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Her Mother's Daughter
Famed feminist Marilyn French’s life-affirming saga celebrates the love and sacrifices of four generations of Polish-American mothers and daughters.
With Bella Dabrowski close to death, her daughter Anastasia, who has reinvented herself as Stacey Stevens, is trying to penetrate the longstanding barriers between them to understand the woman who gave her life.
Through the eyes of Stacey, a divorced, feminist New York photographer, we get to know Bella, a remarkable woman, wife, and mother. The daughter of Polish immigrants, Bella, who renamed herself Belle, clawed her way out of poverty and settled into a middle-class existence.
Shifting perspectives between the two women, the reader is drawn into Belle’s life through the lean years of the Depression as well as Stacey’s recollections of her youthful marriage, a lesbian affair, and her tempestuous relationship with her own daughter, Arden.
From the groundbreaking author of The Women’s Room, Her Mother’s Daughter explores past and present to reveal the complex, indestructible bonds between daughters and mothers.
With Bella Dabrowski close to death, her daughter Anastasia, who has reinvented herself as Stacey Stevens, is trying to penetrate the longstanding barriers between them to understand the woman who gave her life.
Through the eyes of Stacey, a divorced, feminist New York photographer, we get to know Bella, a remarkable woman, wife, and mother. The daughter of Polish immigrants, Bella, who renamed herself Belle, clawed her way out of poverty and settled into a middle-class existence.
Shifting perspectives between the two women, the reader is drawn into Belle’s life through the lean years of the Depression as well as Stacey’s recollections of her youthful marriage, a lesbian affair, and her tempestuous relationship with her own daughter, Arden.
From the groundbreaking author of The Women’s Room, Her Mother’s Daughter explores past and present to reveal the complex, indestructible bonds between daughters and mothers.
Paperback
First published January 1, 1987
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About the author
Marilyn French
49 books279 followersShe attended Hofstra University (then Hofstra College) where she also received a master's degree in English in 1964. She married Robert M. French Jr. in 1950; the couple divorced in 1967. She later attended Harvard University, earning a Ph.D in 1972. Years later she became an instructor at Hofstra University.
In her work, French asserted that women's oppression is an intrinsic part of the male-dominated global culture. Beyond Power: On Women, Men and Morals (1985) is a historical examination of the effects of patriarchy on the world.
French's 1977 novel, The Women's Room, follows the lives of Mira and her friends in 1950s and 1960s America, including Val, a militant radical feminist. The novel portrays the details of the lives of women at this time and also the feminist movement of this era in the United States. At one point in the book the character Val says "all men are rapists". This quote has often been incorrectly attributed to Marilyn French herself. French's first book was a thesis on James Joyce.
French was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in 1992. This experience was the basis for her book A Season in Hell: A Memoir (1998).
She was also mentioned in the 1982 ABBA song, "The Day Before You Came". The lyrics that mentioned French were: "I must have read a while, the latest one by Marilyn French or something in that style".
French died from heart failure at age 79 on May 2, 2009 in Manhattan, New York City. She is survived by her son Robert and daughter Jamie.
In her work, French asserted that women's oppression is an intrinsic part of the male-dominated global culture. Beyond Power: On Women, Men and Morals (1985) is a historical examination of the effects of patriarchy on the world.
French's 1977 novel, The Women's Room, follows the lives of Mira and her friends in 1950s and 1960s America, including Val, a militant radical feminist. The novel portrays the details of the lives of women at this time and also the feminist movement of this era in the United States. At one point in the book the character Val says "all men are rapists". This quote has often been incorrectly attributed to Marilyn French herself. French's first book was a thesis on James Joyce.
French was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in 1992. This experience was the basis for her book A Season in Hell: A Memoir (1998).
She was also mentioned in the 1982 ABBA song, "The Day Before You Came". The lyrics that mentioned French were: "I must have read a while, the latest one by Marilyn French or something in that style".
French died from heart failure at age 79 on May 2, 2009 in Manhattan, New York City. She is survived by her son Robert and daughter Jamie.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 63 reviews
September 13, 2020
"Her Mother's Daughter" was, for me, one of the great novels I've read in my life and will not forget. I picked up a tattered, used version in a book store years ago simply because I had enjoyed The Women's Room so much and wanted to read something else by Marilyn French.
This one - and its 4-generational story of women - touched me deeper than The Women's Room. I found myself dog-earring pages where the feelings and worldviews expressed by the characters perfectly described things I have felt and the way I have perceived the world, but never been able to put into words. I loved the idea of getting to know one character in particular by getting to know her grandmother, mother and daughter. Women's lives, experiences, and journeys are so interwoven and this story drives it home. Like others have said, yes, it is a long book. It drags at parts. There is maybe too much description sometimes. But I read it slowly, over time, and thought "this is how women's relationships with each other go. Slow, over time, sometimes too much detail (TMI as we call it, haha)." Life is sometimes dull, people are sometimes slow to get to know. I found myself enjoying the slow pace of this book,
It is interesting that several reviewers called the main character a narcissist. At first this shocked me, I didn't see that in her at all. As I considered why others may have viewed her that way, it seemed ironic to describe her as narcissistic. If I had to define the primary feminist theme of this book, it would be the gender struggle on wide spectrum between selflessness and narcissist - and why decisions that men make regularly and stereotypical do not make them selfish, but those same decisions made by a woman (and sometimes for better motives) make her selfish or unfeminine. The underlying theme woven throughout the generations of women in Her Mother's Daughter is that pull between choosing self and sacrificing self, and where to find the balance between those two. Anastasia battles with this balance throughout the book, and gives much of herself to many people: That we can walk away from the story calling her narcissistic seems to drive home the author's point of the entire 700-page story.
