understanding that she will need to fashion Juliet to her husband’s wishes. In this exchange we are shown that Lady Capulet is conditioned by the expectations of Elizabethan society and a marriage where her husband’s direction is to be adhered to. We have a glimpse of Lord and Lady Capulet’s relationship, like with the Bennets and are able to question why the mothers behave in the way they do.
Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie tries to assume a commanding position that doesn’t allow the absent father or the son a voice. Her son does offer some resistance and he takes it upon himself to be the opposing voice and to try and keep his mother from taking too much control over Laura. The play is narrated through the eyes of her son Tom and he is not very forgiving of her power games. Act 3 opens with his assumed role of an omnipresent narrator, however he is not neutral and his use of the verb ‘obsession’ shows his lack of respect for his mother,
Tom: The idea of getting a gentleman caller for Laura began to play a more and more important part in mother’s calculations. It became an obsession.
He shows the effect that it has upon his sister and describes her as having a ‘frightened, apologetic manner’. The more his mother tries to manipulate her daughter into marriage the more she escapes into a world of illusion and the more it drives her own son to seek freedom by escaping and running away.
Tom: I mean that as soon as Laura has got somebody to take care of her, married, a home of her own, independent – why, then you will be free to go wherever you please, on land, on sea, whichever way the wind blows you.
However, she is thwarted in this as Laura is not like her and doesn’t offer her the chance to control her. Mrs Wingfield’s main weapon of manipulation towards Laura is Tom and she manipulates him to fulfil her plan using the promise of freedom from the family as blackmail.
Laura is presented as an obstacle to his future in the same way her dependence on Mrs Wingfield is holding her mother from freedom. Women are commodities and Mrs Wingfield doesn’t seem to be offering an alternative solution to women’s lot instead she seeks to continue societies’ ‘imprisonment’ of her own daughter in a marriage. One of the most interesting insights to Amanda’s planning of her daughter’s life is the scene where she attempts to find out what Tom’s friend is like,
Tom: Yes, but Mr O’Connor is not a family man.
Amanda: He might be, mightn’t he? Sometime in the future?
Even before she meets him she is constructing a life for him and Laura. Her control over Laura is fully realised when she dresses her and prepares for the arrival of Jim. The playwright describes her as,
‘…a piece of translucent glass touched by light, given a momentary radiance, not actual, not lasting…’
We are given a foreshadowing of the futility of Amanda Wingfield’s planning as we realise that Laura will never be able to find permanent beauty or happiness.
It is interesting to note how the mothers react to resistance to their plans and when Juliet refuses to marry Paris because of her secret marriage to Romeo she appeals to her mother for compassion over the death of Tybalt in Act 3 Scene 5,
Juliet: Is there no pity sitting in the clouds
That sees into the bottom of my grief?
Oh sweet my mother, cast me not away!
Delay this marriage…
Here the accusation of manipulation could be levied at Juliet as she uses the death of her own cousin to postpone the wedding to Paris. She is guilty of withholding the fact of her marriage to Romeo from her mother and uses another reason to stay the events that her mother is determined to follow. She faces the full force of her mother’s power and authority when Lady Capulet responds with,
Juliet: Talk not to me, for I’ll not speak a word.
Do as thou wilt for I have done with thee.
Perhaps this is a comment by Shakespeare on Lady Capulet’s character that she’s not used to getting her way and is cold and hard hearted enough to disown her own daughter. However, Shakespeare has indicated in Act 1 Scene 3 that she was as young as Juliet when she married and fell pregnant with her,
Lady Capulet: By my count
I was your mother much upon these years
That you are now a maid.
Elizabethan society was such that the women were offered in marriage at very young ages and their childhood was cut short compared with modern times. This gives us some indication as to why there is so little understanding and emotion between Lady Capulet and Juliet. The social expectation of women of noble birth was one that created such estranged relationships lacking in warmth.
An interesting link between all three texts is the need for the mother to go through the man of the house to supply the marital guidance, for example, in Romeo and Juliet, when Juliet exclaims her want to not be married the first person Lady Capulet goes to is Capulet. Whereas, in Pride and Prejudice we see Mrs. Bennet requires Mr. Bennet to introduce himself to his daughters’ suitors before they are socially allowed to meet them. And likewise in The Glass Menagerie Tom is required to find and then introduce a friend from work for Laura.
