Maternal Relationships in Five Short Stories

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Mamma Mia! Maternal Relationships in Five Short Stories
Jessica Haight-Angelo
ENG 352: The Short Story
Instructor: Stefani Leto
Grand Canyon University
28 February 2010

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Abstract
The role of motherhood in literature is often considered metaphorically, Frye argues, but
rarely literally. In five short stories, the maternal relationships between each tale’s respective
mothers, daughters and/or sons are held up in the light of both internal and external factors,
seeking a realistic portrayal. Through the lens of child developmental stages; gender roles; other
familial relationships; cultural factors; and authorial intent alike, the ensuing paper will put the
mother-daughter relationships in Tillie Olsen’s “I Stand Here Ironing”; Amy Tan’s “Two
Kinds”; and Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use”; and the mother-son relationships in Flannery
O’Connor’s “Everything that Rises Must Converge”; and Grace Paley’s “A Conversation With
My Father” through their respective paces, seeking parallels and further understanding of each
story’s maternal roles and the women who fill and shape them.

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Mamma Mia! Maternal Relationships in Five Short Stories
As Frye explains, "Motherhood as literary metaphor has long been a cliché for the
creative process: the artist gives birth to a work of art which takes on a life of its own.
Motherhood as literary experience has only rarely existed at all, except as perceived by a
resentful or adoring son who is working through his own identity in separation from the power of
a nurturant and/or threatening past" (287). For Frye, stories such as Tillie Olsen's "I Stand Here
Ironing" perfectly convey the "fusion of motherhood as both metaphor and experience ... stripped
of romantic distortion, and reinfused with the power of genuine metaphorical insight into the
problems of selfhood in the modern world" (287).
At the same time, her brush-off of tales wherein the maternal character is the main
nurturant for "a resentful or adoring son" discounts similar clichés enforced in literature
depicting mother-daughter relationships, such as Amy Tan's short story, "Two Kinds," or Alice
Walker's “Everyday Use.” In addition, a case can certainly be made for a decidedly unromantic
glimpse at selfhood in the relationship between Julian and his mother in O'Connor's "Everything
That Rises Must Converge,” or the neuroses surrounding the mother-son relationship portrayed
in Paley's "A Conversation With my Father." Contrary to Frye's pigeon-holing, honest portrayals
of motherhood are alive and well in literature, regardless of the age or gender of the children
against whom they're often pitted, or the culture and era in which they live. Such is the
implication in each of the aforementioned five short stories, all of which contain a realistic
mother-daughter or mother-son relationship at their respective cores. Furthermore, said maternal
relationships are often framed by larger social issues in each story, though the relationships
themselves parallel neatly across time and place.

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Internal Factors
Age
As Alward offers: “When the doctor cuts the umbilical cord at birth, the physical
attachment to our mothers cease. This is when psychological and emotional attachments begin.”
All of the aforementioned mother-daughter and mother-son relationships can be compared
against a glut of interpersonal factors, including age, gender and the mother (and child’s) other
familial connections. In this vein, Frye’s concept of “selfhood” (287) seems to have different
connotations depending on the age of the child in each story. In and of itself, selfhood is "The
state of having a distinct identity" or "individuality"; "The fully developed self" (Answers Web
site). David Rankin parallels the term to "self-centeredness", offering that "'the cult of selfhood
... became fashionable in the 1960s'" (Answers Web site). Psychoanalytical theorist Erik
Erikson's eight stages of development further piece together the concept of selfhood.
According to Erikson, by "middle childhood,” the healthy child will have effectively
battled "'basic trust versus mistrust'"; "'autonomy versus shame and doubt'"; "'initiative versus
guilt'"; and "'industry versus inferiority'" (Internet FAQ Archives). As Alward explains:
Infants who have a deep bonding with their mothers become very independent at
a young age. This bond also boosts their self-esteem. It is the most important part
of a child’s life. Even when their lives are unstable, the bonding process enables
them to be self-reliant and enjoy relationships with peers. These children are also
more successful in school, especially in mathematics. Bonding creates within the
child a sense of confidence and a positive attitude. This influences both
attendance and achievement.

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Naturally, the lack of motherly bonding results in highly negative emotional effects: “Those
children lacking a secure bond are more likely to be antisocial, withdrawn, hostile, and
aggressive” (Alward). A distinct lack of mother-infant bonding can be seen in the relationship
between Emily and her mother in Olsen’s “I Stand Here Ironing.” As Frye observes, the story,
from the mother's reluctant point of view as she is called upon by a well-meaning social worker
to explain her daughter's general awkwardness, constructs "an image of the stressful growth of
[Emily] from infancy through a troubled, lonely childhood, an alienating relationship to school
and friends, and an unsettled adolescence" (288). Emily’s mother is wearily defensive of the
implication that she is to blame for Emily’s “need[ing] help” (Olsen 1053): “Even if I came,
what good would it do?” she asks the social worker. “You think because I am her mother I have
a key, or that in some way you could use me as a key? She has lived for nineteen years. There is
all that life that has happened outside of me, beyond me” (Olsen 1053).
Detachedly, Emily’s mother paints a picture of her relationship with her eldest daughter,
beginning when she herself was nineteen: “It was pre-relief, pre-WPA world of the depression”
(Olsen 1053), she explains, her brush strokes already glum. Frye notes: “The narrative structure
creates a powerful sense of immediacy and an unfamiliar literary experience” (288). There is
little doubt in the reader’s mind that Emily’s mother loves her, but she was “young” and
“distracted” through most of her daughter’s growing pains, for which she must constantly endure
the realization that “My wisdom came too late” (Olsen 1058) to have a positive influence.
Emily’s mother is proud of having nursed her daughter (“They feel that’s important nowadays, I
nursed all the children, but with her, with all the fierce rigidity of first motherhood, I did like the
books then said” [Olsen 1053]), and similarly heartbroken when Emily’s “clogged weeping”
(Olsen 1054), which occurs whenever she must leave her daughter to work outside the home

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becomes the even darker reality that she cannot take care of Emily properly. “They persuaded me
at the clinic to send her away to a convalescent home in the country where ‘she can have the kind
of food and care you can’t manage for her’,” Olsen writes (1055). It is likely here where Emily
learns her place, behind an “invisible wall” (Olsen 1055), disengaged from her mother’s latent
affections. By the time they are together again, the “terrible, growing years” (Olsen 1057) ensure
that their relationship will forever be strained: “She was a child seldom smiled at … of anxious,
not proud, love. We were poor and could not afford for her the soil of easy growth … There were
years she did not want me to touch her. She kept too much in herself, her life was such she had to
keep too much in herself … She is a child of her age, of depression, of war, of fear” (Olsen
1058). In essence, Emily is a textbook illustration of Erikson’s developmental admonishments,
right down to the foreshadowing about her educational prowess: “She was not glib or quick in a
world where glibness and quickness were easily confused with ability to learn” (Olsen 1056).
Though not as outwardly neglected as Emily, Mrs. Johnson’s daughter Maggie in Alice
Walker’s short story, “Everyday Use” is nonetheless easily paralleled with the eldest daughter in
“Ironing”. Maggie lives with her mother (colloquially referred to as Mama) in a cheap house that
holds little emotional value for either character: “I have deliberately turned my back on the
house” (Walker 1308) Mama offers, and then compares it to the Johnson’s previous home which
burned to the ground “Ten, twelve years” (Walker 1307) ago: “This house is in a pasture, too,
like the other one. No doubt when Dee sees it she will want to tear it down” (Walker 1308). Dee
is Mama’s eldest daughter, with whom she has the exact opposite relationship as that between
her mother and Maggie. “Dee is lighter than Maggie, with nicer hair and a fuller figure” (Olsen
1307) Mama recounts as the two “wait for [Dee] in the yard that Maggie and I made so clean and
wavy yesterday afternoon” (Olsen 1306). Curiously, Mama takes pride in the simplistic beauty