Anastasia's mother, and mother-in-law, and sister, err on the side of sacrificing self, while Anastasia errs on the side of choosing self, and living more of a "man's life" as she calls it. The photography and publishing work she chooses, in a time when women didn't choose such things, brings her fulfillment, excitement, adventure. She gives her children everything else, she gives her husband everything else. EVERYTHING that she has to give outside of that career, she gives away to other people. She recognizes, once her family is grown and gone, that she has killed herself in some ways. Killed her emotions, her spirit, lost parts of herself physically due to the sacrifices she made to her family - sacrifices that were arguably MORE costly than other women that chose a traditional path, because she was determined to give more than she was able in order to make up for the energy she gave her career. And yet, by modern day readers, in modern day times, she is still called a narcissist. As a woman who finds myself in the same boat, often finding myself pushing to give my family the same amount of time, energy and attention as I would if I didn't work many hours away from them, I have so much empathy and love for this character that can't quite seem to find the balance between self and others.
About this balance, Anastasia says so profoundly "There is quality of attention you can pay to yourself that makes you more sensitive to other people. Egotism, selfishness, these words should be discarded. Everything I learned when I was young was lies. Because the way Mother feels, the way I feel when I am in the black hole, is totally self-involved, yet there is no self in it, but an absence of self, an absence of love, abandonment to the ecstasy of feeling abandoned. And the absence of self is a punishment of others: I know this, I feel it. Whereas when you start to think, if you can let yourself think about how you are and how you act and what you want and what you like and don't like - suddenly other people jolt into color, pop into relief like a movie film suddenly brought into focus.
Toward the end, she acknowledges in her review of her life that women's tasks she had deemed boring and menial had become joyful to her once she chose them - cooking, sewing, growing herbs. She realizes that these tasks never brought joy to her own mother, because her mother had that role, those tasks, dumped on her - it was never a choice. And choice makes all the difference. I love that she acknowledges this - a woman of the 70s, the early 80s. Today, 40 or 50 years later, I feel like there is so much more choice. Yes, it can be overwhelming. Yes, sometimes it seems like a "set path for women" might be a nice break from having to decide, and re-decide, and balance, and re-balance. But that freedom of choice means everything. So many women can choose career AND family AND masculine activities AND feminine activities and not be socially ostracized because of it, like our grandmothers were who chose this AND path. What's more, we can find friends in this life, build relationships with other women that have chosen similar. And it is because of the four generations of sacrifice behind us that we have that privilege.
My favorite part of the book, a very long quotation that summarizes the intent of the story for me:
"Suddenly it seemed that the occupations of my mother's days, the meat loaf, the lemon pie, the smocked pink silk dress she made me when I was eleven were as important, more important, than the dams an the hydroelectric plants, the oil rigs, the highways, the articles, the photographs, the magazines that occupied the other world, the world I was a part of. And that she was as heroic, more heroic than the men who built cars and planes, paved roads, shot bullets at each other, dropped bombs. Because what were they doing and what did it cost them? The highest life extracted from such men was their lies; they never had to pay the higher price, the price she'd paid- daily sacrifice, slow torture, day by day by day, the had way.
"Even forget sacrifice: I never worshiped sacrifice, never wanted to sacrifice, I wanted to LIVE, to experience everything. And I had - everything that seriously mattered to me. No, we shouldn't judge according to sacrifice but according to what a person gives, what contribution they make to the huge intricate organism that is the world, and what is worth what. And there is no contest. To nourish children and raise them against odds is in any time, any place, more valuable than to fix bolts in cars or design nuclear weapons or certainly, to take photographs for a magazine.
"...I approve of what I had an dhow I lived given the information I started with. It was that information that was flawed. Because I was taught that life was split into two parts, one for women, the other for men. If you were an extraordinary woman, you could take the man's role. And I was and I could and I did. Veni, vidi, vici.
"...but somehow, even though I was extraordinary and filled the man's role, I still had to be a woman. And even if I hadn't had kids, I still would have had to be a woman, because how many men are willing to be housewives for women? I had to be a housewife, somebody in the house has to, and even though for some years I had a man who did it, I had to do it too. And when I was being a housewife, I always felt resentful about it. I felt I was doing menial work, the damned laundry, the boring marketing, the dismal cooking. I was too intelligent, too talented, to do such stuff. That wasn't the part I'd chosen, I just had it dumped on me.
"It has taken me years, but now that there is only Franny and me and the kitchen sink, I enjoy cooking dinner...I sew on a button once in a while, or iron a blouse. It's no more tedious than cleaning all my [camera] lenses. I grow herbs in window boxes and love watching them get taller. It's taken me fifty years to realize that domestic things, women's work, can be fun and has its own dignity. I'd not seen that when I was a child because it wasn't fun for my mother. And it wasn't fun for my mother because she wasn't doing it by choice.
"That's the secret. Men choose what they do, or feel they choose what they do."
This one - and its 4-generational story of women - touched me deeper than The Women's Room. I found myself dog-earring pages where the feelings and worldviews expressed by the characters perfectly described things I have felt and the way I have perceived the world, but never been able to put into words. I loved the idea of getting to know one character in particular by getting to know her grandmother, mother and daughter. Women's lives, experiences, and journeys are so interwoven and this story drives it home. Like others have said, yes, it is a long book. It drags at parts. There is maybe too much description sometimes. But I read it slowly, over time, and thought "this is how women's relationships with each other go. Slow, over time, sometimes too much detail (TMI as we call it, haha)." Life is sometimes dull, people are sometimes slow to get to know. I found myself enjoying the slow pace of this book,
It is interesting that several reviewers called the main character a narcissist. At first this shocked me, I didn't see that in her at all. As I considered why others may have viewed her that way, it seemed ironic to describe her as narcissistic. If I had to define the primary feminist theme of this book, it would be the gender struggle on wide spectrum between selflessness and narcissist - and why decisions that men make regularly and stereotypical do not make them selfish, but those same decisions made by a woman (and sometimes for better motives) make her selfish or unfeminine. The underlying theme woven throughout the generations of women in Her Mother's Daughter is that pull between choosing self and sacrificing self, and where to find the balance between those two. Anastasia battles with this balance throughout the book, and gives much of herself to many people: That we can walk away from the story calling her narcissistic seems to drive home the author's point of the entire 700-page story.
