Mother Comes of Age

Mother Comes of Age

In the novel Mother Comes of Age, written by Driss Chraïbi, Mother is a barrier breaker and a conformist, a mother and a child, a women and girl. She straddles the line of innocence and experience, light and dark, wisdom and ignorance. Mother is very much in the gray area in matters of stereotypes and challenges. She is very complex and does both; defy and support the stereotypes of not only women, but of an Arab woman.
At the tender age of thirteen, Mother was put into an arranged marriage. She “didn’t even know what an egg was, how to break it or how to cook it or even what could have laid it…”(Chraïbi 92). She learned what to do, because that was her job. She cooked, cleaned, took care of the children, sheared the sheep and took orders from her neglectful husband, who was barely ever around. She didn’t question her role as a mother, or her name Mother. It was Junior and Nagib who questioned it for her. They wanted to broaden her horizons and open her mind. It was Junior said, “Her life was like a puzzle. She tried to correspond her inner life to the social roles expected of her—those of mother and wife. Whatever she could touch, feel, see, hear, taste and love she accepted with ease and it became a part of her. All else she rejected” (37). When Junior and Nagib teach her about her own body, how to read, History, Geography, French, technology and currency, they are upholding the stereotype that knowledge is a gift to women from men. Her uneducated and simple sides are shown when Junior and Nagib trick Mother, into thinking that the radio was a magician who lived inside the box. She takes it food, talks to it and believes that is aware of her.
After being taken from her close-minded, colorless world into a vibrant, exciting, new world, Mother shows a new side of her self. She begins to really learn and understand.
Hill 2

She breaks barriers for herself as well as women. The first time she goes to the park is a monumental part of the...