Chapter 1: When A Lie Is Not A Lie
“When someone you loved was depending on your lie, it was perfectly easy.” — Jane
Reviewing Big Little Lies for The Washington Post in 2014, Carol Memmott wrote, “[It] tolls a warning bell about the big little lies we tell in order to survive.”[1] Here, Memmott reads Liane Moriarty’s 2014 novel Big Little Lies as a “warning,” a sort of cautionary tale whose main message is: thou shalt not lie. Who should not lie, according to Memmott, is not clear, but given that Memmott is a woman reviewing a book about women, it is unlikely that her “we” includes men. Thus, even as Memmott recognizes that the women in the novel lie “in order to survive,” she reads Big Little Lies as a condemnation of those lies and places the blame on the female protagonists, i.e. those trying to survive, rather than the forces they are surviving: abusive partners, economic inequality, childhood trauma and societal pressure, just to name a few.
A more useful reading of Big Little Lies is found in the reviews of Celeste Ng’s 2017 novel Little Fires Everywhere. Refinery29’s Rachel Selvin labeled Little Fires “a meditation on the unspoken pains and contradictions of motherhood,” and Claire Fallon wrote in HuffPost that it “examines the cruelties that we unwittingly inflict on those we claim to love.”[2] Though a seemingly minor shift, labeling novels like Big Little Lies and Little Fires Everywhere “meditations” and “examinations” rather than “warnings” affects our readings of their maternal characters and the choices they make. Furthermore, Fallon’s claim that these mothers “unwittingly” inflict pain with their lies offers a refreshingly human approach to the maternal experience. Recognizing why these characters lie, rather than merely focusing on the act of lying, allows a new definition of “lie” to emerge — one that is rooted in empathy and understanding rather than moral judgement — and carves a path to reconsidering a mother’s obligation to remain relentlessly devoted to her child.
This chapter explores the intersection of truth and trauma in Big Little Lies, Little Fires Everywhere, and The Leavers to ultimately argue that even as these texts seemingly circulate a traditionally negative definition of “to lie,” they trouble that definition through their constructions of post-traumatic identity formation and memory reformation. I argue that a lie is not a lie, as in “an untrue statement with intent to deceive,” when it is an unintentional protective measure employed in the aftermath of a traumatic event, as is the case with Celeste, Jane, Elena, Bebe, and Polly. Though each mother has her own story, and thus her own multifaceted reasons for keeping secrets from her children, their lies collectively stem from their inability to confront or process their traumas.
All three texts feature mothers who survive traumatic experiences, though their experiences vary in nature. Celeste and Jane (Big Little Lies) survive sexual violence, Elena (Little Fires Everywhere) has a traumatic pregnancy, Bebe (also Little Fires Everywhere) experiences homelessness and starvation, and Polly (The Leavers) is abruptly deported from America and forced to leave her eleven-year-old son behind. These traumatic experiences lead these women to withhold information from their loved ones, both because they are mentally and physically unable to confront the truth and because they lack the language and environment necessary to testify to their trauma. Thus, just as it is inappropriate to claim that trauma survivors are to blame for what happens to them, it is reckless to shame mothers who survive trauma for their failure and, more often, inability to disclose their experiences to their children.
It is impossible to conceptualize why a trauma survivor might lie about or withhold her experiences without first understanding what trauma is and how it affects a survivor’s brain and body. Though its inability to be defined is itself a defining characteristic of trauma, certain scholars offer useful language for understanding it. I favor Richard Crownshaw’s definition: “Trauma can be defined as that which denies witnessing, cognition, conscious recall and representation – generating the belated or deferred and disruptive experience of the event not felt at the time of witnessing.”[3] According to Crownshaw, trauma is inherently unutterable — both when it first occurs and when it returns days, months, or years later in flashbacks and intrusive thoughts. Crownshaw’s definition is based heavily on Cathy Caruth’s insights on trauma, which she views as a “dynamic relationship between the event and its witnesses.”[4] Trauma is dynamic because it moves through time and, as Crownshaw puts it, “travels through the unconscious.”[5] For Caruth and Crownshaw, the unconscious is where trauma becomes “curiously insulated from its witness, who now has no purchase or grasp of the event, conscious or unconscious.”[6] Susan Brison, a survivor herself, simplifies this concept when she explains that “memory is so fatally disrupted by traumatic events.”[7] And, even if they could remember the full extent of their traumatic experiences, survivors often lack proper language to describe what they went through. As Holocaust survivor Primo Levi explains it, “our language lacks words to express this offense, the demolition of a man.”[8] Acknowledging that survivors are not always in control over their memories opens the door to conceptualizing a survivor’s failure to disclose her experiences as an intrinsic component of the re-remembrance stage of post-trauma recovery. Literary depictions of trauma provide the perfect platform for testing this reconceptualization because their fictive realms allow survivors struggling to make sense of their trauma to tell their story. In Big Little Lies, Little Fires Everywhere, and The Leavers, this struggle manifests itself through the lies that the maternal survivors tell both themselves and their children. In other words, it is only through the conceit of lying that the author, the characters, and the readers are able to access the truth; thus, even as they lie, these mothers testify to their traumas.