Anastasia's mother, and mother-in-law, and sister, err on the side of sacrificing self, while Anastasia errs on the side of choosing self, and living more of a "man's life" as she calls it. The photography and publishing work she chooses, in a time when women didn't choose such things, brings her fulfillment, excitement, adventure. She gives her children everything else, she gives her husband everything else. EVERYTHING that she has to give outside of that career, she gives away to other people. She recognizes, once her family is grown and gone, that she has killed herself in some ways. Killed her emotions, her spirit, lost parts of herself physically due to the sacrifices she made to her family - sacrifices that were arguably MORE costly than other women that chose a traditional path, because she was determined to give more than she was able in order to make up for the energy she gave her career. And yet, by modern day readers, in modern day times, she is still called a narcissist. As a woman who finds myself in the same boat, often finding myself pushing to give my family the same amount of time, energy and attention as I would if I didn't work many hours away from them, I have so much empathy and love for this character that can't quite seem to find the balance between self and others.
About this balance, Anastasia says so profoundly "There is quality of attention you can pay to yourself that makes you more sensitive to other people. Egotism, selfishness, these words should be discarded. Everything I learned when I was young was lies. Because the way Mother feels, the way I feel when I am in the black hole, is totally self-involved, yet there is no self in it, but an absence of self, an absence of love, abandonment to the ecstasy of feeling abandoned. And the absence of self is a punishment of others: I know this, I feel it. Whereas when you start to think, if you can let yourself think about how you are and how you act and what you want and what you like and don't like - suddenly other people jolt into color, pop into relief like a movie film suddenly brought into focus.
Toward the end, she acknowledges in her review of her life that women's tasks she had deemed boring and menial had become joyful to her once she chose them - cooking, sewing, growing herbs. She realizes that these tasks never brought joy to her own mother, because her mother had that role, those tasks, dumped on her - it was never a choice. And choice makes all the difference. I love that she acknowledges this - a woman of the 70s, the early 80s. Today, 40 or 50 years later, I feel like there is so much more choice. Yes, it can be overwhelming. Yes, sometimes it seems like a "set path for women" might be a nice break from having to decide, and re-decide, and balance, and re-balance. But that freedom of choice means everything. So many women can choose career AND family AND masculine activities AND feminine activities and not be socially ostracized because of it, like our grandmothers were who chose this AND path. What's more, we can find friends in this life, build relationships with other women that have chosen similar. And it is because of the four generations of sacrifice behind us that we have that privilege.
My favorite part of the book, a very long quotation that summarizes the intent of the story for me:
"Suddenly it seemed that the occupations of my mother's days, the meat loaf, the lemon pie, the smocked pink silk dress she made me when I was eleven were as important, more important, than the dams an the hydroelectric plants, the oil rigs, the highways, the articles, the photographs, the magazines that occupied the other world, the world I was a part of. And that she was as heroic, more heroic than the men who built cars and planes, paved roads, shot bullets at each other, dropped bombs. Because what were they doing and what did it cost them? The highest life extracted from such men was their lies; they never had to pay the higher price, the price she'd paid- daily sacrifice, slow torture, day by day by day, the had way.
"Even forget sacrifice: I never worshiped sacrifice, never wanted to sacrifice, I wanted to LIVE, to experience everything. And I had - everything that seriously mattered to me. No, we shouldn't judge according to sacrifice but according to what a person gives, what contribution they make to the huge intricate organism that is the world, and what is worth what. And there is no contest. To nourish children and raise them against odds is in any time, any place, more valuable than to fix bolts in cars or design nuclear weapons or certainly, to take photographs for a magazine.
"...I approve of what I had an dhow I lived given the information I started with. It was that information that was flawed. Because I was taught that life was split into two parts, one for women, the other for men. If you were an extraordinary woman, you could take the man's role. And I was and I could and I did. Veni, vidi, vici.
"...but somehow, even though I was extraordinary and filled the man's role, I still had to be a woman. And even if I hadn't had kids, I still would have had to be a woman, because how many men are willing to be housewives for women? I had to be a housewife, somebody in the house has to, and even though for some years I had a man who did it, I had to do it too. And when I was being a housewife, I always felt resentful about it. I felt I was doing menial work, the damned laundry, the boring marketing, the dismal cooking. I was too intelligent, too talented, to do such stuff. That wasn't the part I'd chosen, I just had it dumped on me.
"It has taken me years, but now that there is only Franny and me and the kitchen sink, I enjoy cooking dinner...I sew on a button once in a while, or iron a blouse. It's no more tedious than cleaning all my [camera] lenses. I grow herbs in window boxes and love watching them get taller. It's taken me fifty years to realize that domestic things, women's work, can be fun and has its own dignity. I'd not seen that when I was a child because it wasn't fun for my mother. And it wasn't fun for my mother because she wasn't doing it by choice.
"That's the secret. Men choose what they do, or feel they choose what they do."
Read
March 17, 2009French works hard to present honest portrayals of how hard woman did and do work to make family work. Impressive, if a bit oppressive, at this point.
My what a heavy read - literarlly (686 pages) and literally (not much plot, lots (perhaps too much) emotion. All the characters at one time or another, and some all the time, were overwhelmed with melancholy, a sense of hopelessness and just plain inconsolable. I think the point of the book was to figure out why and French did that but goodness what a heavy read. That being said (or typed), it was a well written story with some interesting characters. Will definitely read The Women's Room at a later date - maybe closer to fall or winter.
My what a heavy read - literarlly (686 pages) and literally (not much plot, lots (perhaps too much) emotion. All the characters at one time or another, and some all the time, were overwhelmed with melancholy, a sense of hopelessness and just plain inconsolable. I think the point of the book was to figure out why and French did that but goodness what a heavy read. That being said (or typed), it was a well written story with some interesting characters. Will definitely read The Women's Room at a later date - maybe closer to fall or winter.
