SUMMARY:
A woman reflects on “motherhood” as she shrinks from a relationship with her sensitive daughter and questions her own motivations.
ACTIVITIES:
Pre-reading:
A Each student
should fill out the attached Pre-reading Survey which will take approximately
10 minutes.
B Unless your students are very familiar with
the Harvey Daniels discussion role sheets, Literature Circles: Voice and
Choice in the Student-Centered Classroom (1994), hand out one role sheet to
each member of each group (pages A1 – A8).
You may wish to adjust or combine roles in accordance with the number of
students in your class or their respective strengths. For this discussion, the following roles are
important enough to have one student per role in each group: Discussion Director, Literary Luminary,
Connector, Summarizer, and Investigator.
The following roles could easily be combined in a fashion to suit your
group numbers: Illustrator, Vocabulary
Enricher, and Travel Tracer.
Post-reading:
A Students conduct small group
discussion using the role sheets and their reading logs. Circulate to help where necessary.
B Whole class discussion – in a
circle is helpful. It is sensible to
discuss Akiko in view of the way she sees herself since it is a first person
narrative and events are filtered through her perceptions. Write the three underlined nouns on the
board. Students support or deny the
truth of the descriptor with evidence from the text. One can start the discussions within the
small groups and then form the circle to hear the consensus of each group, but
it they have been diligent in previous activities it is more efficient to start
this discussion in the circle.
CONTENT:
Akiko as victim.
She views her in-laws as competitive and overbearing. The sister-in-law is “living an urbane life
as a weapon to compete with me.” Akiko
has had to mange her household “according to the instructions of my
mother-in-law” which she counteracted after the woman’s death by having “tamed
every visible and invisible thing which I inherited from my
mother-in-law.” Given the status of a
daughter-in-law entering the husband’s family, paranoia may be a somewhat
justified view, although it appears that many wives acquiesced to tradition and
forged a place for themselves within the new family setting. Akiko, however, takes her sense of oppression
too far when she projects it onto her daughter.
Her role, as she envisions it, is “usurped,” and her “self” was “taken
away by Hatsuko,” the daughter. Akiko
cites multiple instances of this displacement / appropriation: penmanship like hers performed by pushing on
the paper as though the writing instrument “were a thumb tack”; the hand that,
had it been enlarged, “would have become the same hand as mine”; Hatsuko
appearing for the visit in traditional kimono which Akiko had chosen in order
to be different from daughter. As well,
Akiko cites the similar opening of packages, sharpening pencils, rushing to get
a seat on the bus, and carrying a vase.
The animosity heightens when Hatsuko appears in her daydreams and the
two become so intertwined that Akiko momentarily has difficult distinguishing
whether she or her daughter has the imaginary interlude with the “young master
of the bakery across the river,” realizing finally that it “was Hatsuko who
went with him, leaving me.” Akiko feels
attacked, misused, abandoned, “worried about facing Hatsuko one to one” if she
arrived before the husband or brother.
Akiko as traitor.
She has distanced herself from the daughter in recent
years by not writing or visiting her.
But this is only the completion of a pattern settled into early on. Hatsuko, as early as fifth grade, “became
aware of that face of yours…like that of a Noh mask,” a face that viewed from
an angle may contain emotion, but when confronted directly appears to have no
emotion. Her uneasiness with Hatsuko is intensified
as the motif of doubleness continues.
Akiko recognizes that as children they both betrayed a person to save
face – Akiko in the goldfish incident and Hatsuko in the stairway episode. In both cases a frail scapegoat is accused by
each of them in order to evade blame.
Although Akiko says there are some differences between them, she
continues to dwell on the similarities between herself and her daughter. Akiko sees Hatsuko as a mirror image of
herself – hands, feet, dishonorable behavior, and resents the reminder. Akiko only gets a clear vision of herself
through the intermediary of the old woman’s mirror which reflects the reality
of her situation since “the face which revealed itself contained anger.”
