A Mother and Two Daughters (Masterplots II: American Fiction Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Gail Godwin
- First Published: 1982
- Type of Plot: Domestic realism/social chronicle
- Time of Work: December, 1978, to summer, 1979, and one day in 1984
- Setting: Mountain City, Greensboro, Winston-Salem (all in North Carolina); a small town on the Iowa shore of the Mississippi; and Ocracoke, an island off the Carolina shore
- Principal Characters: Nell Strickland, Cate Galitsky, Lydia Mansfield, Leonard Strickland, Theodora Blount
- Genres: Long fiction, Psychological fiction, Domestic realism
- Subjects: Family or family life, Self-discovery, Mothers, Parents and children, Love or romance, Marriage, Friendship, Midwest, Emotions, Jealousy, envy, or resentment, Women’s issues, Sisters, North Carolina, Divorce, Death or dying, Widows or widowers
- Locales: North Carolina, Iowa, Ocracoke Island
The Novel
Fittingly, in a novel that considers to what extent individuals can create their own destinies and to what extent those destinies are shaped by the people around them, A Mother and Two Daughters both opens and closes with a party. Nell and Leonard Strickland attend the first party at the home of Theodora Blount, representative of the “old guard” and repository of conservative, traditional Southern values. Yet the appearance at the party of Theodora’s unmarried, pregnant, backwoods protégée, the teenage Wickie Lee, suggests that those values may be in...
[The entire page is 3097 words long]
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