Parents play a crucial role in the development of children, varying from culture to culture. Although imperative, the mother and daughter relationship can be trivial. Many women writers have exercised their knowledge and shared their feelings in their works to depict the importance and influence of mothers upon daughters. Jamaica Kincaid, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Kiana Davenport are only three of the many women writers who have included mother and daughter themes in their texts. These writers explore the journeys of women in search of spiritual, mental and individual knowledge. As explained by these authors, their mothers' words and actions often influence women both negatively and positively. These writers also show the effects of a mother's lesson on a daughter, while following women's paths to discovery of their own voice or identity. In Kincaid's poem, Girl; Hong Kingston's novel, Woman Warrior; and Davenport's short story, The Lipstick Tree, various themes are presented in contrasting views and contexts, including the influence of mothers upon daughters.
It is said that a girl can often develop some of her mother's characteristics. Although, in their works, Kincaid, Hong Kingston and Davenport depict their protagonists searching for their own identities, yet being influenced in different ways by their mothers. Jamaica Kincaid's poem Girl, is about a young woman coming-of-age receiving helpful advice from her mother. In this poem, Kincaid addresses several issues where a mother's influence is beneficial to a young woman's character. The mother, or speaker, in Girl, offers advice to her daughter- advice that she otherwise would not learn without being told or shown. The mother advises the daughter about everyday tasks, and how to go about them properly (in her opinion).
'Wash the white clothes on Monday and put them on the stone heap; wash the color clothes on Tuesday and put them on the clothesline to day; don't walk bare-head in the hot sun;…this is how to sew on a button; this is how to make a buttonhole for the button you have just sewed on; … this is how you sweep a corner; this is how you sweep the whole house…';
Most importantly, the mother offers advice that only a mother should. Although she is being informative and authoritative, the mother's tone is often condescending. In particul...
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...m, falling asleep wrapped in the smell of her childhood…She climbed to the top of the bunker again, and studied the horizon, seeing herself decanted into the future, going even further than WeWak…';
Jamaica Kincaid, Maxine Hong Kingston, Kiana Davenport utilize the methods of fiction and non-fiction to represent influential relationships such as the mother and daughter. In each of these texts, the writers present their perspective and knowledge, varying by culture and context. From each writer, the expression that individuality and lessons learned from mothers are essential for the development for a woman's identity. But most importantly, these writers evoke that it is beneficial to discover femininity and strength by going beyond tradition and the norm.
Works Cited
Davenport, Kiana. The Lipstick Tree. Women Writers coursepack. Fall 1999.
http://www.crwrl.utexas.e du/~natasha/usauto_html/kingston/gender.html. Kincaid, Jamica. Girl. Women Writers coursepack. Fall 1999
Kingston, Maxine Hong. The Woman Warrior. Random House: NY, April 1976.
The theme of, mother daughter relationships can be hard but are always worth it in the end, is portrayed by Amy Tan in this novel. This theme is universal, still relevant today, and will be relevant for forever. Relationships are really important, especially with your mom. “ A mother is best. A mother knows what is inside you”
On the night that Jessop’s body was found, the first snowfall of the season was challenging police to find any evidence related to the case at the scene. The police conducted their search ...
On May 21, 1980, Katherine Reitz Brow was stabbed over 30 times in her Ayer, Massachusetts home. There were bloodstains throughout the house and her purse, some jewelry and an envelope where she had been known to keep cash was missing. Investigators found hair, blood ladened fingerprints on the toaster and the kitchen faucet which was left running. A bloody paring knife which was perceived to be the murder weapon was found in the waste basket. Mr. Water’s became a suspect because he lived next to the victim with his girlfriend, Brenda Marsh. He also worked at a local diner that Ms. Brow frequented and employee’s revealed that she had been known to keep large amounts of cash in her home.
Mary Maloney is accused of murdering her husband with an unknown weapon for an unknown reason. Chief detective, Patrick Maloney was murdered last night at his own house, no suspects have been identified yet and the search for the murder weapon was futile. Apparently, the officer had come home exhausted from work and was waiting for his wife Mrs. Mary Maloney, who left to buy food across the street for their dinner. According to a statement, Mary arrives home from the grocery store to find her husband dead on the living room floor.
The following day, a fisherman was at the Treeland Blvd. pond when he spotted some stuff floating in the water. Upon closer inspection he noticed it was firefighters gear and figured something must be wrong since firefighters do not just leave their equipment. The police had the pond drained and found a green Chevy truck at the bottom. Inside the truck was a substantial amount of blood; when the blood was tested it was that of Brandy Hall. The amount of blood in the cab of the truck makes it unlikely she will be found alive. The woods around the pond were also searched but nothing more was found.