Akiko as coward. She hides her thoughts behind the fictive Noh
mask which has only driven her secrets deeper, but not eradicated them. The old woman’s mirror reveals the depth of
Akiko’s discomfort with her daughter.
She projects Hatsuko as an agent of displacement in rivalry for both
husband and suitor, as indictment of her own inability to be a sensitive
mother, as the replication of her own moral failings. Akiko has withdrawn behind the mask because
“… Hatsuko had stolen from me the woman whom although longing for I had locked
up …” She places her daughter in the
frame of a competitor for youth, sexuality, freedom, and refuses to speak
openly with Hatsuko who feels that she “was disliked by her mother without
knowing why.” Despite the girl’s evident
sensitivity to the feelings and wishes of others, she can find no way past the
mask. Akiko has even hidden from herself
behind a façade. It is only through the
reflection of a mirror that awareness is forced. An oblique look in the old woman’s mirror
where the anger is evidenced shocks Akiko.
Her only explanation comes from the crone who assures her that this
indeed is “the face of mother in general.”
Maternal love is “nothing but an illusion manufactured by men.” Each woman’s essence is diluted to infinity
by succeeding generations without her permission. Akiko seems frightened by this and restrains
her impulse to inform Hatsuko, who is so pleased that her own daughter
resembles her, that she too will feel what Akiko has felt. The question posed is Hatsuko’s ability, or
anyone’s, to come to grips with an eternal conundrum. Akiko is alienated from her self, her
daughter, and her society. She seeks her
salvation not in rebellion, but in estrangement. Her only attempt at acting on her perceptions
is to point a “gun” (pencil) in a silent threat, all the while silently begging
her daughter to flee the mother who might destroy her.
STYLE:
Dichotomy: The
dichotomy of Akiko’s predicament is to accept the face of anger silently or
embrace willingly the dissemination of her essence to female progeny. Even the similarities that bind the two women
reflect duality. Their penmanship begins
in rigid, precise shapes “of the letters written with unfailingly careful
strokes,” but toward the end of each line, as though suddenly unfettered, the
style becomes “wild and carefree.”
Nature itself repeats the dual pattern.
As early as sentence two, the voice of the forest is either “weeping” in
sorrow, or “panting hard” in jubilation.
Both figures symbolize the mother – daughter relationship and the
sensual undertones of the opening passages.
Warring emotions pierce Akiko’s perception of nature. On her way to the mailbox, Akiko is moved by
the vivid tones of fallen leaves on the sidewalk, feeling “they were too good
to step on.” Yet her return to the
house, having received the letter from Hatsuko, reveals the anger and agitation
that lurks just below the surface.
Bruising the persimmon leaves no longer monopolizes her as they “did not
impress me as vividly as they had before.”
Her reaction to the leaves is parallel to her reaction to the letter and
to her daughter. Pondering past events
she is attuned to her unmotherly resentments.
She acknowledges that she should “have rejoiced in the sensitivity that
a daughter of only nine had just displayed,” but instead she is uncomfortable
that there is a “miniature me beside me.”
Pointing the “gun” pencil at her daughter in a menacing gesture is
belied by her inward pleading to the girl to move away, “quickly retreat.” Akiko herself is distressed and torn by the
raging duality of her situation – be the loving mother, or fear and resent the
daughter. Akiko layers on the lipstick
and then removes it; as a result her face first announces “the gorgeous woman
which had been crushed inside of me,” and subsequent to the removal, returns
“to its usual hard state.” She is caught
between what is and what she imagines might have been. This inability to reconcile the past and
present brings forth the dreamlike sequences, night dreams or daydreams, erotic
or metaphysical. The old women,
purveyors of wisdom and truth, reinforce her feeling that there is danger in
having a double. Akiko is warned that it
“will be better for you to walk alone.”
“… It’s better that two similar ones do not stay together. It’s inviting trouble.” The ominous advice is reinforced by a
daydream in which she and Hatsuko are mixed interchangeably during an erotic
river encounter with “uncle”, and Akiko melts “drop by drop.” Akiko is trapped between opposites and knows
not whether to assume it is a normal aspect of motherhood or to blame herself
for a personality disorder.