It is interesting to see how the opinion on mother daughter relationship differs when reading the two male authors’ point of view compared with the perspective from that of a female author. Both the male authors write of destructive relationships with an unloving mother and an overbearing mother, whereas in Austen’s Pride and Prejudice we have a mother that cares for her daughters in a way that she hopes will benefit them. Although Austen shows how she needs to get some of her priorities right everything she does for her daughters is in their best need, even if the original outcome is disadvantageous.
“No, my dear, you had better go on horseback, because it seems likely to rain; and then you must stay all night.”
This scheming of events to socially engineer it that her daughter has to stay at Nettlecombe House of course does eventually lead to the outcome of Jane marrying Mr. Bingley. Her joy over her success is evident as she observes the proceedings at their party in Chapter 54,
Mrs Bennet…was in great spirits; she had seen enough of Bingley’s behaviour to Jane, to be convinced that she would get him at last; and her expectations of advantage to her family were so far beyond reason.
A Freudian reading of the novels would concur that an Electra complex might be present where the daughter at a young age attempts to push out the mother. In the texts studied here the closest to this interpretation would be with Austen as it is possible to suggest that Elizabeth Bennet out manoeuvres them all, including the reader, with her final choice in Mr Darcy. Right at the end of the novel Mrs Bennet holds onto her opinion of Mr Darcy as a ‘disagreeable man’ (Page 383) and advises her to not put herself to any ‘inconvenience’. Elizabeth is in unsure whether the financial gain she makes in the match will persuade her mother to change she muses,
‘She could not determine how her mother would take it; sometimes doubting whether all his wealth and grandeur would be enough to overcome her abhorrence of the man.’
Austen continues her humorous portrayal of Mrs Bennet when she discovers that she has been superseded by her own daughter in terms of scheming and manipulation when she renders Mrs Bennet ‘unable to utter a syllable’ at the news of Darcy’s proposal to Elizabeth. This match proves to be socially and financially superior to the one her own mother made with Mr Bennet. Her verbal response eventually reflects her muddled sense of values as she mixes her comments about him being ‘charming…so handsome’ with ‘what jewels, what carriages you will have!’ Austen is merciless with Mrs Bennet right to the end in her narrative when she opens chapter 61 with,
Happy for all her maternal feelings was on the day on which Mrs Bennet got rid of her two most deserving daughters.
The daughters that manage to over throw their mothers are the only ones that have happy endings. Laura in The Glass Menagerie is tragically unable to escape through her mothers schemes. She is gracious towards Jim when she discovers he cannot marry as he is ‘going steady!’ The stage directions depict her reaction,
…she gently takes his hand and raises it level with her own. She carefully places the unicorn in the palm of his hand, then pushes his fingers closed upon it.
Williams’ use of verbs such as ‘gently’ and ‘carefully’ leave the actor with little interpretation but to portray Laura as someone who is not going to blame anyone for the outcome and instead is going to be quietly resigned to her life. Amanda’s response is in marked contrast as rallies against Tom, who had no idea about Jim’s engagement, with accusations that could be made against herself,
Amanda: You live in a dream, you manufacture illusions!...You’ve had us make fools of ourselves…Then go to the moon you selfish dreamer!
The galling truth for Amanda is that she has been forced to face her dreams and empty hopes of a future. She cannot manipulate her children to get the lives she wants for them.
The tragic conclusion of Romeo and Juliet leaves the reader with little hope for change in the rules and expectations of marriage too. As a reader we respond to the anguish of Lady Capulet over Juliet’s death as not one of a woman who has failed to get her own way but one where both mothers and daughters seem to be used and manipulated by society. Her use of the imagery of joining her in death shows her desperate grief in Act 4 Scene 5,
Lady Capulet: O me, O me! My child, my only life!
Revive, look up, or I will die with thee…
The audience witnesses a breaking of emotional and social barriers through Juliet’s death and Lady Capulet asks the higher beings to take her life because she would not be able to cope without her daughter. Maybe this is the true nature of Lady Capulet although she does not follow through with her threat.
From the reading of these three texts the complexity of the relationships between mothers and daughters is clearly evident. The use of manipulation and control is reciprocated from both sides with devastating consequences for the female characters in the texts written by men. Perhaps Austen is more forgiving of the maternal hand over her daughters’ fate. There are also other factors to blame for the failure of the mother’s plans and Shakespeare leaves his audience with the challenge to not forget but to seek answers,
Prince: Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things.
Some shall be pardoned, and some punished.