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of the yard with its “tiny, irregular grooves” and “breezes that never come inside the house”
(Olsen 1306). It is unlikely that Dee will appreciate or even notice the small pleasure that her
mother takes in keeping the yard up, in the same way that her ability to “kill and clean a hog as
mercilessly as a man” (Olsen 1306) would likely not be appreciated. It is too coarse, too
unrefined for the likes of Mama’s eldest daughter.
In contrast, Maggie is simple like her mother, scarred both literally by the fire that
claimed the first Johnson home, and figuratively, as Mama is, by Dee’s attempts to bestow upon
them “a lot of knowledge we didn’t necessarily need to know” (Olsen 1307). Like Emily,
Maggie “knows she is not bright. Like good looks and money, quickness passed her by” (Olsen
1307), Mama affirms. Whereas Emily’s mother offers defensively that Emily is “lovely” and will
“find her way” eventually (Olsen 1058), Mama is less doting in her observance of Maggie,
characterizing her as “homely and ashamed” (Olsen 1306) when confronted with her sister, and
observing her movements as those of a “lame animal” who “sidle[s] up to someone who is
ignorant enough to be kind to him” (Olsen 1307). Of Maggie’s future, Mama offers that “She
will marry John Thomas (who has mossy teeth in an earnest face) and then I’ll be free to sit here
and I guess just sing church songs to myself. Although I never was a good singer. Never could
carry a tune” (Olsen 1307). The consideration of Maggie’s future marriage becomes more
pressing when Mama learns the true nature of Dee’s visit: The procurement of some “‘old
quilts’” (Olsen 1310) that Dee is nonetheless scandalized to learn that Mama will not let her take:
“‘The truth is,’ I said, ‘I promised to give them quilts to Maggie, for when she marries John
Thomas’ … I didn’t want to bring up how I had offered Dee a quilt when she went away to
college. Then she had told me they were old-fashioned, out of style” (Olsen 1311). Collectively
accused of not understanding their “‘heritage’” (Olsen 1312), Mama and Maggie are abandoned

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once more by Dee to the comfort of their neat yard and “‘the way [they] live’” (Olsen 1312),
outlined for the reader as painstakingly irrelevant to the way that Dee lives.
The nine-year-old narrator of Amy Tan’s “Two Kinds” is yet another contender for
Erikson’s developmental octagon. The most notable difference between Jing-Mei (later called
June in the novel-length expansion of the story, The Joy Luck Club) and both Maggie and Emily
is that June is horrified that her mother won’t leave her alone. Obsessed with the notion of her
only child becoming a prodigy, June, too, initially buys into the idea that unearthing the hidden
talent that must exist will make her “perfect. My mother and father would adore me. I would be
beyond reproach. I would never feel the need to sulk for anything” (Tan 1222). Eventually,
however, her mother’s dogged persistence that June becomes a “remarkable child” (Tan 1223)
takes its toll. Notably, like Maggie and Emily, Tan’s narrator is painfully average in terms of
physical or academic abilities. When her mother decides that she will become the next Chinese
Shirley Temple (incidentally, a comparison that Olsen’s narrator also makes in “Ironing”) by
becoming a piano prodigy, June goes out of the way not to “give myself a fair chance … I was so
determined not to try, not to be anybody different that I learned to play only the most ear-
splitting preludes, the most discordant hymns” (Tan 1225-6).
After likewise botching a public performance of Schumann’s “Pleading Child”, the
tension between June and her mother comes to a head: “‘Only two kinds of daughters,’ she
shouted in Chinese. ‘Those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind! Only one
kind of daughter can live in this house. Obedient daughter!’” (Tan 1228). Though Tan’s narrator
is not neglected by her mother, she yearns for affection the way lonely children like Maggie and
Emily do that she does not receive. Rather, said affection comes bundled inside the prickly
notion that she will never be a good enough daughter. Indeed, the “struggle at the piano” is “not

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the only incident my mother felt in me,” June recounts, now an adult. “In the years that followed,
I failed her so many times, each time asserting my own will, my right to fall short of
expectations. I didn’t get straight As. I didn’t become class president. I didn’t get into Stanford. I
dropped out of college. For unlike my mother, I did not believe I could be anything I wanted to
be. I could only be me” (Tan 1229). Like Emily’s mother and Mrs. Johnson, Tan’s tale is
grounded in the reality of imperfect people who are beaten down by the “hope … for something
so large that failure was inevitable” (Tan 1229). It is unclear in the ambiguous conclusions of
both “Ironing” and “Everyday Use” whether Maggie or Emily will become, like June, “Perfectly
Contented” with their lots in life. Even so, such a feat has taken June more than 30 years to
achieve.
In Flannery O’Connor’s “Everything That Rises Must Converge,” the college-graduated
Julian is significantly older than his counterparts in Tan’s, Walker’s or Olsen’s short stories;
likewise, the relationship he has with his mother is one rooted in mutual adulthood that
nonetheless poses its own challenges. Similarly, Grace Paley showcases the present-day
relationship with her own father as a framework for another adult, mother-son relationship in “A
Conversation With My Father.” In both instances, as well as in the relationship between Dee and
Mrs. Johnson in “Everyday Use,” the later stages of Erikson’s child development theory provide
a framework with which to evaluate each parent-child bond.
In stage five of Erikson's theory, the self-seeking teenager grapples with “'identity versus
role confusion',” which can result in alienation of others due to "immature behavior and
reasoning" (Internet FAQ Archives). Simultaneously, Erikson notes, it is "imperative" at this
stage for the young adult to "figure out their likes and dislikes, talents and natural inclinations,
and to try new things ... so that they will develop a sense of identity" (Internet FAQ Archives).

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By stage six, the burgeoning adult begins to seek "deep, meaningful, intimate relationships" that
align with these aforementioned preferences. By stage seven, the now-adult will begin to feel the
effects of stagnation ("not changing or growing"), if they have not made positive connections or
choices. By stage eight, the adult evaluates "whether they have accomplished something with
their lives and choices and whether they have contributed to the betterment of society" (Internet
FAQ Archives).
Dee has well proven her ability to have meaningful adult relationships with persons other
than her mother. Though her female friendships only ever extended vaguely into the territory of
“Nervous girls who never laughed” (Walker 1308), Dee was known early on to impress boys
with her “well-turned phrase, the cute shape, the scalding humor that erupted like bubbles in lye”
(Walker 1308). Nonetheless, Mama’s criticism of Dee’s “faultfinding power” (Walker 1308)
implies her daughter’s high standards, which her behavior during “Everyday Use” outlines in
greater detail. Indeed, when she arrives at the house, she is accompanied not by one of the awe-
inspired boys whom she likely befriended to distance herself from her bourgeois home life, but
by a fellow political mover-and-shaker with whom she seems to feel a kinship. “The short stocky
fellow with the hair to his navel is all grinning and he follows up with ‘Asalamalakim, my
mother and sister!’” (Walker 1308). While Dee has made herself comfortable alongside “Hakim-
a-barber”, acknowledging that they are on the same side of the fight against a common oppressor
(the mainstream White culture), and announcing that she has changed her name to “‘Wangero
Leewanika Kemanjo’” (Walker 1309) as a physical expression of that fight, Mama recognizes
few similarities between herself and Hakim-a-barber besides pointing out that he resembles
“‘those beef-cattle peoples down the road’”; that is, fellow country folks (Walker 1309). Indeed,
she is unable to understand Hakim-a-barber’s name well enough to pronounce it correctly, and

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shifts back and forth between “Dee” and “Wangero” as it suits her. Naturally, Dee’s friend (or
husband; Mama never bothers to find out, and Dee does not offer the information) rejects his
own familial roots the same way that Dee rejects hers, downplaying their apparent connection:
“‘I accept some of their doctrines, but farming and raising cattle is not my style’” (Walker 1310),
Hakim-a-barber tells Mama.
It is unlikely that Dee has moved beyond Erikson’s sixth stage of development. She does
not yet show a maturity or awareness of her own stagnation, though one wonders whether her
mother’s refusal to allow her to stake her claim on the family belongings of a family with which
she no longer associates herself will be the precipice from which deep self-reflection may
eventually spring. At present, Dee’s sense of self-identity is strong, though it is devoid of respect
for her mother and younger sister, who are collectively useful to her only when they are
something quaint that she can possess and control. Conversely, both Mama and Maggie regard
Dee with a sort of shy awe. Mama believes that Dee would like her better if she were “a hundred
pounds lighter, my skin like an uncooked barley pancake,” someone who could match a “gray,
sporty man like Johnny Carson” with a “quick and witty tongue” (Walker 1306). Mama
categorizes herself and Maggie as “dimwits” (Walker 1307) compared to Dee, and seems to
regard her eldest daughter almost as a goddess: “Her feet were always neat-looking, as if God
himself had shaped them with a certain style” (Walker 1308) Mama offers, barely able to shield
her eyes from the brightness of Dee’s yellow and orange dress against the sun; her gold jewelry,
starkly contrasted with her daughter’s “black as night” hair (Walker 1308). Mama’s
characterization of Dee as someone who “has held life always in the palm of one hand;” a person
to whom “‘no’ is a word the world never learned to say” (Walker 1306) proves apt. Indeed, her
refusal of the “‘priceless’” (Walker 1311) quilts to her eldest daughter marks the end of Dee’s