Sister-in-law pronounces that she doesn’t “look like anyone else,” and
Akiko says the “face of mother” that depicts her “was not my mother’s.” These characters deny it, but the case is
made that this is the way of the world – each mother resembles her mother and
envies her daughter. Students in
psychology classes may wish to refer to Jung and Freud.
Technique: The montage
of momentary flashbacks is linked by Akiko’s first person “I”. The reader sees through her eyes the growth
of her disquieting concern. Akiko’s
daydream melange, the baker, Hatsuko, and herself, typifies the sensual, erotic
language throughout – the warmth, flowing melting, the feel of riverbank
pebbles, a strong wind, the blue-black water.
The emphasis on Akiko’s unfailing awareness of smells, sounds, colors –
even skin tone, shows her to be a highly visceral person despite her
standoffish spectator-like behavior that does not allow her to participate in
the “tempura” game with the children.
For her, winning the game “is decided by ignoring the opponent.” She feels deeply, erotically, but hides
behind the karatachi hedge.
The
repetition of blood – menstrual, life source, birth, sacrifice, lineage – is a powerful symbol that propels the story beyond
a mere questioning of a mother’s duty and invokes a reflection on the
psychological in regard to motherhood and the subconscious.
The story
is framed beginning and end by Akiko’s thoughts and sympathy toward
nature. In the opening the autumn wind
blows and stirs “the deep layers of darkness.”
Akiko is entranced by the “intricate combinations of yellow and red colors”
of the leaves. At the conclusion of the
story, Akiko is distracted by the thought of her (red) blood diluted in Misako
as “ominous,” despite her daughter’s enthusiasm for motherhood. Akiko hears and appreciates “the talk and laughter in the house which
swelled, gay, noisy, and with the smell of life;” yet she remains in an “air
pocket” reflecting as the “coldness arose, creeping up from the surface of the
ground.”
Multiple
flashbacks and dream sequences inform the reader of motivations along with the
use of an intermediary or seer in the guise of old women who have mystical
knowledge.
Post-discussion Activities:
INDIVIDUALS:
# In the course
of discussions or after, these reading log prompts may be added to the reading
log which will be graded.
* Can you win the game by “ignoring the
opponent”?
* Why
is the husband never named?
* In
what ways does the title seem appropriate to the story?
* Become one of
the characters: Akiko, Hatsuko, Masao, husband, mother-in-law, sister-in-law, baker, or
Misako. Imagine that you have died, and
now you are looking back and commenting on an aspect of your past. What will you say? Activities for an Interactive Classroom, Jeffrey
M. Golub, 1984. 69
# Set up a Venn diagram comparing Akiko and Hatsuko. Think of both visible and non-visible
attributes.
GROUP: (VOLUNTEERS)
Organize the group(s) at the beginning of work on the story so that they can collect evidence as they go along. Schedule debates at least three days after completion of all class discussions in order for them to organize roles, information, and do any necessary research. Most students at this level will know the procedures for a debate, but a quick review might help the whole class. They should use the story as will as current events, experiences, and observation to validate their argument.
It is necessary for parents to become involved with their children’s lives.
External
resemblances between two people indicate internal resemblances.
READING GROUP:
# On a piece of butcher paper three feet long each group will provide illustrations of the story. They may be realistic or symbolic. Include people, places, events, emotions. This should not be a simple retelling of the plot. Prepare to present and explain your poster to the class.
# Each group will be
assigned one phrase or word. Find and
interpret all references to that prompt.
Prepare for a class presentation of your findings. Keep in mind our whole class discussions.
karatachi hedge
blood
old woman
persimmon (nature)
?
congruent figures
Noh
drama / mask
To keep
track of references set up a chart which contains: page number, line number,
the quote, the interpretation. Make it
large enough for the whole class to see it easily.