September 5, 2012
There were several occasions where I almost gave up on this book, just put it aside and say I gave it a shot, but I stuck it out to the end, 726 pages! Every time I was ready to quit, there would be some extremely real moment between a mother and daughter or harsh truth about the nature of relationships and generations that would suck me back in. Now that I've finished it I can't say I'm sorry I did, but it if I had it to do over again, I wouldn't.
Overall, it was of a depressing nature regarding a woman's lot in life years ago (although it would be a bit Pollyanna to suggest that all of that has gone away and everything is all equal in today's world). However, it was definitely written from an anti-male perspective that I felt was extremely slanted.
Overall, it was of a depressing nature regarding a woman's lot in life years ago (although it would be a bit Pollyanna to suggest that all of that has gone away and everything is all equal in today's world). However, it was definitely written from an anti-male perspective that I felt was extremely slanted.
February 24, 2010
If you read 300/600 pages, can you say you 'read' it?
THis book was SO FLIPPING LONG. Here's the thing with Marilyn French. Because of the longevity of her works, it begins to feel like the tenth season of a TV show you've been following. So you're drawn in and curious to see what happens, but you are also hit with a ton of details that really stop being interesting pretty soon. This traces mother daughter relationships with narratives that are often confusing as to who is speaking, and showing how many mistakes get repeated and how hard it is to raise kids. It was at times insightful but mostly really depressing.
THis book was SO FLIPPING LONG. Here's the thing with Marilyn French. Because of the longevity of her works, it begins to feel like the tenth season of a TV show you've been following. So you're drawn in and curious to see what happens, but you are also hit with a ton of details that really stop being interesting pretty soon. This traces mother daughter relationships with narratives that are often confusing as to who is speaking, and showing how many mistakes get repeated and how hard it is to raise kids. It was at times insightful but mostly really depressing.
January 8, 2014
Her Mother's Daughter is a 1987 novel from Marilyn French, the author of the acclaimed Women's Room, a book that had a great influence on me when I was growing up, and which I recently reread.
At first, Her Mother's Daughter appears primarily to be a work of historical fiction, as it recounts the life stories and miseries of the narrator Anastasia's immediate ancestors, particularly her grandmother Frances and mother Isabella. Much of this part held the same fascination for me as A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith: it takes place in the same time period, the first couple decades of the twentieth century; and in the same place, Brooklyn and other immigrant neighborhoods of New York City. While I marveled at the hardships and survival skills it took to raise a family on pennies a day, I was often confused during the first third of the book, as the time frame continually shifts between adult Anastasia, sometimes narrating in first person, sometimes in third; child Anastasia, always in third person; and her mother, usually in third but sometimes first. I was sometimes a page into a section before I was clear who was speaking.
The middle section of the book is at times even muddier, as other characters get a voice: Anastasia's sister Joy, for example. French experiments here, playing with several different narrative techniques: that of an objective sociologist, for example, cataloging family photos.
Finally, however, the novel shifted into the mode I remembered and loved from The Women's Room: realistic characters orbiting around a strong first-person narrator, enacting personal dramas that reveal so much about American culture.
French asks hard questions about women's struggle for equality: Why were (are?) men so willing to give up custody of their children during divorce? Why do women sacrifice so much for children? Why are some women never happy? Why do so many men and women give up on their dreams? She paints an unflinching picture of the sexism that prevailed (and perhaps still prevails) in professional fields like journalism. Novels like hers are valuable reminders to twenty-first century women to be grateful for the improvements we have gained, and remain vigilant about keeping them.
At first, Her Mother's Daughter appears primarily to be a work of historical fiction, as it recounts the life stories and miseries of the narrator Anastasia's immediate ancestors, particularly her grandmother Frances and mother Isabella. Much of this part held the same fascination for me as A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith: it takes place in the same time period, the first couple decades of the twentieth century; and in the same place, Brooklyn and other immigrant neighborhoods of New York City. While I marveled at the hardships and survival skills it took to raise a family on pennies a day, I was often confused during the first third of the book, as the time frame continually shifts between adult Anastasia, sometimes narrating in first person, sometimes in third; child Anastasia, always in third person; and her mother, usually in third but sometimes first. I was sometimes a page into a section before I was clear who was speaking.
The middle section of the book is at times even muddier, as other characters get a voice: Anastasia's sister Joy, for example. French experiments here, playing with several different narrative techniques: that of an objective sociologist, for example, cataloging family photos.
Finally, however, the novel shifted into the mode I remembered and loved from The Women's Room: realistic characters orbiting around a strong first-person narrator, enacting personal dramas that reveal so much about American culture.
French asks hard questions about women's struggle for equality: Why were (are?) men so willing to give up custody of their children during divorce? Why do women sacrifice so much for children? Why are some women never happy? Why do so many men and women give up on their dreams? She paints an unflinching picture of the sexism that prevailed (and perhaps still prevails) in professional fields like journalism. Novels like hers are valuable reminders to twenty-first century women to be grateful for the improvements we have gained, and remain vigilant about keeping them.
August 23, 2009
I am reading this book now and 3/4 thru it. While it is slow to get going, I really got into the 4 generations of this family of mothers and daughters and how the narration moves back and forth between them, both talking about their lives from their perspectives and then from their daughters perspectives. It is a bit scary being a mother and thinking about how one becomes one's mother often in various ways even as one has resisted this all one's life! It is a bit too long and some of the details are boring but overall a good read.
November 15, 2009
Painful. Painful. Painful. I had a very hard time finishing this book; yet,I was driven to finish it. Will the cycle ever be broken? Mother's who love their children and can not express it in a way that the children recognize it, receive it and respond to it. Father's who don't express love to their children. Divored fathers who don't support their children. Husbands who see woman only as extensions of themselves. Four generations of woman are interwoven in a story that replicates itself with each generation. 761 pages of small print. I'm still thinking about it.
