A Mother and Two Daughters by Gail Godwin

First published: 1982

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Psychological realism

Time of work: 1978-1979 and 1984

Locale: Mountain City and Ocracoke Island, North Carolina

Principal Characters:

• Nell Strickland, the widow of Leonard Strickland who must find her own identity
• Leonard Strickland, Nell’s husband, a lawyer
• Cate Strickland Galitsky, their older daughter, the rebel of the family
• Lydia Strickland Mansfield, their younger daughter, who has left her husband and returned to college
• Theodora Blount, a wealthy, unmarried woman in her seventies and Leonard’s lifelong friend
• Wickie Lee, Theodora’s protégée, a small, fiercely proud, pregnant girl from the mountains

Form and Content

A Mother and Two Daughters is the story of a few eventful months in the lives of three women; it is also the story of their husbands and lovers, their friends, and their extended families. It begins in Mountain City, North Carolina, on December 16, 1978, at the home of the redoubtable Theodora Blount. Among those who are attending her holiday party are quiet, gentle Leonard Strickland and his devoted wife Nell Strickland. While they are driving home from the party, Leonard has a heart attack, and Nell awakens in the hospital to find that her husband is dead. Then follow, in close succession, Leonard’s funeral and a muted Christmas celebration, the first of several gatherings that Godwin uses to bring her characters together and to advance the action of the book.

Unfortunately, the two daughters of Nell and Leonard have never gotten along. Although they believe that their differences are matters of personality and principle, in fact Cate Strickland Galitsky, an outspoken, liberal English professor, and Lydia Strickland Mansfield, her conventional younger sister, have never stopped seeing each other as rivals for the approval and love of their parents. This conflict, however, is only one of the problems facing the mother and two daughters of the title. All three of the women are trying to discover who they are and what direction their lives should take.

The novel is divided into three sections, tracing the action chronologically from that fateful December night in 1978 to the summer of 1979. There is also a brief epilogue, which covers a single day in 1984. The first two sections take place in Mountain City, North Carolina; the third and climactic section, on Ocracoke, an island on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, where the Stricklands have a summer home. The epilogue finds the family and their friends once again gathered in Mountain City, or, rather, at nearby Big Sandy, high in the hills above the town, this time for another family gathering, the wedding of Lydia’s older son.

Although Godwin always keeps her chronological structure evident, she feels free to range both in time and in setting as she explores the mind of first one character, then another. Still another obvious pattern in A Mother and Two Daughters is closely related to the conflict between the individual and the larger unit, with which each of the three women has to contend. After the three formal gatherings with which the book begins, the party, the funeral, and the Christmas celebration, the three women disperse. Throughout the remainder of the first book and the second book, Nell, Cate, and Lydia pursue their own interests separately. Nell broods about being cut off from life, Lydia moves further away from her husband and her old self, and Cate refuses a proposal and has an abortion. The breaking of family bonds is symbolized by the fact that after having her baby, Wickie Lee walks out on her would-be mother Theodora, so distressing her that Theodora promptly has a stroke. In the third book, the mother and two daughters once again come together, and this time, although they manage to burn down the house on Ocracoke, they do seem to come to some understanding of themselves and of one another.

The purpose of the epilogue is to demonstrate that the movement toward community, if not conformity, has triumphed. The occasion is in itself a symbol of healing, since Lydia’s son is marrying the daughter of her best friend, a black woman. Moreover, Theodora has been reconciled with Cate and with Wickie Lee, and among those who have either married or committed themselves to relationships are not only Wickie Lee, who is once again pregnant, but also Nell, Cate, and Lydia.

Context

In previous novels such as The Odd Woman, Gail Godwin explored the difficulties that face contemporary women. On the one hand, society and their own instincts urge them to become wives and mothers. On the other hand, many of them do not want to be trapped in domesticity or subjected to the whims of men. In the conservative South, the pressure to conform is particularly intense. When Godwin wrote her essay on “the Southern Belle,” she pointed out that the stereotypes still existed and concluded that most Southern women would have to choose between acting a role that confines them and leaving their native area.

A Mother and Two Daughters is the first of Godwin’s novels to offer another alternative. She now believes it possible that Southern women can continue to enjoy their gracious way of life, with its rich heritage, while at the same time escaping the Southern Belle stereotype. The answer can be seen in the characters of Cate and Lydia. At the beginning of the novel, although they do not realize it, both women are still reacting to their family history and to each other rather than acting out choices they make because they know themselves and understand their own needs. Lydia still wants to be the child who is loved because she is so good; Cate still enjoys being the child who is noticed because she is so bad. Their reconciliation becomes possible only when each of them becomes so secure in her own identity that she no longer sees the other as a threat. The fact that Cate and Lydia, the rebel and the conformist, become more alike as the novel progresses certainly symbolizes the new kind of balance that can be achieved by Southern women. Because their society has finally changed enough to permit them to develop their own roles, Southern women can remain true to themselves without leaving the South. Godwin’s optimism is echoed in other contemporary Southern writers, ranging from Anne Rivers Siddons to Lee Smith and Elizabeth Spencer, all of whom share Godwin’s belief that indeed it is possible to live in a community without sacrificing the self; in other words, to have the best of both worlds.