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pleasantries; where initially Dee is facetiously “delighted” (Walker 1310) by everything the
humble Johnson home has to offer, it quickly outwears its usefulness once there is nothing more
in it for her to take. Similarly, Mama correctly identifies Maggie’s reaction to her sister’s
tantrum as “something like fear,” but not anger: “This was Maggie’s portion. This was the way
she knew God to work” (Walker 1311). Though Dee rejects her family, Mama does not reject
her; at the same time, she will not wait for “Miss Wangero” (Walker 1311) to come around
anymore. Paradoxically, by putting Dee in her place and championing Maggie, Mama seems to
emulate her eldest daughter, in order to protect the younger one. Both Mama and Maggie
noticeably grow as characters by the end of the story; for Dee to do the same in the future, she
will need to “negotiate the old by casting [her] lot with the new” (Tornsey 1559).
Like Dee, Julian is a college-educated young adult who prides himself on being a well-
rounded person, particularly in the face of his mother’s old-fashioned ways. Unlike Dee,
O’Connor tells the story of Julian and his mother from the prodigal son’s point of view. To
Julian, he and his mother have little in common: “The further irony of all this was that in spite of
her, he had turned out so well. In spite of going to only a third-rate college, he had, on his own
initiative, come out with a first-rate education; in spite of growing up dominated by a small
mind, he had ended up with a large one; in spite of all her foolish views, he was free of prejudice
and unafraid to face facts” (O’Connor 1009-1010). Julian’s mother’s prejudices are racial; set in
the deep South in the midst of the African-American civil rights movement, she is hardly the
only person to feel that “‘the bottom rail is on the top’” (O’Connor 1006); that their Black
neighbors should “‘rise … on their own side of the fence’” (O’Connor 1007). In spite of this,
Julian’s mother is a catch-all for all of Julian’s idealistic disgust, even if he readily admits that

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she is more “a little girl that he had to take to town” (O’Connor 1005) than someone going out of
her way to cause harm to anyone, Black or otherwise.
Ironically, both characters suffer one another with the same sort of beleaguered
“martyrdom” (O’Connor 1006). While Julian acts put-upon to “make himself completely numb
during the time he would be sacrificed to [his mother’s] pleasure” (O’Connor 1005), his mother
complains about her diminished surroundings, but simultaneously “enjoy[s] the struggle” to give
her son “everything she thought a Chestny ought to have” (O’Connor 1009). For Julian’s mother,
being “adjustable” and “gracious” (O’Connor 1006-7) are signs of a dignified upbringing, one
she nonetheless was not afforded due to “‘reduced circumstances’” (O’Connor 1007). To her,
having Chestny and Godhigh (a symbolically powerful name) in the bloodline is everything.
Conversely, Julian goes out of his way to reject all aspects of his ancestry, though he sometimes
fails at eradicating it completely: “He never spoke of it without contempt or thought of it without
longing,” O’Connor writes, describing the old Godhigh-Chestny mansion, now gutted and
occupied by “Negroes” (O’Connor 1007), one of many examples of “threadbare elegance”
(O’Connor 1007) that is all that remains of his mother’s “banner of imaginary dignity”
(O’Connor 1008). Indeed, everything about Julian and his mother’s life is “reduced,” right down
to the “slimming class” that the latter must take in order to get her blood pressure under control
(O’Connor 1005). The theme of Julian’s mother gradually losing her composure, falling from
grace is strong throughout the story. Similarly, Julian is unhappily stagnant. At the age of 25, he
is “as disenchanted with [the world] as a man of fifty” (O’Connor 1009), a college graduate who
sells typewriters while hoping (but not with very much hope) for his writing career to take off.
Neither character lives entirely in the real world; at the same time, Julian is better prepared for

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society’s tentative evolution towards racial equality, something his mother would rather (and
does) die than concede.
Neither Paley and her father, nor the hypothetical mother-son tale that she dishes out to
appease her dad in “A Conversation With My Father” seem preoccupied with racial tension. In
spite of this, both parent-child relationships parallel with Dee-and-Mrs. Johnson and Julian and
his mother. The unnamed mother and son’s story begins as a handful of vaguely scribbled facts:
The son becomes a drug addict as a teenager, which the mother latches onto herself in an attempt
to be “part of the youth culture, with which she felt very much at home” (Paley 1081). As the
author writes: “After a while, for a number of reasons, the boy gave it all up and left the city and
his mother in disgust. Hopeless and alone, she grieved” (Paley 1081). Bookending the saga is
Paley and her elderly father’s own relationship, the latter who dislikes his writer daughter’s
postmodern leanings, and cajoles her to tell him “‘a simple story … the kind de Maupassant
wrote, or Chekhov’” (Paley 1081). Though “Conversation” in and of itself is almost defensively
written in a postmodern style, the sparse dialogue between father and daughter provides at least
as good of an insight into their relationship as a more straightforward style might. Of the story,
which Paley admits is autobiographical, she offers that she was “‘just trying to oblige [her
father],” and that they were very close (Charters 1526). Beyond authorial intent, the fact that
Paley does concede to her father’s wishes and attempts to re-tell her story to his liking shows that
she cares for him, at least as well as Paley telling the reader that this is the case does.
Paley herself aside, the boy and his mother, whom she admits are styled after her
neighbors across the street, are similar in their interactions and co-dependency as Dee and Julian
are to their own mothers. Unlike Maggie or Emily, the son’s “helpless chubby infancy” and
ensuing childhood are strengthened rather than weakened by obvious maternal affection (Paley

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1082). Though the boy becomes a junkie in the “fist of adolescence” he is also a “hopeful …
ideologue and successful converter” (Paley 1082). Like Dee, he attracts fellow intellectuals to his
cause, albeit a less savory one than fighting for equality. He also attracts his mother, whose draw
towards the youth culture, rather than to “her own generation” (Paley 1083) is her biggest flaw.
Whereas Dee and Julian act out against their mothers, craving understanding, Paley’s teenage
boy receives unabashed maternal affection and, like June in “Two Kinds” lashes out against it.
Like Dee, the boy’s natural ability to draw a crowd leads him to greener pastures than his
mother’s full-fledged addiction; namely, the boy meets a girl who, ironically, plays the role of
the disapproving parent when his mother fails to do so, and moves “to the bushy edge of another
borough” (Paley 1083) with her. Whereas Julian is the pinnacle of Erikson’s fabled stagnation,
both Dee and Paley’s boy burn brightly, even at the cost of the maternal connection that
nonetheless brought them into the world. All three characters reject their respective mothers;
Paley, at least, attempts to admit that her father correctly accuses her of not “look[ing] things in
the face” (Paley 1084), for which the only cure is self-awareness. Whether Dee, Julian, or the
boy will come around remains unknown, an acknowledgment that Paley’s father would term a
postmodern “tragedy” (Paley 1084).
Gender
Beyond age, the gender of the child in each respective maternal relationship is another
notable interpersonal factor. Frye does not explain her distinction between the mother-son and
mother-daughter relationship, only that sons particularly run the risk of being too “resentful or
adoring” (287), with unhealthy results. However, parallels across gender lines in these “trans-
generational entanglements” (Carruthers) can be easily observed.