Intergenerational conflicts are an undeniable facet of life. With every generation of society comes new experiences, new ideas, and many times new morals. It is the parent’s job go work around these differences to reach their children and ensure they receive the necessary lessons for life. Flannery O’Connor makes generous use of this idea in several of her works. Within each of the three short stories, we see a very strained relationship between a mother figure and their child. We quickly find that O’Conner sets up the first to be receive the brunt of our attention and to some extent loathing, but as we grow nearer to the work’s characteristic sudden and violent ending, we grow to see the finer details and what really makes these relations
In “ Two kinds” Amy Tan uses characterization, point of view, imagery and mother’s diction to convey her theme of mother daughter relationships. i learned that i cant always please my parents in everything i do. but i also know that i owe them so much for what they have sacrificed to bring me here so i always listen to there advise and try my best to be a obedient son even though i can be rebellious at times just like
Twenty-two years into the murder of JonBenet Ramsey murdered in her Boulder, Colorado and Ramsey’s case is still unsolved. JonBenet Ramsey’s autopsy entailed blunt force trauma, sexual assault, and unimaginable aggression (ABC 20/20, 2016). On December 26, 1996, Patsy Ramsey revealed her six-year-old daughter has disappeared from her bedroom. Patsy immediately believed her disappearance was strange considering her husband John Ramsey, their ten-year-old son, Burke, and herself was sleep. Patsy Ramsey frantically dials the emergency hotline, reports her daughter kidnapping, and soon thereafter a Boulder Police officer arrived.
Jamaica Kincaid’s success as a writer was not easily attained as she endured struggles of having to often sleep on the floor of her apartment because she could not afford to buy a bed. She described herself as being a struggling writer, who did not know how to write, but sheer determination and a fortunate encounter with the editor of The New Yorker, William Shawn who set the epitome for her writing success. Ms. Kincaid was a West-Indian American writer who was the first writer and the first individual from her island of Antigua to achieve this goal. Her genre of work includes novelists, essayist, and a gardener. Her writing style has been described as having dreamlike repetition, emotional truth and autobiographical underpinnings (Tahree, 2013). Oftentimes her work have been criticized for its anger and simplicity and praised for its keen observation of character, wit and lyrical quality. But according to Ms. Kincaid her writing, which are mostly autobiographical, was an act of saving her life by being able to express herself in words. She used her life experiences and placed them on paper as a way to make sense of her past. Her experience of growing up in a strict single-parent West-Indian home was the motivation for many of her writings. The knowledge we garnered at an early age influenced the choice we make throughout our life and this is no more evident than in the writings of Jamaica Kincaid.
An evolving mother-daughter relationship is the focus of Jamaica Kincaid s autobiographical The Circling Hand. Like the narrator, Kincaid grew up in Antigua as the only child her mother and carpenter father. Also like the narrator, Kincaid admits her mother kept everything she ever wore. This narrative is a coming of age story, in which this dynamic and unusual mother-daughter relationship plays an important role. Through the beginning bliss of childhood to the frustrating stage of adolescence, this unique relationship, in which the daughter is infatuated with her mother, seems to control the narrator s development as a freethinking person.
Throughout life we experience and form many relationships and these relationships help define who we are. However, of all potential relationships, the mother-daughter relationship is the strongest relationship that can be formed. A mother-daughter relationship is all of the following: loving, supportive, encouraging, aspirational, inspiring, emotional, and trusting. When reading the books for my Contemporary Women Writers class, the mother-daughter relationship was a key theme throughout. The women writers of Beloved, Speaking in Tongues, and Runaway have thoughtfully captured the power of the mother-daughter relationship in a light that showcases this special bond’s (struggles and triumphs/ability to consume lives/ability to self destruct/ability to both create and destroy), demonstrating that these writers share the compassion and value of the relationship.
These women authors have served as an eye-opener for the readers, both men and women alike, in the past, and hopefully still in the present. (There are still cultures in the world today, where women are treated as unfairly as women were treated in the prior centuries). These women authors have impacted a male dominated society into reflecting on of the unfairness imposed upon women. Through their writings, each of these women authors who existed during that masochistic Victorian era, risked criticism and retribution. Each author ignored convention a...
the narrator had to deal with as well as her mother constantly made declarations about her
The rifts between mothers and daughters continue to separate them, but as the daughters get older they become more tolerant of their mothers. They learn they do not know everything about their mothers, and the courage their mothers showed during their lives is astounding. As they get older they learn they do not know everything, and that their mothers can still teach them much about life. They grow closer to their mothers and learn to be proud of their heritage and their culture. They acquire the wisdom of understanding, and that is the finest feeling to have in the world.
he told the police and they got a search warrant to look in his house. The guy’s name was Keith Moore, a detective for the police who happened to be on the news for the Hartsville murders. The police raided Keith’s home only to find emptiness. They searched his room and found a journal with addresses. The police cross checked the addresses and two of them were addresses of the people who were murdered. The journal had many addresses, 25 to be exact. The police searched every home only to find almost nothing. Two detectives were searching a home when they found a note that had an address leading to a warehouse. The police called in the SWAT, raiding the building. What they found next was the most brutal thing they would ever see. Five bodies lying on the floor with what looked like torture equipment. On the wall written in blood read, “You’re too late.” The police identified the bodies and one of them belonged to