Memory and Trauma in Big Little Lies
Big Little Lies is a novel about the “little lies” we tell and the consequences of telling them. Yet, the word “lie” as employed by Celeste and Jane takes on new meanings in the novel, as these trauma survivors cannot be described as lying about events they cannot and do not want to fully comprehend. In fact, neither woman believes that she is lying; rather, Celeste and Jane’s non-disclosures, withholdings, and secrets stem from their inability to confront or process their traumas, and their desire to protect their children and themselves from the painful truths of those traumas. Celeste and Jane are sexually and physically assaulted by the same man, yet they react differently to their traumatic experiences and develop contrasting definitions of, and dependencies on, lies. Importantly, readers encounter these varying responses not through Celeste’s or Jane’s eyes, but through the lens of an omniscient narrator who has access to these women’s mental processes and memories. Though each chapter is primarily devoted to the experience of one woman at a time, we never hear Celeste or Jane describe their experiences in the first person. This narrative choice creates space between the characters and the reader, and in doing so, mimics the space that Celeste and Jane, as survivors of trauma, feel exists between their bodies and minds and their loved ones.
As the narrator reveals over time, Celeste’s inability to cope with the fact that her husband Perry beats her coincides with her comfortable, picturesque lifestyle. Her love for her husband, and her unwavering belief that he truly loves her, makes it difficult for her to verbalize her trauma, to mar her marriage with the label of “abusive.” The first time Celeste references the abuse, she does so without mentioning it at all. Instead, she merely reveals to the reader that she — the “unacceptably, hurtfully beautiful” woman we meet earlier in the novel — has a secret. On Christmas Day, of all days, Celeste discloses: “Today would be perfect in every way. The Facebook photos wouldn’t lie. So much joy. Her life had so much joy. That was an actual verifiable fact. There was really no need to leave him until the boys finished high school” (Moriarty, 60-61). Celeste’s hope, “Today...the Facebook photos wouldn’t lie,” implies that other days, they would. Along with the revelation that Celeste might leave her husband, the focus on the Facebook images points to an ugliness undergirding Celeste’s supposedly glamorous lifestyle.
Coupled with Celeste’s reluctance to abandon her “comfortable” lifestyle is her belief that, to some extent, Perry’s violence toward her is justified because she is far from a perfect victim. Frequently, when Celeste discusses an incident between her and Perry, she outlines her role not as a victim of assault but as an instigator and perpetrator. In one instance, Celeste describes a fight between her and Perry which occurred after he was unable to resolve a computer issue. Immediately upon calling upon Perry for assistance, Celeste rebukes herself and thinks, “Stupid, stupid, stupid. She should have known better. But it was too late” (76). Here, before the assault even occurs, Celeste accepts responsibility for it. This blame runs throughout her recollection of the event, which she asserts would have never happened “if she hadn’t made such a ‘catastrophic error’” (76) in asking Perry for help. In Celeste’s eyes, the root cause of the night’s violent scene is not Perry’s inability to control his temper, but her inability to control hers. She remembers the “frustration in her voice” when she asks Perry to give up on the computer (76). She admits that she “refused to retreat” as “a part of her continued to inwardly rage, even as the yelling began and her heart pounded and her muscles tensed in readiness” (77). Even as Celeste can recognize the injustice of the situation, even as she can acknowledge that “it should not be like this,” she cannot fully grasp that what is happening to her is not her fault.