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Maggie and Dee in “Everyday Use,” as well as June in “Two Kinds” and Emily in “I
Stand Here Ironing” find themselves in what Carruthers characterizes as typically problematic
mother-daughter relationships. "A mother may say that she wishes her daughters happiness, yet
from a daughter's point of view - she acts quite opposite," Carruthers offers. "A daughter may
feel criticized for her choices, for example in education, career, boyfriends and partners."
Conversely, the mother "may feel blamed by her daughter for everything that happens with the
daughter's education, career, boyfriends and partners" (Carruthers). In essence, the two may
regard the same incident in opposite ways. For Dee and Mrs. Johnson, this may be Dee’s regard
for “heritage” versus her mother’s feeling that Dee does not care about her family. For June in
“Two Kinds,” the botched piano recital performance is both an incident and a metaphor that
shapes her maternal relationship; it is a marker of June’s perceived inadequacy in her mother’s
eyes. In response, June lashes out, delighted when her mother starts “to give up hope” (Tan
1224) that her daughter will ever become a prodigy.
Emily and Maggie’s mothers’ neglect is more palpable than any arguments that they may
have had. As Caruthers notes, "Few parents intend to abandon, abuse or neglect their children.
Most mothers have good intentions and nurture and protect their children through childhood." At
the same time, however, "Mothers may advise their daughters to be realistic by preparing for
unfulfilling lives” (Caruthers). Such advice is notable in the relationship between Mrs. Johnson
and Maggie, the latter who seems pre-judged as useless and unimportant, to some degree, by
both her mother and her older sister. Maggie understands her lot in life; she is willing to give up
the precious quilts without a fight to Dee who decides that they “already belonged to her”
(Walker 1311), anticipating their value as wall decorations in the eyes of her new family.
Maggie’s subservience; the way that she hides from dubious company and scuffs her toe makes

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Mama’s championing of her at the end of the story all the more heartening: “I did something I
never had done before: hugged Maggie to me, then dragged her on into the room, snatched the
quilts out of Miss Wangero’s hands and dumped them back into Maggie’s lap. Maggie just sat
there on my bed with her mouth open” (Walker 1311). Later, Maggie smiles a rare, “real smile”
(Walker 1312), the status quo changed. It is indeed a “new day” for her and her mother, albeit
unlike anything that Dee has in mind.
Emily is similarly subservient towards her mother: “never a direct protest, never
rebellion,” Olsen writes (1054), characterizing the mother with small, occasional outbursts of
guilt or, at least, displaced emotion: “What in me demanded that goodness in her? And what was
the cost, the cost to her of such goodness?” (Olsen 1054), she asks. Like Maggie, Emily suffers
quietly while others take the spotlight; in Emily’s case, these are the four small children who
come after her, whose presence demand that Emily becomes “a mother, and housekeeper, and
shopper” (Olsen 1057). Thus, Emily never achieves her own identity, though she seeks it in
bursts of growth and success at comedy (mime), which her mother nonetheless knows she will
not be able to afford seeing through to its fullest extent. Frye offers: "a human being cannot rely
on the perpetual presence of external seeing eyes to validate her own authenticity as a separate
self. Emily, feeling her isolation, and Emily's mother, feeling helpless to overcome her daughter's
painful alienation, together give us a powerful lens on the vulnerability to external perceptions of
selfhood" (Frye 289), one from which Emily will never be fully exonerated from, even with her
successful "command ... convulsing and deadly clowning" (Olsen 1058) as a comedian. Emily
will always be seeking acceptance, always looking for "Shoogily", her own made-up word for
"comfort" (Olsen 1057). Her success on stage, however, will never fully substitute for "the
unpreparedness, stammering and unsure" relationship that she has with her mother. Thus, even

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when she is "Somebody", Emily is "as imprisoned in her difference as she had been in
anonymity" (Olsen 1057). To her mother, Emily will always be something of a stranger, "rare
and precious" (Olsen 1058), but ultimately unattainable. The best gift her mother can offer her
then is not belatedly fostered maternal love, but the knowledge that "she is more than this dress
on the ironing board, helpless before the iron" (Olsen 1058). As Frye offers, the metaphor of the
iron and the "rhythm of the ironing" that Emily's mother acquiesces to throughout the majority of
the narrative together "establish a tightly coherent framework for the ... probing of a mother-
daughter relationship" (292) without trivializing or romanticizing it.
Lost or buried identity is a common theme in the mother-daughter bond, according to
Carruthers: “The daughter may fight to establish and protect her own identity - or the daughter
may lose identity and identify with her mother ... Most daughters want assurance that they are
loved for who they are - not for what they may do, who they may become or who they may
marry.” In addition, “A mother may try to motivate her daughter to fulfill her own
unaccomplished goals, and she may immerse herself into her daughter's life” (Carruthers). Such
characterization strongly applies to the women in “Two Kinds,” as June struggles to create an
identity outside of her mother’s expectations, while still yearning for her love. Though June’s
mother appears almost comically tyrannical at times, small hints indicate that she does, in fact,
care for her daughter very deeply. “My mother slapped me. ‘Who ask you be genius?’ she
shouted. ‘Only ask you be your best. For you sake. You think I want you be genius? Hnnh! What
for! Who ask you!’” (Tan 1225). Unlike Olsen’s narrator, who is emotionally incapable of
admitting affection to her daughter (though the reader is assured that it is there), June is flat-out
told that she is loved. At the same time, the message is relayed through shouting and a slap
across the face, a rather mixed signal. Still, Tan’s story remains the most undeniably hopeful; not

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only does she gain independence (as Carruthers correctly estimates, around 30 years of age), but
also seemingly accord with her mother, her long-time enemy.
In contrast to the mother-daughter bond, Carruthers identifies the largest issue between
mothers and sons as “emotional incest,” in which the son becomes the mother's "Little Prince."
Such a relationship potentially forms, Carruthers offers, if the mother acts "irresponsible,
childish, or [does] not provide mature guidance" to her son. Often, the mother's life is "dedicated
... to her son", forming a codependency that can cause the son to "attack (become a compulsive
bully) or withdraw (become an obsessive nerd)" (Carruthers). For the "intellectual" son, this may
lead to difficulty in "maintain[ing] a happy partnership" outside of his maternal relationship. In
addition, Carruthers says, "The consequences include the burned-out shells of real boys who
gave up - who lost themselves to mediocrity or to drugs." Naturally, in order to achieve
"emotional freedom," the Little Prince must successfully acquire "emotional maturity" and break
free from his mother-son entanglement (Carruthers). Curiously, Carruthers identifies the son’s
inability to “hide [his] intellect and delay [his] maturity,” which he claims that daughters are
more apt to do. Like Frye, however, he does not offer any further rationale for why the behavior
is common in one gender and not the other.
In a nutshell, O’Connor’s characterization of Julian best adheres to Carruthers’ proposed
notion of the withdrawn, “obsessive nerd,” whereas Paley’s unnamed teenage boy is the
“compulsive bully.” Likewise, both young men are “burned-out shells of real boys who gave
up,” though Julian succumbs to mediocrity while the boy in Paley’s story attaches himself to
drugs. Perhaps it is because of both young men’s inability to hide their intelligence or maturity
that their maternal relationships are similarly categorized by each son breaking away from his
mother, no longer needing them. Whereas the daughters typically portray an ambiguity in how

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much they both loathe their mothers, yet crave their acceptance, neither Julian nor Paley’s boy
seem upset by the status quo with their own mothers. In essence, both boys (men) call the shots
in their respective maternal relationships, allowing them the choice to adhere to or discard their
mothers at will. Julian even brags about such ability: “Most miraculous of all, instead of being
blinded by love for her as she was for him, he had cut himself emotionally free of her and could
see her with complete objectivity. He was not dominated by his mother” (O’Connor 1010).
At the same time, Julian’s mother relies on him, her Little Prince of whom she is
unwaveringly proud, in spite of “his gloominess” and radical idealism in lieu of “practical
experience” (O’Connor 1009). Indeed, his mother supports him while he struggles to find his
place in a world that he can barely stand. Not only that, but she suffers to provide for him, albeit
arguably enjoys the struggle, feeling that it makes her worthy of her proper upbringing. At the
same time, Julian is easily irritated by his mother’s kindness: “Julian thought he could have stood
his lot better if she had been selfish, if she had been an old hag who drank and screamed at him
… Everything that gave her pleasure was small and depressed him” (O’Connor 1005-6). To the
diminished Lady Chestny, acting gracious is a virtue; to Julian, it is an irritating game that his
mother plays: “She lived according to the laws of her own fantasy world, outside of which he
had never seen her step foot” (O’Connor 1009). Unsurprisingly, once Julian makes the decision
that “There was no reason for her to think she could always depend on him” (O’Connor 1011),
the relationship becomes irrevocably damaged.
For Paley’s teenage boy and his mother, the son unequivocally calls the shots. He does
not ask his mother for permission to use drugs, nor does Paley characterize him as particularly
interested in his mother even when she invites herself into his youth culture. In essence, his
mother becomes his peer: “Although she was often high herself, certain good mothering reflexes

