Rebecca Wells paints a picture of the various roles that women often must encounter in their lives: mother, daughter, friend. As said by Charlotte Observer "She [Wells] speaks eloquently to what it means to be a mother, a daughter, a wife-and somehow, at last, a person." Wells uses a captivating style to create a simple plot, memorable symbolism and a reoccurring theme of friendship. The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood teaches about the importance of giving and receiving love and finding joy in everyday life.
The simplistic plot of the novel and the overall theme of love allows the author to span the lives of the main characters. The reader sees the span of the life of two of the main characters, Sidda and her mother Vivi, as they struggle to love each other based on their own childhood experiences. The reader also sees our two main characters in parallel encountering love and affairs of the heart; yet the most powerful love throughout the book is the love of four friends who stick together through the good and the bad. Vivi loves the Ya-Ya’s; as adolescents they are looking for love and someone to look up to. Vivi didn’t know how to love Sidda because Vivi’s mother didn’t know how to love her; therefore, Sidda doesn’t know how to love Connor because she has never experienced love and is now afraid to be in love. The simplicity of the novel is that everyone is always looking to be loved. The simplicity is that in real life people are always searching to be loved, or finding love. Near the beginning of the novel when the ya-ya’s are in their adolescence as young girls, going through the normal obstacles of childhood- fighting with their parents, getting into mischief, smoking and breaking curfew- they realize that by sticking together they can get through anything. They formalize this bond with a ceremony early on, "I am a member of the royal and true tribe of the Ya-Ya’s…I do solemnly swear to be loyal sister Ya-Ya’s, and to love and look out for them, and never forsake them through thick and thin, until I take my last human breath" (Wells 71). Wells shows the reader that the inability to show love can be passed down through generations: Sidda expresses to Connor why she is afraid to marry him, "She [Vivi] didn’t know how to love me, so I don’t know how to love you" (Wells 284). Sidda is saying that her mother couldn’t ...
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...and that it really was their friendship that guided them through their whole life. And that together they really were all one. "I see lightness and ease. I see suffering somewhere in my mother’s [Vivi] eyes, but also I feel the camaraderie, laughter, friendship" (Wells 313). The Ya-Ya’s are very much at ease giving love to each other. That is what helped them to sustain their friendship for so long and helped them throughout their lives to love each other.
Through the lives of five extraordinary women: Sidda, Vivi, Caro, Necie and Teensy, Wells uses a captivating style to create a simple plot. Memorable symbolism and the reoccurring themes of friendship and love in the novel The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. Wells shows the reader that love and friendship, even in the smallest form, can sustain through tragedy and triumph-the bonds of the Ya-Ya’s.
Works Cited
Primary Source:
Wells, Rebecca. The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. New York New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1996.
Secondary Source:
Wells, Rebecca. The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. New York New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1996.
Hurston, Lora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1990.
Wells, Kim. "My Antonia: A Survey of Critical Attitudes." August 23, 1999. Online Internet. November 4, 1998.
Foster, Frances Smith (1993). Written By Herself: Literary Production by African American Women, 1796-1892. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indian University Press.
Pessoni, Michele. “‘She was laughing at their God.’: Discovering the Goddess Within Sula.” African American Review 29 (1995): 439-451.
Sarah’s Key, though depressing, and hard to read is still an prodigious book. While the new historicist criticism applies more to Sarah’s parts of the story, as it occurred in the past, this eventually leads to a more feminist type of appeal. Tatiana de Rosnay talks about her inspiration
With a heart-full of advice and wisdom, Dinah maturates from a simple- minded young girl to a valiant independent individual. “For a moment I weighed the idea of keeping my secret and remaining a girl, the thought passes quickly. I could only be what I was. And that was a woman” (170). This act of puberty is not only her initiation into womanhood but the red tent as well. She is no longer just an observer of stories, she is one of them, part of their community now. On account of this event, Dinah’s sensuality begins to blossom and she is able to conceive the notion of true love.
Frankel, Valerie Estelle. From Girl to Goddess: The Heroine's Journey through Myth and Legend. Jefferson, NC: McFarland &, 2010. Print.
We see this with Owen Meany when John tells us that Owen “gave me more than he ever took from me” (A Prayer for Owen Meany 2.509-511). Even with the death of John’s mother at the hands of Owen these too prove to be the best of friends. A friend is someone who is “A positive influence on your life” (What is Friendship? Friendship.about.com), this friendship proves this theory by the boys helping John finding his identity and Owen’s destiny. Along with friendship in the novel we see the importance of family and the role that it plays throughout the novel.
Kelley, Margot Anne. "Sisters' Choices: Quilting Aesthetics in Contemporary African-American Women's Fiction." Christian, ed., Everyday 167-94.
After a more detailed examination of the stories, however, it becomes evident that each individual is striving to find love. Though love is a universal goal, each person's criteria for a meaningful, fulfilling and loving relationship varies. This is clearly demonstrated by the different situations in which the characters find themselves. The conventional, stereotypical, and almost cliché demonstration of love can be seen in stories A & D, where the characters simply "fall in love and get married".
The mother of the three daughters in the novel is Mah. Mah’s first marriage was to a man named Dulcie Fu. This marriage was a relationship that was founded solely on infatuation. Mah was young and thought she was in love. Soon after the first daughter Leila was born, her husband up and left to Australia and never returned. This happens all too often in today’s society. Young women in America become overly infatuated without even knowing what a relationship involves. The media portrays relationships at a young age as perfect and unending. However this is rarely the case. According to divorcestatistics.org, “50% of marriages end in divorce of couples married under the age of 25.” Love means something different to everyone. Each person seeks different points of interest in a relationship, and what you put into a relationship will rarely be equal to what you get back. Love can leave a scar on your heart but also healing to your soul.
The book by Faith Ringgold entitled Faith Ringgold, explains the story of a mother and daughter during the Harlem Renaissance era in New York. According to the book, the series deals with many generational issues of a middle class black family and focuses on the drama, and tension between a mother and daughter who are profoundly different. The series represents a relationship much like the relationship between Faith Ringgold and her two daughters. The story follows a daughter named, Celia Cleopatra Price, a graduate of Howard University, who graduated first in her class. She is unable to identify with her mother, CeeCee. CeeCee had only finished the 8th grade and dropped out due to her pregnancy with Celia. CeeCee is a very creative individual and makes bags; she is married to”the dentist”, who a young CeeCee meets in the first quilt Love in the School Yard. CeeCee thinks Celia has develope...
Coontz, Stephanie. A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s. New York: Basic Books, 2011. 42.
Brown, Rosellen. “Honey Child.” Women’s Review of Books. Vol. 19. No. 7. Philadelphia: Old City Publishing. 2002. 11. Print.
8) Sterling, Dorothy. (1984). We Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Norton.