The DeRosier’s were also the ones who shattered her dreams of a perfect family by saying “We take you in because your parents don’t want you"(35). The DeRosier’s left April with a shame of her background and an even deeper shame for her parents. Even though the DeRosier’s did so much bad for April and her identity, they still did some good for her. They made such an horrible environment but April stayed strong and grew as a person. She even said “I could let the DeRosier’s suck out my dignity for now and I could pretend they had me where they wanted me.
“It came into my head that I cannot run away. I am who I am wherever I am”. Catherine, Called Birdy by Karen Cushman is about a 14 year old girl who's father, the lord, wants to marry her off to a rich old man with lots of land. Catherine wants to just get away from the lady life and escape, but is always held in place by her pregnant mother, and her always nagging nurse/maid Morwenna. In Catherine, Called Birdy, many women gave Birdy advice but she never really listenened to them, but when she did, she made a decision that changed her life forever.
When she moves to St. Louis and sees her mother for the first time, she is struck by her mother’s beauty. She thinks her mother is too beautiful to have children, and that is the reason why her mother sent her away. Marguerite thinks she is a “Black ugly girl”, at the same time, she is a girl full of imagination. She imagines once she puts her dream Easter dress on she will be a sweet little white girl with long and blond hair. She also imagines the conflict between her grandmother and the white dentist Dr. Lincoln after he said he would rather stick his hand in a dog’s mouth than treat Marguerite’s problem.
With people tormenting her about her cousins who were teen moms, or her father who made a fool of his drunken self in public, the poor girl felt like nothing more than dirt, and she wanted to be thought of as flawless and beautiful. Edith dreamed of being a celebrity, she wished to be a perfect girl, and to live in a perfect world "in which only married women had babies, and in which men and women stayed married forever." The shacks in which Eddie grew up were less than desirable, and supposedly thought of as contemptible, by people of a higher social class. When Edith moved to the boarding house, with set meal times, she was quite ashamed to think of how people living in the shacks didn't have meal times, they simply found any food they could and ate by themselves when they were hungry. The potato-chip plant that Eddie worked at
Rochelle continuously denies her heritage and desires to be the ideal “American Bride.” Throughout the story Lily tries to get Rochelle to acknowledge her Hispanic heritage but Rochelle doesn’t accept it. “You’re carrying your gringa kick too far.” This shows how Lily feels towards her sister’s attitude. In the end Rochelle’s denial of reality reaches it’s peak when she’s finds herself pregnant, married, and in high school. “He was beautiful too- the Mexican version of the blond grooms.” Rochelle finally realized what her sister was trying to tell her all her life; you can’t escape your
However, each in their own way matures along this journey, and gains a better understanding, or knowledge of their lives and themselves. The main character, Sethe appears first as an extremely independent and strong woman, she refuses to accept help from anyone. Which the black community sees as her being stuck up, “trying to do it all alone with her nose in the air” (Morrison 299). As soon as Paul D. arrives on her doorstep, bringing her past with him, her resolve to block out the past at all costs begin to crumble, as do her hardened exterior actions. When Paul D. first arrives, Denver, Sethe’s daughter notices that she is, “Looking in fact acting like a girl, instead of the quiet, queenly woman Denver had known all her life.
Aibileen works for Elizabeth, so Aibileen has to take care of her daughter, Mae Mobley. Aibileen and Mae Mobley have a different relationship than other babies she has taken care of. It is a different relationship because Aibileen has a seed of bitterness planted inside her after Treelore, her son, died. In an article by Jackie Crosby, it mentions the love Aibileen had for her babies, “There's Aibileen, the wise and gentle soul whose heart breaks every time one of the white babies she loves so much grows up to ‘become just like they mama’” (Crosby). So she teaches Mae Mobley something she has never taught any of her other children because she wants to avoid Mae Mobley turning out like her mother, Elizabeth.
Although both Allie and Bud struggle with their parents’ disapproval of class difference, Allie is more successful in overcoming the pressure from her parents due to her stubbornness, passion, and her mother’s ultimate understanding. In The Notebook, Allie’s stubbornness is one of her most dominant traits. Throughout the film, she is portrayed as a “rich and studious go-getter with the world at her feet” (Schrager 1). This characteristic ultimately helps Allie overcome the burden of class conflict and enables her to be truly happy with Noah. When Allie falls in love, she refuses to acknowledge the class conflict between her and Noah.
After being suffocated by the images of this absolute world, Mrs. Breedlove strives to acquire the white’s life style. While in her employer’s house, Mrs. Breedlove role plays as the household’s main woman because this is the closest she will get to living this fairytale life. Mrs. Breedlove also shows how little she values her family by “neglect[ing] her house, her children, her man” (127). She demonstrates the strain in her mother-daughter relationship with Pecola by allowing the little white girl she looks after call her Polly. Pecola does not address her mother in this casual manner.
“Now suddenly she was Somebody, and as imprisoned in her difference as she had in anonymity.” In the narrators point of view her child was an outcast, a nobody, but when she got the call from her daughter it seem the sun finally started to shine in her daughter path, she was free. Narrator heard was the happiness in her daughters voice and started to accept who she had become. In Everyday Use, a mother regrets bringing her children in a world of poverty and