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remained, and she saw to it that there was lots of orange juice around and honey and milk and
vitamin pills. However, she never cooked anything but chili, and that no more than once a week”
(Paley 1083). Neither her son nor her neighbors regard her absolutely as a fellow youth or as a
proper mother, however, which seems to set up the son’s decision to abandon her for a
“proselytizing girl” who scolds him for his drug use and poor eating habits (Paley 1083). As
previously mentioned, she adopts a maternal bond with the boy, one which his mother fails to
fully accept upon her own shoulders. For Julian, there is no saving grace, no scolding girlfriend
or Hakim-a-barber to accompany him home. At one point, O’Connor observes, “he had never
been successful at making any Negro friends” (1011), an acquaintanceship that he fantasizes will
put his mother’s outdated racism in its place. Similarly, Julian toys with the idea of hiring a
Black doctor for his mother, and even the “ultimate horror”: Bringing home a “Negroid woman”
as a romantic partner (O’Connor 1011). Alas, as Carruthers hypothesizes, Julian is unable to
successfully find for himself a fulfilling relationship. There is only his mother, much to his
despair.
The mother in Paley’s story has never been her son’s main consideration; she is merely
one of the hangers-on to his feats of drug-addled genius, epitomized by his contributions to a
periodical called Oh! Golden Horse! (Paley 1082). Like Dee with her noisy bracelets and book
knowledge and new name, the boy is a golden child whose mother is devastated by his absence
and subsequent rejection of her. “The boy and his girl … were very strict. They said they would
not see [the boy’s mother] again until she had been off drugs for sixty days” (Paley 1083), the
author writes. For the son, the lack of a mother is supplemented by alternative and perhaps even
greater things; there is no need for Paley to hastily convince her father that his life is not tragic.
Conversely, even the mother’s potential success as a pharmacy receptionist is related to her

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previous glory years spent in her son’s shadow, where she is no longer worthy to remain in his
eyes. As Paley’s father notes, “‘She will slide back. A person must have character. She does
not’” (1084). Regardless of whether his prediction comes true, it pales in comparison to the
notion that the mother only ever exists because of or in spite of her son. He is everything to her;
sadly, to him, she is insignificant.
Once again, it is prudent to mention Paley’s own fictionalized depiction of her own
father-daughter relationship in “Conversation,” as it relates to Carruthers’ notions of gender-
based maternal conflicts. Ideally, one would find shades of what Carruthers terms the “Daddy’s
Little Princess” archetype, characterized by mother-daughter tensions as a result of the
daughter’s emotional compatibility or championing of the father. Like the father in a mother-son
relationship, the mother observing such a father-daughter bond presumably feels slighted by the
father’s lack of attention to her, just as the father feels slighted by an emotionally awkward
mother-son relationship. To apply this to Paley, one must obtain context regarding her own
maternal relationship, of which “Conversation” provides very little. Notably, Paley offers that “I
had promised the family to always let [my father] have the last word when arguing, but in this
case I had a different responsibility. That woman lives across the street. She’s my knowledge and
my invention” (1084). To Paley, her mother is only one member of the rest of her family, whose
opinions extend only to not riling her ailing father up on what is likely his death bed. Naturally,
the implication is that Paley’s mother regards any additional detail – the worth of her daughter’s
writing, for example – as unimportant, at least in the singular vein of Paley’s short story.
At the same time, Paley champions the mother in the story that she creates for her
father’s entertainment and criticism, even acknowledging that she is based on the mother-son
drama playing out across the street. The same level of inference, ergo, can apply to the barely

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explored mother-daughter relationship in Paley’s own life: The mother in her story is “‘born in a
time of fools, to live among the fools’” (1084), for which the author pities her: “I’m not going to
leave her there in that house crying. (Actually, neither would Life, which unlike me has no pity)”
(1084). Though fascinating to presume that Paley potentially has her own maternal issues, it is
mere speculation beyond wondering if there are any parallels between her mother and son
characters and her own mother. In that sense, only the author knows, and she’s chosen to keep
such knowledge to herself.
Other Familial Relationships
Yet another interpersonal thread that ties the maternal relationships in each story together
are the mother and child’s respective relationships with other family members. It is prudent to
consider the strength and validity of each mother’s romantic adult relationships, as much as it is
important to observe instances of sibling rivalry amongst her children, where applicable.
More often than not, the mother-daughter and mother-son relationships in the
aforementioned stories are presented as single-parent functions. Neither Mama in “Everyday
Use” nor Julian’s mother in “Everything That Rises Must Converge” mentions a father figure in
the course of either story. Similarly, Paley’s mother and son characters are devoid of any
paternal interaction. Conversely, though fathers are mentioned in “Two Kinds” and “I Stand
Here Ironing,” their roles are minimal. In “I Stand Here Ironing,” Emily’s father is explained
away quickly, mentioned only in relation to the “good-bye note” that he leaves, stating that he
“‘could no longer endure … sharing want with us’” (Olsen 1053). Later, Olsen’s narrator has
children after Emily, presumably with another man, but he is never mentioned or described, let
alone shown interacting with the children that he helped to create. Interestingly, before Emily is

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sent to the children’s home in the midst of her mother’s Great Depression-era struggles, she lives
for a short time with her father: “When she finally came, I hardly knew her, walking quick and
nervous like her father, looking like her father, thin, and dressed in a shoddy red that yellowed
her skin and glared at the pockmarks. All the baby loveliness gone” (Olsen 1054). Though Paley
does not appear to fit the Daddy’s Little Princess archetype, a case can be made that Emily’s
mother finds her daughter to be a stand-in for her absent husband, for which Emily is (probably
subconsciously) blamed, in the vein of Carruthers’ father-daughter postulating. Olsen also
implicitly states in an interview that the mother character does not particularly lack anything in
spite of not having a dutiful husband; indeed, “Ironing” is “autobiographical” (Charters 1052) in
that Olsen too is left by her own husband to raise her first child alone. Of her own predicament
and her narrator’s, Olsen defensively offers that she feels “no personal guilt as a single working
parent over her daughter’s predicament … since ‘guilt is a word used far too sloppily, to cover
up harmful situations in society that must be changed’” (Charters 1052). Frye adds: Olsen is not
in the business of “guilty self-laceration. Rather she is searching for an honest assessment of past
behavior and its consequences and for an accurate understanding of the role of cultural necessity
which nonetheless allows for individual responsibility” (290). Still, Emily’s mother is not Emily;
though the mother can justify her husband’s absence with the rationale that “She had a new
daddy now to learn to love” (Olsen 1054), it does not mean that Emily does not, or will not
blame her mother for her own father’s absence in the future.
As Carruthers offers, even family therapists often fail to treat the father as an “equal
parent” to the mother, one “whose involvement is needed by their families”. Thus, fathers may
feel “demeaned” and “devalued” in their respective family relationships (Carruthers). It is
unclear whether June’s father in “Two Kinds” feels emotionally slighted; like Paley’s

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unexplained relationship with her mother, the story’s narration only hints at subtleties that
doubtlessly exist somewhere. On one hand, June’s father is a uniquely notable presence in the
story. At the same time, he is hardly the primary caregiver for June. He does not noticeably take
part in any decision-making about his daughter’s well-being; June’s mother wishes for her to
take piano lessons, and so she does, even if it’s “Our family” (Tan 1224) that can’t afford the
expense. June’s father’s influence is implied, but June, as a child, never sees it in play. Similarly,
her father attends his daughter’s doomed piano recital, but his only contributions are yawning at
the stiffness of the event, and “humming the busy-bee tune” (Tan 1227) that the winner of the
recital played on his violin. Unlike June’s mother, her father is not committed to judging his
daughter’s worth through her achievements; he does not champion either wife or daughter, and
exists merely as silent observer to their drama. In this sense, June seems both to silently respect
her father, and to regard him less as an authority figure and more as a confidante. Like Paley and
her father, June’s paternal relationship appears to be based on mutual respect, rather than the
push-pull of achievement-failure that defines many of the interactions between herself and her
mother. After her mother dies, June even helps to “get … things in order for [her] father, a little
at a time” (Tan 1229) by organizing remnants of her mother’s life as she feels that they are
relevant. In essence, this is her job, whether an obedient, successful daughter or free-thinking
failure; not her father’s.
The sibling conflicts in each short story are the final interpersonal factor that one should
consider in the context of maternal relationships. Neither Julian in “Everything That Rises Must
Converge” nor Paley or her mother and son characters have siblings – potentially, the ‘other’
members of Paley’s family includes brothers and/or sisters, but they are even less notable in “A
Conversation With My Father” than Paley’s own mother-daughter relationship. Similarly, Olsen