February 24, 2008
I don't recall the content but I remember loving this book, and Marilyn French, when I was young. This is one I should reread.
September 13, 2020
I found this book to be frustrating and tedious at times yet I also felt I gained understanding of myself, my mother, my sister and perhaps women in general....it was written in the late 80s and that is reflected, but many observations continue to be valid. I came away thankful for the love and acceptance I was given by my mother througout my life and also grateful to some degree that I did not have female children - although that relationship can also provide some of the greatest joys - if managed well. All together a thought provoking read and I recommend it.
May 23, 2015
I reached page 353 and realized that the author had spent the proceeding pages whining about her characters lives and listing food items. I didn't make it to the end. I imagine they all die miserably. For me, however, having abandoned such an extended bummer of a book, the world seems somehow brighter.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 28, 2007
Explores the way daughters often work to avoid their mothers' mistakes but end up making their own.
February 14, 2012
Marilyn French
Her Mother’s Daughter
761 Pages
Page 38
Why did she leave?
For it must have been a terrifying journey for a girl of thirteen who had never even been to Krakow ---- all the way to Bremen along; buying her passage with the money Aunt Sophie had sent her from America; traveling steerage in the immigrant ship, locked in the bottommost deck with hundreds of others, some sick, babies crying, no privacy. And then the horror of Ellis Island, being treated like some subhuman creature by self-satisfied grey men important over their pens, their ledgers, their stamp pads.
Page 53
But his clothes do not suit him now. Here he’s a stereotype, an angry many thick and cruel, a redneck sheriff, a sergeant in the army, ay army, a tough, a bully.
Page 70
You say – but suffering is also determined by how you react to things. You say you know people who had terrible calamities in their lives, yet maintained their courage and spirit. Admirable yes, but tell me thin: what is it that enables them to do that? A certain ambience in their childhoods, a genetic propensity, a gift of love made early enough to be engraved on their soul? Are we responsible if these things are absent in our lives? Can we be blamed, can we blame ourselves?
Page 95
“That was cruel”, she was all excited about that book. “Why did you do that?”
I stopped. Why had I? Maintaining high literary standards, regardless of cost? How ridiculous. “I don’t know. You’re right”, I said, puzzled at myself. But it was done, and could not now be remedied. Except that I never again doused her excitement like that.
Page 98
The incident is one more black mark in the book of rage she is compiling against the gods she doesn’t believe in.
Page 133
Children do not understand that nothing they do can repair the past. Only my father knew how to do that: he could fix its broken clocks and necklace clasps, its collapsed furniture. He didn’t deal with hearts, though.
Page 229
The love is there: the women will give the children whatever food they have, denying themselves. But it does not advertise itself.
And it seems to me now – and I must have had an inkling about this back then in 1951 – that the relations of mothers and children is maybe more profound and important than anything else in life. If it is omitted from consideration by philosophy, philosophy is the less.
Page 287
His entire world had turned into a scheme of rewards and punishments, bribes and penalties, and he no longer saw that there was any other way to be with people. That was why he was so terrible with the children. When they were lively and making noise and bothering him, he thought they were doing something to him, that they were challenging him or ting to annoy him. He couldn’t see that the noise was an accidental by-product of young high spirits. So he shouted at them as if they were willful destroyers of his peace.
Page 364
If I’ve been implying that things improved, I don’t want you to think it was a steady thing. With kids, things never improve, they just change form. You never know what’s ahead, and if you allow yourself to fall into complacency, you will be disappointed.
Page 377
At the time, I regret to say, I did not think at all about concealed censorship; about how, if you want to get ahead in the world, you take you cue from what is established, and shoot the things the establishment enjoys seeing, and avoid those it does not. I didn’t think about the ways we are taught, outside the church and the schoolroom what to value or about y being manipulated by the power worked. I just wasn’t thinking: I wasn’t a political person. All of that sort of thinking came to me much later, and from other people. I didn’t even think about how I automatically knew what photographs to include, or the meaning behind the choice of what to exclude. That seems remarkable to me now, since I had in my youth been a questioner. I had forgotten my youthful self.
Page 387
Given my own history as a sensitive plant
Page 398
It’s strange that men feel they have the right to criticize a woman’s appearance to her face. Women don’t go around telling men they’re getting too paunchy, or suggesting they buy a toupee. Do they? Or suggest they use deodorant, or even tell them they have egg on their tie or spinach between their teeth.
Page 575
I never again was able to believe that war served a good human purpose. In every war I saw mostly absurdity, stupidity, delusion: the ridiculous spectacle of boys playing games. I never got over the sense that trip to Cuba gave me, that war was a stupidity that could be avoided if men were not boys who wanted to play games in which they could pretend to be men, could pretend that they cared about something more than creating a self-image.
Page 612
You don’t see alternatives. You close down shop and cry, instead of opening the door and looking around.
Page 704
You can’ tell a child that every choice brings pain, can you..
I treated her like a gift lent to me for a while.
Page 679
It seems you can always have a happy ending, no matter what really happens, simply be selecting what you choose to leave out.
Page 685
I spent ten years of my life in a man’s world, meeting speaking to, dealing with men only. The only women I met were girlfriends and secretaries. It was a rich time, I saw the world, I learned how to behave in it. I learned utter self-control – not to cry, not to lose my temper hotly, only coldly, not to show I was hurt, and in time, not to feel hurt, and in more time, not to feel anything. I learned to deal with the x’s and y’s and z’s of the world, with whom it is fatal to betray the slightest tremor of feeling. I mastered my feelings so completely that they disappeared and not I cannot find them myself.
Her Mother’s Daughter
761 Pages
Page 38
Why did she leave?