Bibliography

America. CXLVI, April 17, 1982, p. 305.

Current Biography 56 (October, 1995): 26-29. Profiles Godwin’s life and career as an award-winning novelist and short story writer. Critical reaction to her work is discussed, providing a valuable framework within which to compare Godwin’s novels with various other of her writings.

Godwin, Gail. “A Dialogue with Gail Godwin.” Interview by Lihong Xie. The Mississippi Quarterly 46 (Spring, 1993): 167-184. Godwin discusses her works, comparing them to major or minor keys in music depending on the emphasis she gives them in relation to certain plot elements and characters. Among the topics she covers in this interview are characterization, as well as the southern influence on her writing.

Godwin, Gail. “The Southern Belle.” Ms. 4 (July, 1975): 49-52, 84-85. Defines the ideal of behavior held up to Southern girls by their mothers. Some young women adopt stereotypical behavior; others escape by leaving the South. Essential to the study of A Mother and Two Daughters as well as Godwin’s other fiction.

Kissel, Susan S. Moving On: The Heroines of Shirley Ann Grau, Anne Tyler, and Gail Godwin. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Press, 1996. This critical analysis of Grau, Tyler, and Godwin reveals how the work of Chopin, McCullers, O’Connor, and Mitchell, as well as other southern women writers, has influenced each author. Also discusses Godwin’s universal communal vision.

The New York Times Book Review. LXXXVII, January 10, 1982, p. 3.

The New Yorker. LVII, January 18, 1982, p. 129.

Newsweek. XCIX, January 11, 1982, p. 62.

Pelzer, Linda C. “Visions and Versions of Self: The Other Women in A Mother and Two Daughters.” CRITIQUE: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 34 (Spring, 1993): 155-163. Focusing on A Mother and Two Daughters, Pelzer explores the identity crisis of three women who must define themselves in relation to their families and the social contexts of their communities. An interesting study in the theme of self-creation in Godwin’s works.

Prenshaw, Peggy Whitman, ed. Women Writers of the Contemporary South. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1984. An important compilation of critical essays on Godwin and other Southern women authors. In her perceptive study “Gail Godwin and the Ideal of Southern Womanhood,” Carolyn Rhodes argues that A Mother and Two Daughters is the first of Godwin’s novels in which women are able to reject “hypocrisy and shallowness” while remaining within Southern society. The initial chapter of this work also contains interesting comments made by Godwin in an interview.

Saturday Review. IX, January, 1982, p. 64.

Sternburg, Janet, ed. The Writer on Her Work. 2 vols. New York: W. W. Norton, 1980-1991. Essays by various writers on their craft. Godwin writes about the unusual household in which she was reared, which consisted of three women: her grandmother, her mother, and the author. As the breadwinner and a writer, Godwin’s mother had an important influence on her view of the roles of women.

Time. CXIX, January 25, 1982, p. 72.

Times Literary Supplement. March 5, 1982, p. 246.

Tyler, Anne. “All in the Family.” The New Republic 186 (February 17, 1982): 39-40. A review of A Mother and Two Daughters by a major Southern novelist. Although her work is somewhat lacking in suspense and ends too suddenly, writes Tyler, its minor flaws are more than made up for by its major virtues, including the author’s superb characterization, especially her new skill in developing “solidly believable” men. Praises Godwin’s accurate descriptions of everyday life and the richness of her narrative.

Wimsatt, Mary Ann. “Gail Godwin, the South, and the Canons.” The Southern Literary Journal 27 (Spring, 1995): 86-95. Explores the two major causes of Godwin’s exclusion from the canon: her feminism and the fact that her novels are bestsellers. Godwin’s novels are saturated with autobiographical elements, and her portraits of women ensnared in unhappy marriages are derived from her own life experiences.

Yardley, Jonathan. “Gail Godwin: A Novelist at the Height of Her Powers.” Washington Post Book World 11 (December 13, 1981): 3. Sees the major theme of the novel as “the joy of living.” Like Faulkner, Godwin uses her characters to represent all humanity. There is a “quality of compassion” in A Mother and Two Daughters which has not previously been evident in Godwin’s novels.

Xie, Lihong. The Evolving Self in the Novels of Gail Godwin. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1995. A critical appraisal of many of Godwin’s novels, including a chapter devoted to A Mother and Two Daughters. A bibliography and index round out this outstanding resource.