Mothers and Daughters - Why Good Mothers Don't Make for Great Stories

Clare Flynn
Jul 21
5 min read

Anne Vallayer-Coster - Portrait of an Elderly Woman with her Daughter - Bowes Museum - public domain

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the absence of mothers in my books. If mothers are present, they’re often uncaring or even malevolent.

It's making me feel guilty. What does this say about my relationship with my own mother?

My mother, Kay, was an inspiration and wonderful role model – kind, caring, interesting, clever, musical. Writer of poetry, mother of five, teacher, pianist, gardener, golfer and bridge player. She had a cracking sense of humour and a beautiful smile, as well as a lust for travel, for art, for culture. My siblings sometimes assumed she and I didn’t get on. In truth, despite occasional heated exchanges, we were very close indeed. I realise now that our conflicts mainly arose because we were so alike.

With such a great mother, why then do I avoid mothers in my books or cast them as less than caring and often cruel?

It’s because good mothers don’t make for great stories. Main characters have to face setbacks and challenges, and having a loving caring mother on hand to offer advice and share the burden would undermine this. So, I’m sorry to say, in my books the mothers are usually dead or thousands of miles away.

Dead mothers

The death of the mother of Elizabeth Morton in A Greater World happens before the start of the book and is the cause of Elizabeth’s father going off the rails and hence setting Elizabeth’s travails in motion. Because Mrs Morton is no longer there to support either her husband or her daughters this leads to events that wouldn’t have happened had she been present to provide stability. Her very absence in the book is the fuse that sets the story alight. It’s like the concept of negative space in art, which stresses the importance of the empty space around the portrayed objects.

Jack Brennan in Letters from a Patchwork Quilt has a mother who is the victim of a belligerent husband and Jack escapes the family home at the start of the book. The love of his life, Eliza, is an orphan. Neither of them has anyone but each other to draw upon as things start to go wrong.

Hephzibah (Heppy) Wildman of The Green Ribbons buries both her parents on the opening page of the book. She has no other living relatives and hence is entirely dependent on her own devices as she makes her way in the world. Again, had her mother been alive she would have steered Heppy away from the mess she got herself into.

Cold and distant mothers

Ginny Dunbar of Kurinji Flowers does have a mother – a cold and distant widow who packs her off to India and a loveless marriage to avoid an imminent scandal. In this instance, the mother, while seeking to support her daughter, does so by effectively casting her out.

Evie in The Pearl of Penang is abandoned by her widowed mother who has married a Texan oil baron and never appears in the book. Evie herself is required to take on the role of mother to her stepdaughter Jasmine and does so instinctively.

Alice in The Hearts of Glass series (The Artist’s Apprentice/ The Artist’s Wife/The Artist’s War) has a troubled relationship with her mother and they become estranged. The lack of empathy between mother and daughter is a trigger for Alice to leave home and seek refuge with her aunt. With her own parents she is allowed no voice, and is unheard – hence the need to remove herself in order to find herself. Her aunt offers emotional support, occupying the role of friend and confidante rather than mother. Alice, like Evie, becomes a stepmother and like Evie instinctively seeks to supply the love so absent in her own mother.

In The Star of Ceylon, my latest novel, Stella’s mother is dead. They were close – yet Stella discovers that behind their relationship was a long-held secret that comes as a terrible shock when her father reveals it. Her professor father plays a pivotal role in the story – relying on Stella’s knowledge in his academic research while denying her the right to explore it for her own benefit. It’s only once the long-buried secret is revealed that the two can transition to a more mutually supportive role. When in need of some female counsel, it is offered to her, unsolicited, by a virtual stranger, Mrs Moreland, during their brief encounter at the pearl fishery.

The exception that proves the rule

Mary Helston in A Prisoner from Penang is a rare exception to my mother-daughter rule – she is in captivity with her mother, and they are close and affectionate. But both, as prisoners of the Japanese, lack agency, so Mrs Helston can’t swoop in and help her daughter. In fact, it’s the other way round – she is dependent on Mary and hence becomes another problem for Mary to worry about and try to protect throughout the terrible circumstances they are placed in.

So, all my protagonists are dependent on their own resources, or rely on the essentially temporary support of other maternal figures. Their mothers are dead, absent or the source of more problems.

A precedent in Jane Austen

Watching the recent 3-part BBC celebration of Jane Austen and her work, it’s apparent that Austen also relegated mothers to similar fates. I suspect that my love of reading Austen has meant that I had unconsciously absorbed this terrible or absent mother trope!

In Pride and Prejudice, Mrs Bennet is damningly described as “a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper” and contributes to Lizzie’s problems. The Dashwood girls in Sense and Sensibility have a mother who is loving and kind but does Marianne no service by acting like a friend rather than a mother. Emma Woodhouse’s mother is dead – and so is Anne Elliot’s in Persuasion. Fanny Price is given away by her feckless mother to the care of two awful aunts in Mansfield Park. Finally there is Catherine Morland of Northanger Abbey, who has a sensible loving mother – but one who, with nine other children and a clergyman husband, doesn’t have a lot of time to spare for her daughter.