For it must have been a terrifying journey for a girl of thirteen who had never even been to Krakow ---- all the way to Bremen along; buying her passage with the money Aunt Sophie had sent her from America; traveling steerage in the immigrant ship, locked in the bottommost deck with hundreds of others, some sick, babies crying, no privacy. And then the horror of Ellis Island, being treated like some subhuman creature by self-satisfied grey men important over their pens, their ledgers, their stamp pads.
Page 53
But his clothes do not suit him now. Here he’s a stereotype, an angry many thick and cruel, a redneck sheriff, a sergeant in the army, ay army, a tough, a bully.
Page 70
You say – but suffering is also determined by how you react to things. You say you know people who had terrible calamities in their lives, yet maintained their courage and spirit. Admirable yes, but tell me thin: what is it that enables them to do that? A certain ambience in their childhoods, a genetic propensity, a gift of love made early enough to be engraved on their soul? Are we responsible if these things are absent in our lives? Can we be blamed, can we blame ourselves?
Page 95
“That was cruel”, she was all excited about that book. “Why did you do that?”
I stopped. Why had I? Maintaining high literary standards, regardless of cost? How ridiculous. “I don’t know. You’re right”, I said, puzzled at myself. But it was done, and could not now be remedied. Except that I never again doused her excitement like that.
Page 98
The incident is one more black mark in the book of rage she is compiling against the gods she doesn’t believe in.
Page 133
Children do not understand that nothing they do can repair the past. Only my father knew how to do that: he could fix its broken clocks and necklace clasps, its collapsed furniture. He didn’t deal with hearts, though.
Page 229
The love is there: the women will give the children whatever food they have, denying themselves. But it does not advertise itself.
And it seems to me now – and I must have had an inkling about this back then in 1951 – that the relations of mothers and children is maybe more profound and important than anything else in life. If it is omitted from consideration by philosophy, philosophy is the less.
Page 287
His entire world had turned into a scheme of rewards and punishments, bribes and penalties, and he no longer saw that there was any other way to be with people. That was why he was so terrible with the children. When they were lively and making noise and bothering him, he thought they were doing something to him, that they were challenging him or ting to annoy him. He couldn’t see that the noise was an accidental by-product of young high spirits. So he shouted at them as if they were willful destroyers of his peace.
Page 364
If I’ve been implying that things improved, I don’t want you to think it was a steady thing. With kids, things never improve, they just change form. You never know what’s ahead, and if you allow yourself to fall into complacency, you will be disappointed.
Page 377
At the time, I regret to say, I did not think at all about concealed censorship; about how, if you want to get ahead in the world, you take you cue from what is established, and shoot the things the establishment enjoys seeing, and avoid those it does not. I didn’t think about the ways we are taught, outside the church and the schoolroom what to value or about y being manipulated by the power worked. I just wasn’t thinking: I wasn’t a political person. All of that sort of thinking came to me much later, and from other people. I didn’t even think about how I automatically knew what photographs to include, or the meaning behind the choice of what to exclude. That seems remarkable to me now, since I had in my youth been a questioner. I had forgotten my youthful self.
Page 387
Given my own history as a sensitive plant
Page 398
It’s strange that men feel they have the right to criticize a woman’s appearance to her face. Women don’t go around telling men they’re getting too paunchy, or suggesting they buy a toupee. Do they? Or suggest they use deodorant, or even tell them they have egg on their tie or spinach between their teeth.
Page 575
I never again was able to believe that war served a good human purpose. In every war I saw mostly absurdity, stupidity, delusion: the ridiculous spectacle of boys playing games. I never got over the sense that trip to Cuba gave me, that war was a stupidity that could be avoided if men were not boys who wanted to play games in which they could pretend to be men, could pretend that they cared about something more than creating a self-image.
Page 612
You don’t see alternatives. You close down shop and cry, instead of opening the door and looking around.
Page 704
You can’ tell a child that every choice brings pain, can you..
I treated her like a gift lent to me for a while.
Page 679
It seems you can always have a happy ending, no matter what really happens, simply be selecting what you choose to leave out.
Page 685
I spent ten years of my life in a man’s world, meeting speaking to, dealing with men only. The only women I met were girlfriends and secretaries. It was a rich time, I saw the world, I learned how to behave in it. I learned utter self-control – not to cry, not to lose my temper hotly, only coldly, not to show I was hurt, and in time, not to feel hurt, and in more time, not to feel anything. I learned to deal with the x’s and y’s and z’s of the world, with whom it is fatal to betray the slightest tremor of feeling. I mastered my feelings so completely that they disappeared and not I cannot find them myself.
Read
January 27, 2016mistake - A sign of bacterial infection up the arm = a RED streak, not a blue streak !!
I enjoyed the book, but some passages were repetitive (it could have done with more editing) and sometimes the story-teller or the timeline was obscure. The story was about 4 generations of women and how they frequently perpetuated parenting practices, although often aware that these actions were harsh, abusive, hurtful and damaging. Anastasia in the third generation tells most of the story and is perhaps the most self aware and the reader grows with her, as Anastasia matures and becomes more reflective about her adult life and the impact on her of previous generations, their roots and culture. All the women find home-making a drudgery but accept that that is what is expected of them.
Anastasia's Mother does some work from home but although it improves their financial situation somewhat, she doesn't feel any satisfaction from it and it just adds to her already long hours of household labour and living by the clock. Anastasia is the only one to have a close female friend and that relationship becomes manipulative and adds to the brokenness of their lives. Also, Anastasia has a career as a magazine photographer, but that brings a myriad of problems and dilemma's about her being absent from home and it damages the relationships with her children and her partner.
This book will make every woman reader reflect on her role in the home and in social life/work. etc. Hopefully the male reader will reflect on how he can better interact with his children and indeed 'father' them better and support his wife in defining her roles and breaking free of past attitudes and traditional female chains. All readers would I hope, be more aware of why we do the things we do, question what is really useful from our ancestry and our own childhood training and look at how we can each support our mate in living more fulfilling lives, experimenting with dreams and aspirations and bringing up our children - not tied to the learning from past generations without examining those codes and discarding what may be unhelpful in the 21st. century, but also taking on board what has been helpful and positive.