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never shows Emily interacting with any of her younger siblings in “Ironing,” though her mother
observes and comments on their relationship:
Oh there were conflicts between the others too, each one human, needing,
demanding, hurting, taking – but only between Emily and Susan, no, Susan
toward Emily that corroding resentment. It seems so obvious on the surface, yet it
is not obvious; Susan, the second child, Susan, golden- and curly-haired and
chubby, quick and articulate and assured, everything in appearance and manner
Emily was not; Susan, not able to resist Emily’s precious things, losing or
sometimes clumsily breaking them; Susan telling jokes and riddles to company
for applause while Emily sat silent (to say to me later: that was my riddle, Mother,
I told it to Susan); Susan, who for all the five years’ difference in age was just a
year behind Emily in developing physically. (Olsen 1056-7)
Frye’s analysis of the Emily-Susan connection is also notable: “When [Olsen] defines the
hostilities between Emily and her sister Susan - 'that terrible balancing of hurts and needs' (Olsen
16; cited by Frye 288) - she asserts her own recognition not only of an extreme sibling rivalry but
also of the inevitable conflict in the separate self-definitions of parent and child” (Frye 288).
From Olsen’s narrator’s perspective, Susan was the easier child to love, both circumstantially
and in a comparison of her two eldest children’s traits. Likewise, Susan does not remind her
mother of Emily’s wayward father, and thus does not suffer from her mother’s defensive
brusqueness the way Emily seems to merely for looking or acting like him.
In the same vein, though Maggie does not notably remind her mother of her and Dee’s
own wayward father in “Everyday Use,” she is similarly regarded as the Emily to her sister

Haight-Angelo 27
Dee’s Susan, birth order aside. Where Dee is boisterous and entitled, Maggie acts “like
somebody used to never winning anything, or having anything reserved for her” (Walker 1311).
Mama offers that “I used to think [Dee] hated Maggie, too. But that was before we raised the
money, the church and me, to send her to Augusta to school” (Walker 1307). In this sense,
Maggie serves as a placeholder for all of the things that Dee can’t, or won’t be for her mother;
she will never be satisfied with her family’s humble heritage, or with slumming it alongside Mrs.
Johnson and her little sister. Similarly, Maggie regards Dee “with a mixture of envy and awe”
(Walker 1306). She is perhaps more observant and intelligent than her mother gives her credit for
being: “Maggie and I thought about this and Maggie asked me, ‘Mama, when did Dee ever have
any friends?’” (Walker 1308). Whereas Dee and her Muslim friend’s presence make Maggie
anxious, ergo, she seems to see her sister for what she really is; when Dee leaves in a huff,
donning “sunglasses that hid everything above the tip of her nose and her chin” (Walker 1312),
Maggie merely smiles at her. Conversely, Maggie holds no everyday use to her sister. Their
relationship will remain stagnant unless or until that changes; as always, on Dee’s terms.
Amy Tan’s “Two Kinds” is unique in that non-blood-related characters have very sisterly
relationships. The short story itself is a small piece of Tan’s novel, The Joy Luck Club, which
follows not only June’s relationship with her mother, but her mother’s friendship with her own
age-mates, collectively the Joy Luck Club. In “Two Kinds” itself, June is forced into interaction
with Waverly, one of the Club member’s own daughters. “We had grown up together and shared
all the closeness of two sisters squabbling over crayons and dolls. In other words, for the most
part, we hated each other. I thought she was snotty” (Tan 1226), June offers. Compounding their
sour sisterly relationship is the fact that June’s mother and her Auntie Lindo constantly compare
notes on their daughters. Waverly, locally known as “‘Chinatown’s Littlest Chinese Chess

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Champion’” (Tan 1226) is defensive of her position as the ‘better’ daughter at several points in
the story. When June prepares for her piano recital, Waverly sits in the audience with a “sulky
expression” (Tan 1227) on her face. Later, her dismissal of June’s lack of piano playing prowess
is all too similar to June’s own struggle for acceptance from her mother: “Waverly looked at me
and shrugged her shoulders. ‘You aren’t a genius like me,’ she said matter-of-factly. And if I
hadn’t felt so bad, I would have pulled her braids and punched her stomach” (Tan 1227). Like
Emily-and-Susan and Dee-and-Maggie, June’s sibling rivalry with Waverly is directly connected
to their own respective maternal relationships. Like June, it is implied that Waverly suffers under
the same implication that she is only worth something to her mother if she measures up to an
ideal, one which characters like June, Emily and Maggie have long since given up trying to
attain.
External Factors
All of the authors of the aforementioned five short stories bring personal faith, life
experiences and opinions on the problems within their respective societies and eras to their
writing. Thus, each story acts as a barometer of the time for which it was created as much as it is
an intensely private observation of each mother’s interpersonal relationship with her child(ren).
For Amy Tan and the characters in O’Connor’s and Walker’s stories, race relations must be
taken into account; Tan, in the context of Chinese-American immigration; and O’Connor and
Walker representing respective White and Black perspectives on the African-American civil
rights movement of the mid-20th century, with O’Connor’s tale thoroughly interwoven with her
Catholic dogma. Similarly, a case can be made that Olsen’s “Ironing” is an apt assessment of

Haight-Angelo 29
Great Depression-era America, as much as it is a treatise on unconditional maternal love in spite
of diminished circumstances. Finally, Paley’s “A Conversation With My Father” uses an
argument with her father as a hypothetical debate on the merits of postmodernism, which
simultaneously parallels with her mother and son characters’ acknowledgment of their society’s
“youth culture.”
Of the Chinese-American culture portrayed in “Two Kinds,” author Amy Tan is quick to
note that she is often placed in classroom literary canons “for all the wrong reasons”: “I am
alarmed when reviewers and educators assume that my very personal, specific, and fictional
stories are meant to be representative down to the nth detail not just of Chinese Americans but,
sometimes, of all Asian culture” (Tan 1550). She goes on to expose numerous tales of well-
meaning readers and critics offering more credit to her for shaping the western world’s view of
the Chinese-American landscape than she feels they ought to. More to the point, Tan argues, “I
don’t write to dig a hole and fill it with symbols. I don’t write stories as ethnic themes. I don’t
write to represent life in general. And I certainly don’t write because I have answers. If I knew
everything there is to know about mothers and daughters, Chinese and Americans, I wouldn’t
have any stories left to imagine” (1551). Even providing strong role models in her characters,
Tan says, is not her goal. At the same time, as novelist Valerie Miner argues, “Tan’s special gifts
are her storytelling ability and her ‘remarkable ear for dialogue and dialect, representing the
choppy English of the mother and the sloppy California vernacular of the daughter with a
sensitive authenticity’” (Charters 1221). Such authenticity, Charters infers, is what makes “the
resilient bond between mother and daughter” (1221) come to life, even if they are not meant to
represent any particular status quo.

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In contrast, O’Connor is equally firm that her own stories should be read not as realistic
fiction, but as parables. Also, Charters points out, O’Connor’s “remarkable ear for dialogue” and
her use of family relationships to explore religious motifs are notable staples (1004). O’Connor
herself was uncompromisingly Roman Catholic; and while her stories certainly reflect her
dogmatic beliefs, Brinkmeyer is firm that they are not “tracts” or religious propaganda. Rather,
the author seeks to make her faith look realistic, not favorable. In this sense, "Everything That
Rises Must Converge" paradoxically incorporates "the rising and convergence of a suppressed
group (blacks) in society," as well as the "spiritual decay" of the previous generation as it levels
into an "irresonant, faithless world of tomorrow" (Wyatt 68-9). This is symbolized by Julian's
mother's diminished capacity as a noble woman whose family is no longer on top of the world.
On the inside, she insists repeatedly to her son, she is a Chestny; on the outside, however, she
and her surroundings; their current neighborhood; her grandfather’s now-dilapidated mansion,
overrun with Black squatters were "once fashionable but now [are] deteriorated and dingy"
(Wyatt 69).
O’Connor thus confronts the racial tension apparent in Julian and his mother’s world,
though her loftier intent is to incite the characters to confront their own salvation. In the case of
“Converge,” this appears to be mainly aimed at Julian, epitomized early on in the story as “Saint
Sebastian [waiting] for the arrows to begin piercing him” (O’Connor 1005). Wyatt points out,
however, that some critics find O'Connor's characters to be "typically too ambiguous to serve as
either heroes or villains" (Wyatt 66). To this, O'Connor offers that "Her protagonists may not be
able to support the grace that befalls them, but she loves them nonetheless," as well as her
antagonists, who conversely "become the objects of the searching grace that finds them lacking"
(Wyatt 67). Upon this, Wyatt heaps that O'Connor "confronts a drastically fallen world in which

