The Women of Brewster Place

Kathleen review of how Mattie takes Lucielia in her arm and begins to rock her as a mother would rock a child that is unable to be comfored in any other manner. I can hear the cadence of my mentor stating get an education it can’t be taken away from you, you will be able to make a future for you and your children and no one will be able to take that away. “Mattie offers the soothing power of words and the water of symbolic baptism, Puhr (103-104), the baptism comes after the commission of an unforgivable sin of the abortion of her unborn child and the taking of the only one in her life that loved her unconditionally. The purging of all the wrong one has done, is demonstrated in the rocking of Mattie’s arms. The sin being represented by the silver splinter, and how the sins of the mother were the reason that the child was taken, the hole is representative of the void that will remain in Lucielia heart the rest of her life but with time an continuing life journey will become less painful, and Mattie knowledge of life tell her that Lucielia will have a chance at healing.
Title: Healers in Gloria Naylor's Fiction
Author(s): Kathleen M. Puhr
Publication Details: Twentieth Century Literature 40.4 (Winter 1994): p518.
Source: Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Janet Witalec. Vol. 156. Detroit: Gale, 2002. p518. From Literature Resource Center.
Document Type: Critical essay
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Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale, COPYRIGHT 2007 Gale, Cengage Learning

In a novel full of unfulfilled and constantly deferred dreams, the only the dream that is fully realized is Lorraine's dream of being recognized as “a lousy human being who's somebody's daughter or somebody's friend or even somebody's enemy.” In dreaming of Lorraine the women acknowledge that she represents every one of them: she is their daughter, their friend, their enemy, and her brutal rape is the fulfillment of their own nightmares.
Mattie's dream presents an empowering