The Mother · Chapter
The Binding of the Blind Maid explained
After a severe illness, the mother grows weak and increasingly dependent on her son's wife.
What happens
After a severe illness, the mother grows weak and increasingly dependent on her son's wife. Pressured by the household and her own frailty, she reluctantly agrees to wed her blind daughter to a poor family in the hills. The old gossip arranges the match, and despite her initial resistance, the mother accepts the necessity.
Themes in this chapter
Motherhood and Sacrifice
The mother sacrifices her desire to keep her blind daughter at home due to her own failing health and family pressure.
Family Conflict and Favoritism
Tension between the mother and her son's wife over the blind maid's place in the household.
Poverty and Survival
Economic hardship forces the family to consider the blind daughter as an extra mouth to feed, leading to her marriage.
Characters to notice
- The Mother
Struggles with illness and weakness, eventually yields to pressure to marry off her blind daughter.
- The Woman
The son's wife; cares for the mother during illness but openly complains about the blind maid's presence.
- The Young Girl
The blind daughter; feels unwanted and asks her mother to be wed anywhere she is wanted.
- The Elder Son
Supports his wife's view that the blind sister should be married off.
- The Young Man
The younger son; visits his mother occasionally but leaves due to conflict with his brother.
- Cousin
Advises the mother that she cannot care for the blind maid forever.
Key passages
“Mother, I cannot stay here in my brother's house. Oh, mother, I think I would sooner be wed anywhere so that I could be somewhere I was wanted!”
The blind daughter tells her mother she feels unwelcome and would rather marry anyone than remain a burden.
Highlights the daughter's desperation and the mother's reluctant decision.
“What you said was true. I see my maid would be better wed and let it be to that one you know, for I am too weary to look here and there, and always weary somehow nowadays since that flux took me a year or two agone.”
The mother admits to the gossip that she is too tired to oppose the marriage and agrees to the match.
Shows the mother's physical and emotional exhaustion.
“So could you tend her if you lived forever, sister, but when you are dead, and we dead too, perhaps, or very old and not masters any more before our children save in name, then who will tend her?”
The cousin argues that the mother cannot protect her blind daughter forever.
Forces the mother to confront her own mortality and the necessity of the marriage.