Haight-Angelo 31
even the remnants of religious belief are vanishing and the instruments and recipients of grace
themselves may be as sordid as the damned" (67). In this, he offers, her stories are parables; her
characters "dubious ... vessels of grace" (68).
Author intent aside, of the five short stories previously discussed, “Everything That Rises
Must Converge” is easily the one most irrevocably shaped by its cultural backdrop. That is,
without consideration of the tensions between White and Black persons in the story, it ceases to
have much relevance to the world beyond O’Connor’s rather abstract religious beliefs. Indeed,
the story is one of frequent contrasts: Julian is disinterested in his family legacy whereas his
mother literally cannot function without it. More tangibly, at the beginning of the story, Julian’s
mother dons a “hideous hat” for her trip into town for her “reducing class at the Y” to help her
lose weight (O’Connor 1005). The hat is purple and green and “jaunty and pathetic” (O’Connor
1005), a concise categorization of its owner according to her son. Later in the story, his mother is
confronted with a Black woman during the bus trip into town who has bought the same hat, a
fact which delights Julian: “The vision of the two hats, identical, broke upon him with the
radiance of a brilliant sunrise. His face was suddenly lit with joy. He could not believe that Fate
had thrust upon his mother such a lesson … His grin hardened until it said to her as plainly as if
he were saying aloud: Your punishment exactly fits your pettiness. This should teach you a
permanent lesson” (O’Connor 1012-3).
As one might suspect from O’Connor, however, the permanent lesson is really Julian’s.
Offended when his mother attempts to give the Black woman’s child, Carver a penny (“He don’t
take nobody’s pennies!” [O’Connor 1014]), Julian continues to hold his perceived superiority
over his mother: “‘Don’t think that was just an uppity Negro woman,’ he said. ‘That was the
whole colored race which will no longer take your condescending pennies. That was your black

Haight-Angelo 32
double. She can wear the same hat as you, and to be sure,’ he added gratuitously (because he
thought it was funny), ‘it looked better on her than it did on you’” (O’Connor 1015). Julian, too,
has a black double, a “Negro man” on the same bus route who “immediately unfold[s] a
newspaper and obscure[s] himself behind it” (O’Connor 1010). Though Julian wistfully wishes
to “convey his sympathy” (O’Connor 1010) and align himself idealistically with the man in the
spirit of racial harmony, it is not to be. In this, Julian’s social disgust works against him; for, like
him, the Black man prefers to remain “entrenched behind his paper” (O’Connor 1010) where he
can “see out and judge” while remaining “safe from any kind of penetration” or “general idiocy
of his fellows” (O’Connor 1009). As if on cue, Julian’s mother prefers to make small talk with
“A thin woman with protruding teeth and long yellow hair” (O’Connor 1008) whom Julian finds
absolutely repulsive, rather than with someone more worthy; naturally, Julian and his mother
have very opposing ideas about what constitutes worth. Yet another contrast is mentioned plainly
by O’Connor, that between Julian and Carver, the latter whom sits next to Julian’s mother on the
bus, and his mother next to Julian. The “symbolic significance” of the “swapped sons” is
obvious; not only that, but Carver’s innocence and unabashed interest in his substitute mother
aligns well with Julian’s mother, repeatedly characterized as child-like (O’Connor 1012).
Similarly, Julian is likened to Carver’s actual mother, a “giant of a woman” whose sour
demeanor is all too familiar to the reader. Both she and Julian are “set not only to meet
opposition but to seek it out” (O’Connor 1012), a task at which they are both tragically
successful, at Julian’s mother’s expense.
Down but not out, Julian uses the hat incident to triumphantly hammer home the notion
that “‘the old world is gone. The old manners are obsolete and your graciousness is not worth a
damn … You aren’t who you think you are’” (O’Connor 1015). Symbolically, Julian’s

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prediction is his mother’s undoing; the excitement of the day, topped with his increasingly
vitriolic verbal barbs ignite his mother’s high blood pressure into what appears, at the end of the
story, to be a fatal stroke. As Wyatt observes, if Julian's mother's "sense of herself is unsuited to
the modern temper, [Julian's own] premature world-weariness and arrogant misanthropy insulate
him from any genuine relationship, even with his mother. It is his rejection of her, his figurative
killing of her, that projects the 'real world' that he must enter after her death - 'the world of guilt
and sorrow'" (Wyatt 71). Ultimately, Wyatt writes, Julian pushes his own beliefs on his mother
until they are but strangers to one another.
Similarly, and ever ironically, stagnant, overly mature Julian reverts almost to an
incapacitated, child-like state upon realizing that the experience with the Black woman has
triggered his mother’s fabled blood pressure trouble. Previously regarding his mother
disdainfully as a "grubby child" (O'Connor 1005, Julian himself now assumes the role of an
infant: "'Mother!' he cried. 'Darling, sweetheart, wait!' Crumpling, she fell to the pavement. He
dashed forward and fell at her side, crying. 'Mamma, Mamma!'" (O'Connor 1015).
Unfortunately, having effectively pushed his mother away so many times, she finds "nothing"
recognizable in his face and succumbs (most likely) to death (O'Connor 1015). Paradoxically,
Julian's mother also recedes to where she feels safe, asking for her deceased father and the Black
nurse, Caroline who used to care for her as a child, in lieu of acknowledging Julian's ability to
help her (which he no longer can or will). Tragedy, then, befalls the mother-son relationship in
O'Connor's story, just as it does the one in Paley's "Conversation." In this, both characters
“struggle for personal power which they [both] misunderstand” (Pritchett 1628); Julian, who is
corrupt and “absorbed in his own ego,” Booth argues (1639), dwells on his mother’s
inadequacies. His very name is representative of the “mortal sin” (Booth 1640) which neither

Haight-Angelo 34
Julian nor his mother are successful at saving him from. Similarly, reality exists between them,
somewhere further center of Julian’s stereotypically elite Black people and his mother’s racial
prejudices. Ultimately, neither of them rises from the “poor-white” (Pritchett 1629) construct that
society has bequeathed to them, to their mutually great injustice.
If O’Connor represents the poor, White perspective of the American South’s racial
inequality, then Alice Walker picks up the slack for her Black characters in “Everyday Use.”
Walker considers herself a “womanist,” a black feminist, for whom racial inequality extends
beyond her specific people. “‘When I look at the people in Iran they look like kinfolk’” (Charters
1305), Walker offers, giving credence to Dee’s association with Hakim-a-barber, with whom she
perceives a shared struggle. Indeed, Dee's (Wangero's) trendy lifestyle is the textbook definition
of the African-American civil rights road trip, with all of the notable pit stops: "the simple
integrationist imperative that followed ‘Brown v. Board of Education’ (1954) to the collective
outrage of the long hot summer of 1967 and the rise of an Islamic alternative to the Christianity
that black America had hitherto embraced” (172-3). Cowart continues: “Walker herself traveled
to Africa, and one imagines ... Wangero [as similarly] ... Africa smitten ... she has progressed to
an idea of nationality radically at odds with all that has hitherto defined the racial identity of
African-Americans" (172-3). More to the point, Dee risks "deracination in [her] quest for
personal authenticity" (Cowart 183), which she grasps at with palpable determination: "In her
name, her clothes, her hair, her sunglasses, her patronizing speech, and her black Muslim
companion, Wangero proclaims a deplorable degree of alienation from her rural origins and
family," Cowart (172) notes. Furthermore, "The story's irony is not subtle: the visitor who
reproaches others for an ignorance of their own heritage (a word that probably does not figure in

Haight-Angelo 35
the lexicon of either her mother or her sister) is herself almost completely disconnected from a
nurturing tradition" (Cowart 172).
Cowart continues: "Assimilation, torching the ghetto, Islam, the Africanist vision -
Walker treats these alternatives with respect, even as she satirizes her character's uncritical
embracing of one after another of them" in Wangero, who sees her mother and sister as
exemplary visions of "character[s] bred in adversity" (Cowart 174) from which she has worked
so defiantly to disassociate herself. In essence, Cowart offers, Wangero is "hopelessly selfish and
misguided" (175), appropriating for herself the "cunning and quaint implements and products of
[her] past" (Cowart 175) the way that her White oppressors would. Like O'Connor's showcasing
of Julian's misplaced pride, the lesson for Dee to take back to her sophisticated world in
"Everyday Use" is not subtle. Cowart, too, recognizes the parallels between O'Connor's writing
and Walker's: "O'Connor contrasts intellectual pretension with certain transcendent realities:
Original Sin, Grace, prospects for redemption. Walker, meanwhile, assesses ideas of cultural
identity within a community only a few minutes' drive from the home in which O'Connor spent
her last years" (182). Whereas O'Connor "allows so little real value to black aspiration" in stories
like "Converge," however, Walker "parodies the iconoclastic tricks that O'Connor uses over and
over again" (Cowart 182). In this sense, both writers uphold eloquent, though "competing
ideologies", O'Connor's "spiritual folly of a godless age" to Walker's interest in "social
shortsightedness" (Cowart 182).
Tornsey offers up the metaphor between quilting and women's writing (1556), a notion
which Cowart heartily champions:

