I do not think that the writer is a reliable narrator because as the mother of the child she is going to have a bias towards the child. During the story, the narrator recalls many positive aspects of her child, and the many hardships that the little girl had to endure. The narrator also has many excuses on why the events happened throughout her daughter’s life. Through the poem, we can feel her guilt at the life her daughter had but at the same time she is proud of the way her daughter turned out.
I think the narrator chose to share the parts of the story that she does because these events to her seemed significant in the upbringing of her daughter – and these events possibly directly relate to how her daughter turned out. I think at the same time the narrator shares these parts to try to explain her own actions in the circumstances at the time. Once again, I feel her guilt is coming through her and she is trying to justify her actions through the years.
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I agree with you on, but also I believe the narrator is is best suited for this because she knows her daughter the best and has been there to experience her actions.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you to a certain extent. Yes she is going to have a bias towards the child but i feel that she admits to her faults as a parents when raising her daughter. Her uneasy relationship with her daughter was a result of the responsibilty of holding both the mother and father figure in her life. Having the responsibility of putting food on the table and providing care for her daughter caused their mother-daughter relationship to suffer. She clearly expresses the hardships that she and her daughter had to face as they struggled to survive during a hard economic condition and critisizes herself for not being the mother she should have been. I don't she's trying to justify her actions as much as just describe the type of lifestyle that many mothers faced in a generation where single parenting and hard economic conditions were more common.
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