Like Mother, Like Mother

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of mental illness, child abuse, rape, suicidal ideation and self-harm, and emotional abuse.

The text shows that, as time passes, society’s expectations for women change, creating possibilities for them to achieve both personal and professional fulfillment. The fact that the older women in the text, including Bubbe, Frances, and Zelda, fight for the opportunities to find this fulfillment, regardless of their society’s low expectations of women, indicates just how important it is. Rieger uses these characters to illustrate how even in restrictive social contexts, personal agency and resilience can carve out space for independence, demonstrating the universal desire for autonomy and self-actualization.

Bubbe and Frances have fewer opportunities than their granddaughters, but neither meekly accepts the idea that she should have to give up everything she wants. Though Bubbe is not happy to be responsible for keeping house and taking care of her son’s children in her old age—even wearing all black to signify how she mourns herself—she “insisted on being paid weekly, ‘like the housekeeper [Aldo would] need to hire’” (36). At the very least, she forces her son to acknowledge the value of her work so she will have some way of benefiting herself and her grandkids.