The Mother · Chapter
Spring's Longing explained
As spring returns, the mother labors in the fields with her son and teaches her blind daughter simple tasks.
What happens
As spring returns, the mother labors in the fields with her son and teaches her blind daughter simple tasks. She is called to assist her cousin's wife in childbirth, and the experience awakens a deep longing for her absent husband. Returning home, she struggles with frustration and tenderness toward her youngest child.
Themes in this chapter
Motherhood and Sacrifice
The mother labors tirelessly for her children, yet struggles with her own emotional and physical needs.
Desire and Repression
The mother's longing for her husband is awakened by the spring and the birth she witnesses, but she suppresses her feelings.
Poverty and Survival
The family's survival depends on the mother's hard labor and the children's contributions to farming and household chores.
Characters to notice
- The Mother
Labors in the fields, teaches her children, assists in childbirth, and experiences a renewed longing for her husband.
- The Young Girl
The blind daughter who helps with household tasks despite her impaired vision.
- The Elder Son
Works alongside his mother in the fields, driving the beast.
- Child
The youngest child, now walking, who is weaning and resists suckling.
- The Old Mother
Grows more idle and forgetful, caring mainly for the youngest boy.
- Cousin
The cousin's wife who gives birth and calls for the mother's help.
Key passages
“the mother felt her softness come back in her and she would not let the girl have him, but she lifted him suddenly herself and smoothed the dust from him, and wiped his tearful face with her palm, and she blamed herself secretly with a sort of shame that she had made the child suffer for her own pain.”
The mother's tenderness returned, and she took the child from the girl, dusted him off, and wiped his tears, feeling ashamed for having taken her frustration out on him.
Shows the mother's internal conflict between her own desires and her role as a caregiver.
“Suddenly her longing streamed out of her like a cry, 'Oh—come home—come home!' Yes, she seemed to hear her own voice cry the words, and she stopped, frightened lest she had called them out before the young girl.”
Her yearning for her husband erupted silently, and she feared she had spoken aloud in front of the girl.
Highlights the mother's repressed desire and loneliness.