Haight-Angelo 36
Walker contrives to make the situation of Wangero, the visitor, analogous to the
cultural position of the minority writer who, disinclined to express the fate of the
oppressed in the language and literary structures of the oppressor, seeks a more
authentic idiom and theme. Such a writer, Walker says, must not become a
literary Wangero. Only by remaining in touch with a proximate history and an
immediate cultural reality can one lay a claim to the quilts - or hope to produce
the authentic art they represent. Self-chastened, Walker presents her own art - the
piecing of linguistic and literary intertexts - as quilt-making with words, an art as
imbued with the African American past as the literal quilt-making of the
grandmother for whom Wangero was originally named. (172)
Paley also chastens herself in “A Conversation With My Father,” allowing her dad to
criticize her life’s work while simultaneously showcasing both her postmodern prowess and her
close relationship with her father. “Her space dissection of her characters is never performed at
the expense of sympathy for the human condition,” Charters writes (1080). Thus, though Paley’s
style is experimental, her “supple gift for language” and her “‘funny, sad, lean, modest,
energetic, acute’” (Sontag; cited by Charters 1080) storytelling gives the reader a sense of the
author’s “compassion, humor, and hope” (Charters 1080). Of her experimental leanings, Paley’s
father accuses her of not being able to “‘look [anything] in the face’” (Paley 1084). Indeed, both
the narrator of “Conversation” and the style of writing hedge around a plain-faced demonization
of either the mother or son character. In response, Paley can only offer weak platitudes: “‘it
could really happen that way, it’s a funny world nowadays’” (1084). For the narrator, hope
comes in the notion of open, endless possibilities for the mother in her story to undertake. Her
father, however, will have none of it; even the idea that the mother has a child out of wedlock is

Haight-Angelo 37
damning. Whereas Paley argues that such details are of “small consequence” (1082), to her
father, it is everything, a fact that Paley rationalizes away due to her father’s previous occupation
first as a doctor, and then an artist for whom “details, craft, technique” (1082) are of the utmost
importance. There is no firm grudge to be had between father and daughter in “Conversation,”
however, merely Paley’s forethought that her father was sick and that she should merely attempt
to placate him; “we were very close” (Paley 1526), she offers.
Tillie Olsen’s “Ironing” is another example of a story shaped largely by its surroundings.
Olsen tries to separate herself from the arguable burden of the title of motherhood, under which
she nonetheless gets placed. Not only that, claims Canadian author Margaret Atwood; Olsen is
often revered for undertaking the “heroic feat” of having “held down a job, raised four children,
and still somehow managed to become and remain a writer” (Charters 1052). At best, a
compromise can be offered wherein Olsen writes of motherhood realistically; as Coles praises,
Olsen is “unyielding and strong-minded, but never hysterical or shrill” (Coles 1436). Such a feat
also makes her able to truthfully discuss her life during the Great Depression in stories like
“Ironing”; “littered”, though it was, with “unfulfilled dreams” (Coles 1433). Emily and her
mother lead “blundering lives” (Coles 1433), filled with mistakes, and devoid of opportunity and
personal choice. Frye illustrates well the "general cultural pressure" of the Great Depression era
to "define and limit the power of individual choice" (290), even characterizing the mother's
aforementioned pride in breast-feeding her daughter as mere obedience to "the decree of the
clock" (Frye 290). Coles, too, comments on the dull interchangeability of the social worker, yet
another symbolic representation of the times: “A social worker of guidance counselor or
psychologist or psychiatrist (who knows which, and who cares – a substantial number of them all
sound drearily alike)” (1433). In this, Coles argues, the story reflects an “interior monologue

Haight-Angelo 38
devoted to the exterior” (1434); Emily and her mother are both swimming against the current as
best they can; bogged down as it is with disappointment and failure and poverty. Emily’s mother
is expected to make difficult choices that alter her relationship with her eldest daughter, not
always positively. Even so, the narrator’s sense of regret and self-pity are fleeting; occasional
bursts of emotion eek out (“She is so lovely. Why did you want me to come in at all? Why were
you concerned? She will find her way” [Olsen 1058]), but Olsen “pulls back immediately” and
“never once falter[s]” (Coles 1436). She remains strong, for her daughter; for herself.
Conclusion
As Carruthers notes, “Many families are dominated by mothers ... Some mothers enjoy
the responsibilities of motherhood. Others complain about their limited freedom, justify and
excuse their behavior, and may reject their partners, verbally and/or non-verbally.” Each of the
maternal relationships in the short stories by Olsen, Walker, Tan, O’Connor and Paley represents
a realistic portrayal of motherhood, with all of its imperfections in-tact and on full display.
Sometimes the mother does something unforgiveable; sometimes the child acts out for attention,
or to combat the threat of his or her mother’s affection being whisked away. Rejection is a key
factor in all five stories, whether of an ideal or a person; likewise, it occurs simultaneously
alongside the search for a greater truth than the current status quo provides. In spite of their
flaws, however, the mothers portrayed in each story are noticeably maternal; though not strictly
defined by the role of motherhood to which they often adhere, it is difficult to imagine that any
particular one does not love the person whom she has created and raised in the complicated and
heartbreaking and wonderful way that only a mother can love her own child.

Haight-Angelo 39
Works Cited
Alward, Mary. "Bonding With Your Child." Essortment Web site. Internet. 2002. 18 February
2010 <http://www.essortment.com/all/bondingchildren_rcxh.htm>.
Booth, Wayne C. "A Rhetorical Reading of O'Connor's 'Everything That Rises Must Converge'."
The Short Story and its Writer. Seventh edition. Ann Charters, ed. Boston: Bedford/St
Martin's, 2007. 1638-1641.
Brinkmeyer, Robert H., Jr. "Flannery O'Connor and Her Readers." The Short Story and its
Writer. Seventh edition. Ann Charters, ed. Boston: Bedford/St Martin's, 2007. 1629-
1634.
Carruthers, Martyn. "Emotional Incest & Father-Daughter Codependence." Soulwork Systemic
Coaching Web site. Internet. 2010. 18 February 2010
<http://www.soulwork.net/sw_articles_eng/daddy%27s_princess.htm>.
Carruthers, Martyn. "Emotional Incest & the Little Prince." Soulwork Systemic Coaching Web
site. Internet. 2010. 18 February 2010
<http://www.soulwork.net/sw_articles_eng/little_prince.htm>.

Haight-Angelo 40
Carruthers, Martyn. "Solutions for Mother-Daughter Issues." Soulwork Systemic Coaching Web
site. Internet. 2010. 18 February 2010
<http://www.soulwork.net/sw_articles_eng/mother_daughter.htm>.
Coles, Robert. "Tillie Olsen: The Iron and the Riddle." The Short Story and its Writer. Seventh
edition. Ann Charters, ed. Boston: Bedford/St Martin's, 2007. 1433-1436.
Cowart, David. "Heritage and Deracination in Walker's 'Everyday Use'." Studies in Short
Fiction. 33. Newberry College, 1996. 171-184. Academic Search Premier database.
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"Definition of 'selfhood'." Answers Web site. 2010. 18 February 2010
<http://www.answers.com/topic/selfhood>.
Frye, Joanne S. "'I Stand Here Ironing': Motherhood as Experience and Metaphor." Studies in
Short Fiction. 287-292. Academic Search Premier database. Internet. 18 February 2010.
"Mental Health - Becoming an Individual: Personality, Individuality, and
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<http://www.faqs.org/health/Healthy-Living-V3/Mental-Health-Becoming-an-individual-
personality-individuality-and-temperament.html>.

Haight-Angelo 41
O'Connor, Flannery. "Everything That Rises Must Converge." The Short Story and its Writer.
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1559.

Haight-Angelo 42
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ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2007. 1305-1312.
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