# Peruse the text searching for individual
words – noun, verb, adjective, adverb – that carry emotive baggage. The group will pick a favorite and present it
to the class with an explanation as to impact.
example: “I said, smiling thinly.” adverb p.
195
explanation: thin
= skinny; thin = not full or lush;
see-through or opaque; falsely or nervously; not real; they have not seen each
other for four years – the relationship is thin, not full; Akiko is smiling falsely, can be seen
through; Hatsuko knows that her mother
is not sincere.
RELATED
LUCILLE
Motherhood
is a topic often explored, but almost always by daughters reacting to their own
mothers. Takahashi introduces an
important element when she looks at this through the mother’s eyes. The African-American poet Lucille Clifton
reflects upon, invokes, and evaluates as a daughter also, but as well, she has
produced several poems on being a mother; many reflect the ambivalence and
confusion of Akiko.
“grown daughter” p.
31
Mother does daily household work with daughter commenting on the girl’s difference; she “peels in the opposite direction” and promises a “different soup.” The speaker, as mother, gazes at the grown daughter “learning to love her,” but wondering “who is she.”
“here is another bone
to pick with you” p.32
Clifton, caught between generations, as we all are, seeks answers (“whose bones I worry for scraps”) and rails that she was not warned – neither that the daughters would bewitch her into believing they are her in a new body, not that they harbor secret selves much different from surface appearances. Akiko could use this information.
“morning mirror” p.43
The mirror reflects the surface resemblances of
Good Woman
“last note to my girls” p.124
Her four daughters are her “almost me,” but really “more
than me.”
“she understands me” p.
137
The “miracle of birth” presented in an unconventional light repeats the motif that “she has made herself again.” Interesting imagery for students about to become sexually active.
“the thirty eighth year” p.
158 – 9
Caught between the images of her mother and her daughters
“lucy and her girls” p.
165
Reiterates the reciprocal price of identity. She “feeds” her daughters’ identities and is in turn “extended” by them. Every parent becomes the extension of the child who fulfills the parents’ role.
DRAMAS OF MATERAL STRIFE:
Any of these would be a good cross-reference to look at the feelings of the mother.
OEDIPUS REX
GLASS MENAGERIE
MEDEA
WRITING ASSIGNMENTS:
Essay handout attached.
This is a survey; there are not right or wrong answers. We are going to read a short story about a mother and her reaction to motherhood. This will be the basis of discussions. Mark the appropriate code for each response.
SD =
strongly disagree D =
disagree
SA =
strongly agree A = agree
A GOOD MOM:
should love me no
matter what. __________
should have firm
discipline. __________
should know all
my friends. __________
should be my best
friend. __________
should help me
make the right choices. __________
should not have
secrets from me. __________
should be able to
contact me any time. __________
should get an
education. __________
should speak to
my teachers at least once a month. __________
should check my
room regularly. __________
should listen to
me. __________
should have a
school-night curfew. __________
should tell me
what she is thinking about. __________
should give me
all the freedom I want. __________
should check my
homework every day to be sure it’s done. __________
should choose the
activities I participate in. __________
should like my
boy / girl friend. __________
ON THE BACK:
List five
things that show a mother cares about her child.
List five things that show a mother
doesn’t care.
During your reading of “Congruent Figures” you have two tasks to complete.
1.
Role assignments
Prepare to fulfill the duties of discussion director, literary luminary, connector, summarizer, investigator, illustrator, vocabulary enricher, or travel tracer depending upon which role you are assigned prior to reading the story.
2.
Reading Log
Six entries are required during the reading. Additional entries will be assigned during our discussions. Each entry during reading should contain:
1.
A summary of no more than two (2) sentences with a
personal definition of any words noted on the assignment list. Pay attention to the word’s use in context.
2.
A reaction to the segment.
3.
Questions / concerns / confusions regarding
the segment.
PAGE #’S ENDING WITH … WORDS TO DEFINE PAGE
168-171 “… feeling I had in the boat.” congruent 168
Noh 168
171-175 “… behavior began to attract my
attention further.” tempura 172
175-179
“… things
that had happened more than ten years ago.”