Definitely a powerful novel that we all should read, because it is more than a good story !!
I enjoyed the book, but some passages were repetitive (it could have done with more editing) and sometimes the story-teller or the timeline was obscure. The story was about 4 generations of women and how they frequently perpetuated parenting practices, although often aware that these actions were harsh, abusive, hurtful and damaging. Anastasia in the third generation tells most of the story and is perhaps the most self aware and the reader grows with her, as Anastasia matures and becomes more reflective about her adult life and the impact on her of previous generations, their roots and culture. All the women find home-making a drudgery but accept that that is what is expected of them.
Anastasia's Mother does some work from home but although it improves their financial situation somewhat, she doesn't feel any satisfaction from it and it just adds to her already long hours of household labour and living by the clock. Anastasia is the only one to have a close female friend and that relationship becomes manipulative and adds to the brokenness of their lives. Also, Anastasia has a career as a magazine photographer, but that brings a myriad of problems and dilemma's about her being absent from home and it damages the relationships with her children and her partner.
This book will make every woman reader reflect on her role in the home and in social life/work. etc. Hopefully the male reader will reflect on how he can better interact with his children and indeed 'father' them better and support his wife in defining her roles and breaking free of past attitudes and traditional female chains. All readers would I hope, be more aware of why we do the things we do, question what is really useful from our ancestry and our own childhood training and look at how we can each support our mate in living more fulfilling lives, experimenting with dreams and aspirations and bringing up our children - not tied to the learning from past generations without examining those codes and discarding what may be unhelpful in the 21st. century, but also taking on board what has been helpful and positive.
Definitely a powerful novel that we all should read, because it is more than a good story !!
January 18, 2017
An interesting story of three generations of women, but I had a hard time keeping track of who was who. For me, it wasn't a book that I had to finish once I started and when I put it down for just a day, it was difficult getting back into. The longer I let it sit, the more difficult it was to follow when I returned to it, almost making me think that I should reread up to where I had stopped, but it wasn't that interesting to have that happen. After a struggle, I'd eventually refigure out who was who, but that would be after reading, maybe, two dozen pages. It may have been the wrong Marilyn French novel to start with as introduction to her works.
May 8, 2009
Ini dia buka Marlyin French yang super. Dia menuliskan betapa hubungan ibu dan anak perempuannya secara indah, penuh dengan cinta dan pertentangan. Dinarasikan dari seorang perempuan photografer profesional menjelang setengah baya. Karya-karya novel Marilyn French banyak yang ditulis dari pengalamannya sebagai perempuan matang...great.
December 7, 2008
I enjoyed this book, but since French's other book, the Women's Room, is one of my favorites, I felt it didnt' measure up to my expectations. I'm just being picky, though. It's a good read.
August 19, 2009
If Marilyn French sees herself reflected in the main character of this book, then she has used feminism as a justification for her self-centeredness. What a shame.
March 25, 2021
Dit boek heb ik gelezen toen ik eind 20 was en herlezen nu ik eind 50 ben. En beide keren heeft het veel indruk op mij gemaakt.
Vrouwen die zeggen niet feministisch te zijn en het niet belangrijk vinden om economisch onafhankelijk te zijn en blijven van hun man zouden dit boek moeten lezen.
Er is gelukkig al veel verandert in de man/ vrouw verhoudingen vergeleken met de jaren 50, 60 en daar voor. Dit boek doet je beseffen hoe het voelt om een tweede ranges burger te zijn , omdat je vrouw bent.
Het gaat ook over de relaties tussen moeders en hun dochters. Het belang van liefde in die relatie, je geliefd kunnen voelen.
Het gaat ook over dat je wat je zelf belangrijk vindt in het leven , je eigen dromen, je niet kunt projecteren op je kinderen.
Je kinderen maken dezelfde fouten en keuzes als jij, of ze zetten zich juist af tegen jou en volgen hun eigen pad.
Al met al een boek met heel veel thema's en nog steeds de moeite van het lezen van de 792 paginas waard
Vrouwen die zeggen niet feministisch te zijn en het niet belangrijk vinden om economisch onafhankelijk te zijn en blijven van hun man zouden dit boek moeten lezen.
Er is gelukkig al veel verandert in de man/ vrouw verhoudingen vergeleken met de jaren 50, 60 en daar voor. Dit boek doet je beseffen hoe het voelt om een tweede ranges burger te zijn , omdat je vrouw bent.
Het gaat ook over de relaties tussen moeders en hun dochters. Het belang van liefde in die relatie, je geliefd kunnen voelen.
Het gaat ook over dat je wat je zelf belangrijk vindt in het leven , je eigen dromen, je niet kunt projecteren op je kinderen.
Je kinderen maken dezelfde fouten en keuzes als jij, of ze zetten zich juist af tegen jou en volgen hun eigen pad.
Al met al een boek met heel veel thema's en nog steeds de moeite van het lezen van de 792 paginas waard
February 5, 2016
Personally this is my more favourite one - even though Women's Room is great without any doubt - for many reasons. So many of the characters are unforgettable, even apart from the protagonist, it has to be because it was written with much love and it shows.
The story spans four generations of women and their men, their children, and their lives, the travails they go through to not only survive but more to the point to keep their children alive and in good shape, good health, forgoing often much in the process. It got easier at one stage and then more difficult if anything, and even that easy part was only for those that dare, others had it often harder.
Funnily enough while the main line of four generations is memorable enough, the one that keeps wafting through memory is the fragile Joyce - the baby who went toddling through the back yard grass, laughing, the young girl hurt deeply in love by the family of her upper class boyfriend who took care to separate them because she was not of the same class, and she kept that hurt silent in her heart, never speaking about it; and finally the woman who fought with all conventions and norms in separating from a husband for sake of her children, their stability of a home and education, and showed such grit in keeping a roof over their head and food on their table while working three times as hard as any man, so she could feed them and do better - and her secret help was her mother in law, not the father of the children or his father or social justice, much less courts.
