It Is Impossible To Blemish A Mother

This is a generalization, as you will read, but there is no one who affects our lives more than our mothers. From, the time we are a microscopic zygote to dead in our graves our mothers are the one throughline, the one current in our lives. No matter her amount of physical presence, she is seemingly omnipresent. Her love and patience or her ineptness and scorn are ingrained on the psyche of her children. As in the effect of a mother’s perceived love or her perceived malevolent scorn, is imperative to that child’s ability to engage in healthy interactions and relationships with any person they encounter. I am not trying to give my mom the lion’s share of the blame for how fucked up I am, or our mothers for how fucked up we are as a society but mother’s do play a very pivotal role in which they have been absolved.

            

A role that we as a society have completely absolved the mother. It does not matter what stereotype the mother may seemingly perform she is always a mother, a human being who has been encoded in all of our minds should automatically have the best interests of her child at heart, particularly their physical and mental well-being, even before their own health, especially before their own health. We all believe, culture notwithstanding, the model for the type of mother we all want, for motherhood, for the mother we all should have is that of television character’s Margaret Anderson and Molly Goldberg. They embody the stereotypical motherly quality of placing their family above everything else, most notably their own well being. We all hope and believe that is true in the relationships we have with our own mothers. Whose faults or actions, some of which can be perceived as harmful or reckless or disastrous for the family are always absolved by their intentions because the mother always knows what is best for the family. This is also strikingly evident in the mother and son relationship in Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint. 

Although, Margaret Anderson and Molly Goldberg as the models for all mothers is shrouded in cultural, gender, and racial trivialities the inherent qualities that we as children desire in our mothers are manifested in them both. In the Father Knows Best episode, “Jim, the Tyrant,” the mise-en-scene very early in the episode is the interior of the Anderson’s kitchen, Margaret the matriarch is looking in a cabinet, the door opens and in walks Jim, the patriarch, immediately dominating the frame, as he did the kitchen with his size and force of personality. Jim has had a rotten day at work and he wants his wife, his best friend, and his other half to confide in.

But Margaret is performing duties that benefit the entire family, not just her husband’s feelings so she cannot be interrupted. Jim bends down to give her a welcome home kiss and she cannot be bothered to notice as she beelines for the mixer, just like their son, Bud, beelines for the back door, disavowing his father’s presence. Jim follows behind her and says “Oh what a day I’ve had…” and then Margaret turns on the mixer, the sound of the machine drowning out all of Jim’s words. Jim continues to follow Margaret around the kitchen in want for some consolation but Margaret refuses to be derelict in her duty to her family. Jim finally understands that Margaret has not heard a word he is saying when she asks “How did things go at the office today?”

Communication is important in every relationship not just marriage and so is physical and emotional care for all members of the family but in this scene, Margaret is completely ignoring Jim’s emotions. Despite that, Margaret’s lack of empathy to her husband’s distress she is still being a good mother and wife because he is interrupting her preparing the family’s dinner. That is the stereotype of the mother, that she stoically maintains the well being of the family, even if that means emotional neglect. The stereotype is that men typically are the ones who neglect their partners (in a hetero-normative relationship). Margaret’s inability to sense or even wonder how distressful her husband’s day was, not even considering that Jim is home early from work, something that is not typical of him. Before he left work Jim’s secretary surprisingly asks “Home? At 4:00 o’clock in the afternoon?” because leaving work early was a rarity for Jim. Margaret flips the dynamic as she, in the midst of her work, is allowed and is excused of her emotional neglect because she is doing what is motherly. She can ignore him and still maintain her image as the perfect mother. Motherhood does not necessitate a functional relationship with the child’s father.

Enter The Goldberg’s apartment from the “Moving Day” episode. Molly Goldberg is sitting on a crate in a full body two shot with Uncle David, the once fully furnished and decorated apartment is now empty, the walls are barren. Mrs. Goldberg sold all of the Goldberg’s furniture. She is talking to Uncle David about where the family will live now that they don’t have any furniture or an apartment. All of the family’s worldly possessions were sold because Mrs. Goldberg wanted to do what was best for the family, which was to move to a house in the suburbs. Her desire puts her family on the brink of being split up and homelessness. Although, it is the money she raised that buys their house at the conclusion of the episode she decided without consulting her husband to sell everything in their home and her children conspire with her. It’s as if Mrs. Goldberg is a dope fiend for houses and she’d sell all of her furniture to get just one, just one house, please just one house. Jake using the money she raised also keeps her motherhood intact as she did achieve the outcome she desired.

I doubt, from their characterizations, that the Anderson or the Goldberg children ever express the sentiment (if they could the Federal Communications Commission wouldn’t let them) “WE CAN’T TAKE ANYMORE! BECAUSE YOU FUCKING JEWISH (AND WASP) MOTHERS ARE JUST TOO FUCKING MUCH TO BEAR” (Roth, 121). Despite Alex Portnoy’s outburst he still maintains the same sentiment about the relationship mothers should have with their family, particularly their children. We do not get to see this in Father Knows Best as Margaret is just preparing dinner, but when Alex does not eat his mother Sophie’s home-cooked dinner, she reacts with threats of violence. Sophie remarks to her girlfriends “My Alex is suddenly such a bad eater I have to stand over him with a knife” (Roth, 43). Sophie as with Margaret both cook dinner for their families, as a housewife (especially in the 50s, 60s, and even today) is charged to do for her family, her reaction to threaten her young son with violence is absolved by her reasoning behind the violence. Her reason being that it is for Alex’s benefit to finish his dinner. She is behaving motherly, ensuring the physical health of her family by threatening the physical health of the family.

Marxist sociologist and cultural theorist Stuart Hall wrote in his essay Encoding/decoding, “Certain codes may, of course, be so widely distributed in a specific language community or culture, and be learned at so early an age, that they appear not to be constructed… but to be ‘naturally’ given” (Hall, 132). Is our urge to justify questionable or abhorrent behavior from our mothers necessitated by our need for her nurturing or are we trained by our mothers, the first teacher, to absolve all of their behaviors because all of her actions ultimately are for the benefit of the family? Are mothers conspiring to encode their children with built-in excuses for all of the things that would get their fathers locked up, murdered, or at the very least divorced? No matter the answer, it does not matter, mother is doing it for us.