A Woman; like mother, like daughter

In A Woman by Sabilla Aleramo, the narrator criticizes her mother's weakness and passive role as a mother, but yet makes the same mistakes when she becomes a mother. The narrator is fifteen and is becoming more observant of the differences between her father that she idolizes and her mother, whom the narrator is unsure she loves. The narrator describes her mother as "increasingly self-absorbed as though she had withdrawn to live in an eternal desert" (30). The narrator has trouble acknowledging her feelings towards her mother because of her mother's distance in raising her and her siblings. Also, the narrator looks down at her mother for not being a stronger female figure. After the narrator's father had insulted the mother, the narrator "began to think of her, for the first time as a sick woman, melancholy and weak, who didn't want to be cured or even acknowledge that anything was wrong" (19). The narrator is ashamed of her mother's illness. She sees her even weaker because her mother does not want to admit that she is mentally unstable. Even though the narrator censures her mother because of her weaknesses, the narrator does the same things when she has a child. Three days after her husband departs to start his job that was previously her fathers, she contemplates her progression thus far. "I despised myself for being thus weak...I was a coward...my suffering was pointless: it brought me no comfort and helped neither myself nor my son" (174). She realizes that she is weak but does not know what to do to become strong. Most of her life she is submissive to the people around her, especially her husband, and this allows her to shirk her responsibility as a great mother. The narrator is just as distant of a mother as her mother was to her. The narrator "either demanded too much of [her son]...or else [she] neglected him, leaving him to play in the garden or to run to the factory...while [she] ignored his real demands" (191). Her lifetime of sadness has caused her to neglect her child even though she disliked her mother for acting the same way. The narrator recognizes what she is doing, but does little to change her relationship with her son later in her life.