Mothers and daughters

At any moment, a time comes where young women see their mothers outside of their motherly presence. Viewing them as a person beyond what they have done and accomplished beyond their offspring. What could be worse is the young woman sees and considers the realities and decisions her mother - this woman - has made and disagrees with them. It is a difficult place to be, in a position as a young woman and seeing the future laid before you embodied in the mother figure. The daughter can choose to push back and turn against the mother’s role and the woman she knows her mother to be; in order to terminate this prophesied future. Yet, there is promise if the daughter is somehow able to toss this image of the future aside, along with her ego to embrace her mother as a woman and not as an embodiment of the fear of an unknowable future.

In Eudora Welty's works, the importance of the mother-daughter relationship lies in its ability to expand the reader's understanding of the individual's search for enlightenment. As a wanderer acts and reacts to people and events, she is most often influenced by her mother, or mother-like figures, and other pairs around her. Welty's bonded women represent the historical, religious, psychological, and sociological studies of this interwoven human relationship; her characters are subtly crafted to develop a myriad of close and, at the same time, distant bonds. Welty emphasizes the mothers and daughters of Losing Battles, Delta Wedding, and The Optimist's Daughter though Virgie of The Golden Apples represents the strongest point for the conclusion that the mother-daughter relationship supports and enhances Welty's works.

Our lives are a series of patterns. In Katrina's case, fear plays a reoccurring role. Each chapter illustrates one particular picture in the protagonist's existence; each scene depicts a different year of her life, ranging from age six to twenty-six. The human body, both inner and outer, is a theme throughout, as well as her relationship with her mother. Each chapter title is named after a type of phobia, ranging from Mnemophobia (the fear of memories) to Ostraconophobia (the fear of shellfish).

The purpose of this phenomenological research was to explore the lived experiences of daughters and daughters-in-law who care for aging parents at home. Interviews were conducted with four daughters and two daughters-in-law. The interviews were audiotaped and the researcher conducted observational field notes. The interviews were utilized for data-collection and then transcribed into text. The researcher followed van Manen's method. Essential themes were frustration, anger, guilt, lack of social life, effects on jobs and family support as described by the participants. Variant themes unfolded as themes not shared by all the participants: care for the caregiver, education for the caregiver, being a detective, coming out of his shell, like a robot, reference of aging parent as a patient and judgment by others. The researcher uncovered interpretive themes of unconditional devotion, struggling with childlike mannerism, everlasting vigilance and ambivalence through a paradoxical view. Lonely journey surfaced as the metatheme.