The Good Mother (Masterplots II: American Fiction Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Sue Miller
- First Published: 1986
- Type of Plot: Social realism
- Time of Work: The 1970’s
- Setting: Primarily Cambridge, Massachusetts, with scenes in New Hampshire, Maine, Connecticut, and Chicago
- Principal Characters: Anna Dunlap, Brian Dunlap, Molly Dunlap, Leo Cutter, Bunny, Frank McCord, Ursula
- Genres: Long fiction, Psychological fiction, Domestic realism
- Subjects: 1970’s, Child rearing or parenting, Mothers, Parents and children, Sex or sexuality, Social issues, Art or artists, Chicago, New England, Trials, Child abuse, Single parents or single-parent families, Divorce, Lawyers, Lifestyles, Bohemianism
- Locales: Chicago, IL, Cambridge, MA
The Novel
The Good Mother is a fictional study of Anna Dunlap, a woman who has lived most of her life under the domination of someone else—first her mother, then her husband, Brian. When Anna divorces her husband and tries to build a new, more satisfactory life with her daughter, she achieves a certain brief happiness, but the price she pays is almost more than she can bear.
Anna is the first-person narrator of The Good Mother, which begins while Anna is in the process of divorcing Brian. The first chapter, one of fourteen, foreshadows the events of the...
[The entire page is 2705 words long]
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