Joyce's children appreciated her, and it is only deserved after all.
The story spans four generations of women and their men, their children, and their lives, the travails they go through to not only survive but more to the point to keep their children alive and in good shape, good health, forgoing often much in the process. It got easier at one stage and then more difficult if anything, and even that easy part was only for those that dare, others had it often harder.
Funnily enough while the main line of four generations is memorable enough, the one that keeps wafting through memory is the fragile Joyce - the baby who went toddling through the back yard grass, laughing, the young girl hurt deeply in love by the family of her upper class boyfriend who took care to separate them because she was not of the same class, and she kept that hurt silent in her heart, never speaking about it; and finally the woman who fought with all conventions and norms in separating from a husband for sake of her children, their stability of a home and education, and showed such grit in keeping a roof over their head and food on their table while working three times as hard as any man, so she could feed them and do better - and her secret help was her mother in law, not the father of the children or his father or social justice, much less courts.
Joyce's children appreciated her, and it is only deserved after all.
June 17, 2015
Mi sono immedesimata in molte delle frustrazioni di Stacey, pur non avendo figli nè ambizioni di carriera, e molte pagine mi hanno affascinata e fatto riflettere (anche solo le avventure che vive Stacey nel suo lavoro come fotografa sono incredibili!). In particolare ho apprezzato l'ultima parte, forse più fruibile. D’altra parte devo però ammettere di aver trovato il libro esagerato. Innanzitutto come lunghezza, se fosse stato lungo la metà, e meno confusionario, ne avrebbe giovato. Poi nei contenuti: la French esagera, tutte le sue donne sono assurdamente e completamente infelici, mentre gli uomini sono sempre incompenti o inutili o cattivi, e i figli un peso allucinante e allo stesso tempo fonte di amore esagerato e maniacale. Manca la speranza di un modo migliore e diverso di vivere, manca la parte propositiva che era anche la più importante a mio avviso.
July 7, 2015
I got to page 300 of this 700 page book before I just couldn't stand it anymore. It jumped around too much -- following 4 women, back in time, current time, forward in time...which I normally can follow and understand why writers do it, but French couldn't decide on whether to write in third person or first -- and never the same character! On page 299, when she described Anastasia by her name (third person) and then the next paragraph was talking AS her, that was enough. Awful.
I feel like I got enough out of the book by Frances' and Belle's stories, which were the most intriguing anyway. I didn't like Anastasia at all, and she was (I think) supposed to be the main focus of the book. Life is too short. I'm moving on to a different book.
I feel like I got enough out of the book by Frances' and Belle's stories, which were the most intriguing anyway. I didn't like Anastasia at all, and she was (I think) supposed to be the main focus of the book. Life is too short. I'm moving on to a different book.
January 14, 2020
This book blew me away. The stories - the wisdom - the language and the insight into how women, mothers and daughters think. It was fascinating to be inside the characters head because they truly told us exactly how they thought with all their faults.
I recommend this book as a parenting book and a deep dive into middle life.
Yes, it paints men in a bad light AND it speaks to how women support men in carrying on as they please.
I see from previous reviews that many give up on this book - I promise, it's worth reading to the end.
If memoir, family saga or truly honest women's literature is your thing - Her Mother's Daughter is a MUST READ.
I recommend this book as a parenting book and a deep dive into middle life.
Yes, it paints men in a bad light AND it speaks to how women support men in carrying on as they please.
I see from previous reviews that many give up on this book - I promise, it's worth reading to the end.
If memoir, family saga or truly honest women's literature is your thing - Her Mother's Daughter is a MUST READ.
December 11, 2014
Long, tedious man-bashing, mother hate/love ing narcissistic trash. Sloppy writing, mixed time sequences i.e., Grant story - started screwing in '65, but after separation reunite in '64. Jumps in and out of characters' minds making it difficult to know who is telling the story when. Total feminist over-the-top self-pity from a man-hater who screws every guy she comes near when away from the hubby and kids. Chick-lit fantasy story, not worth the paper or electrons.
August 27, 2017
Something kept me going for 700 pages, no matter how slowly. That must count for something.
Also, some parts are genuinely poignant and remind one of how regrets from long ago can dominate a life. How the burden of expectations can change the course of a life. And how an obsession with wanting to please someone can return to haunt one over a lifetime.
Good stuff, at places. Too long-winding for the larger part, unfortunately.
Also, some parts are genuinely poignant and remind one of how regrets from long ago can dominate a life. How the burden of expectations can change the course of a life. And how an obsession with wanting to please someone can return to haunt one over a lifetime.
Good stuff, at places. Too long-winding for the larger part, unfortunately.
May 16, 2020
This was a very long read and I actually left it behind when we went camping in late Jan (before corona) and read another book. I think I needed the break, upon resuming it I enjoyed and was also saddened by the situation of the women in the three generations of this family story. Women do get a bad deal most times in life.
I could see some of my mum in Belle 😢
I could see some of my mum in Belle 😢
April 26, 2012
Read this when I was young, but might reread it now that I have 2 daughters of my own. The story follows 4 generations of women in one family and shows how we often say we will not make the same mistakes our mother did only to do so. Great read.
April 26, 2012
This book was a huge disappointment , it promised so much but failed to deliver. The words and actions of the characters were contrived and predicable. This book is chick lit trying to be adult but fails miserably.
March 29, 2018
Marilyn French definitely knows the sacrifices women make to hold a family together. Although some parts of the book seemed unnecessary (i.e. Cuban exiles), she certainly touches on how each generation of women impacted the next generation.
April 4, 2010
Excellent for learning about the generation gaps in our daily lives.
Want it Val?
Want it Val?
March 17, 2011
An all time favourite.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 63 reviews