179-186
“… afraid of anything having to do
with that power.”
186-189 “… which had been taken away by Hatsuko.” usurped 187
ambiguously 188
189-193 end of story garrulously 193
ominous 193
NAME____________________________
Summary:_____________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
Definitions:____________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
Reaction:_____________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
Questions/Concerns/Confusions:__________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
Choose one of the following topics for an
in-depth essay on the story. Be specific
and concrete. Use
the text, your knowledge, observation, and current events as support. Use the writing process. The final paper must be typed and submitted
on _______________________________.
* Does
Akiko evoke in the reader sympathy, empathy, or antipathy?
* To what
purpose is sensory language used in the story?
Cite passages that you interpret and evaluate. Be sure that you have a strong thesis.
* Define and
explain motherhood or fatherhood as it fits into your future. What will you do to prepare for it? Consider all areas that affect
parenting: society’s demands, freedom of
the individual, income, values, duties, goals.
Refer to specifics in the story.
* Review
definition 2 of “modernism” on the Boyce handout. Using the Matthew Arnold quotation, consider
how this is or is not reflected in the story.
Be attentive to the communication between mother and daughter that
appears to be crippled.
* Compare and
contrast views of motherhood in this story with those in “Xiaoxiao,” SHEN
Congwen (1929),
NEXT
Lucille Clifton
grown daughter
someone is helping me with the
onions
who peels in the opposite
direction
without tears and promises
different soup. i sit with her
watching her learning to love her but
who is she who is she
who
31
here is another bone to pick with you
o mother whose bones i worry for scraps
nobody warned me about daughters;
how they bewitch you into believing
you have thrown off a pot that is yourself
then one night you creep into their rooms and
their faces have hardened into odd flowers
their voices are choosing in foreign elections and
their legs are open to strange unwieldy men.
32
morning mirror
my mother her sad eyes worn as
bark
faces me in the mirror. my mother
whose only sin was dying, whose
only
enemy was time, frowns in the
glass.
once again she has surprised me
in an echo of her life but
my mother refuses to be
reflected;
thelma whose only strength was
love,
warns away the glint of likeness,
the woman is loosened in the
mirror and
thelma lucille begins her day.
43
GOOD WOMAN
Lucille
Clifton
last note to my girls
for sid, rica,
gilly and neen
my girls
my girls
my almost me
mellowed in a brown bag
held tight and straining
at the top
like a good lunch
until the bag turned weak and wet
and burst in our honeymoon rooms.
we wiped the mess and
dressed you in our name and
here you are
my girls
my girls
forty quick fingers
reaching for the door.
i command you to be
good runners
to go with grace
to well in the dark and
make for high ground
my dearest girls
my girls
my more than me. 124
she understands me
it is all blood and breaking
blood and breaking. the thing
drops out of its box squalling
into the light. they are both
squalling,
animal and cage. her bars lie wet,
open
and empty and she has made
herself again
out of flesh out of dictionaries,
she is always emptying and it
is all
the same wound the same blood
the same breaking. 137
GOOD WOMAN
Lucille
Clifton
the thirty eighth year
of my life,
plain as brad
round as cake
an ordinary woman.
an ordinary woman.
i had expected to be
smaller than this,
more beautiful,
wiser in afrikan ways,
more confident,
i had expected
more than this.
i will be forty soon.
my mother once was forty.
my mother died at forty four,
a woman of sad countenance lucy and her girls
leaving behind a girl
awkward as a stork. lucy is the ocean
my mother was thick, extended
by
her hair was a jungle and her
girls
she was very wise are
the river
and beautiful fed
by
and sad. lucy
is
the sun
i have dreamed dreams reflected through
for you mama her
girls
more than once. are the moon
i have wrapped me lighted
by
in your skin lucy
and made you live again is
the history of
her girls
158
are the place where
lucy
was going 165
“CONGRUENT FIGURES”
TAKAHASHI Takako
Peresephone P. Reynolds
(989) 724-5327