Celeste’s self-blame can be conceptualized as a blend of behavioral self-blame and characterological self-blame, terms developed by psychologist Ronnie Janoff-Bulman. Survivors who adhere to behavioral self-blame ascribe to the belief that, with modified actions, their assaults could have been avoided, and this belief gives them confidence in the prevention of future traumatic incidents. Celeste adheres to this mindset when she wonders if her tone of voice, her anger, her impatience, etc. could have prevented one of Perry’s violent episodes. Characterological self-blame, however, attributes victimization to, as Janoff-Bulman puts it, “a relatively unmodifiable source (one’s character).”[9] Celeste adheres to this form of self-blame when she contemplates whether she truly wants to escape Perry’s violence: “Was there some sick, damaged part of Celeste that actually liked living like this and wanted this shameful, dirty marriage?” That’s how she thought of it. As if she and Perry engaged in some sort of strange, disgusting and perverted sexual practice” (77). In this passage, Celeste’s acceptance that she, like Perry, is grossly attracted to the violence is an expression of her characterological self-blame. Later in the novel, Celeste takes her characterological self-blame further when she claims that Perry’s rage is the result of a mental illness, not an intrinsic character trait. Celeste wants to believe that the true Perry, her loving husband, “trie[s] his best to resist” his violent tendencies. In refuting the reality that Perry’s rage is part of him, that it defines his character, Celeste inadvertently places more blame on herself; in her eyes, Perry cannot stop himself but she can and chooses not to. Celeste’s behavioral and characterological self-blame work together before, during, and after an instance of domestic violence to convince her that she is the source of her marital problems. Unlike “paralyzed survivors of freak accidents,” who often experience self-blame as a “positive psychological mechanism,” Celeste’s self-blame is precisely what prevents her from positively coping with her trauma.[10] Self-blame gives her a sense of control only to the extent that it leads her to control how others perceive her relationship; in other words, her self-blame leads her to lie to herself and to the world about the nature of her and Perry’s relationship.
One day, however, Celeste unexpectedly decides to face the truth and seek help. After admitting to herself, “You know what you have to do,” (176) she sits down at the same computer that had sparked Perry’s rage earlier in the novel and types “Domestic. Violence.” in the search bar. The move is both impulsive and calculated, an unplanned result of years of marital trauma which, in her words, had made her “a soft, spongy version of the girl she used to be” (176). That characterization of herself points to the ways in which her marriage to Perry has radically altered her self-perception to the point that she is motivated to end it, not necessarily because she wants to escape Perry, but because she wants to recover the part of herself he took away. It is obvious that Celeste is still, at this point in the novel, ashamed of her status as a survivor of domestic violence and uncomfortable with the thought of disclosing her trauma to another person, even if that person is a highly-trained counselor. Yet, in simply booking the appointment, Celeste begins to break free from the lies she’s told herself and her friends, a reality she acknowledges when she thinks, “The counselor knew more about the truth of life than anyone in the world besides Perry… She couldn’t go back now. She had to see it through” (212). And she does. Despite telling herself that she will not show up to the appointment, Celeste follows through with the counselor and, in doing so, begins to embrace transparency, community, and healing; walking into the clinic, Celeste takes her first steps toward a new life rooted in truth and freedom rather than fear and secrecy.
Celeste is initially uncomfortable with the counselor’s questions (Do you have weapons in the house? Have you ever been afraid you might die?), but she gradually finds the session to be freeing. Celeste thinks to herself, “It was shameful sharing these things with [the counselor], but it was also a wonderful relief to be telling someone, to be explaining how it all worked, to be saying these secrets out loud” (219). In finally “telling someone” about her trauma, Celeste becomes the subject, rather than the object, of her own narrative. Brison further explains this concept when she writes, “The act of bearing witness to the trauma facilitates this shift, not only by transforming traumatic memory into a narrative that can then be worked into the survivor’s sense of self and view of the world, but also by reintegrating the survivor into a community, reestablishing connections essential to selfhood.”[11] For years, Celeste had let Perry write her history; she posted happy pictures with him on social media and held his hand around the other parents, but those moments only offered snapshots of Perry and Celeste’s real relationship. Celeste’s visit to the domestic violence counselor marks the first time she can talk about the abuse on her terms in her own words. Though this visit does not immediately empower Celeste to disclose her trauma to her closest friends, Madeline and Jane, it does compel her to form a plan for leaving Perry, which includes purchasing and furnishing a new apartment. Each time she executes part of the plan, Celeste sheds the the parts of her whom Perry controls and abuses until, at the end of Big Little Lies, she is someone else entirely.
Importantly, Celeste does not get the opportunity to leave Perry; instead, he is taken from her when, during a school fundraiser, another mom named Bonnie pushes Perry down a flight of stairs and kills him after seeing him hit Celeste.[12] In this scene, choices are made for Celeste. She never tells her friends that Perry abuses her, but they see him hit her. She never divorces Perry, but he dies. Her secrets come to light not through her own revelations, but through Perry’s violent actions. Luckily, the novel does not end there, and Celeste receives an opportunity to continue the reclamation of her story which began with her first visit to the counselor. Instead the novel ends with Celeste speaking to a room of “emergency department doctors, triage nurses, GPs and counselors” (484) about her experiences with domestic violence one year after Perry’s death. At first, Celeste is reluctant to speak, but right before taking the stage she is “suddenly filled with a passionate desire to share everything, to say the bare ugly truth, to hold nothing back” (485). Considering Brison’s assertion that “telling their story, narrating their experiences of traumatic events, has long been considered…to play a significant role in survivor’s recovery from trauma,” Celeste’s testimonial points to the remarkable healing and progress she has made in just one year.[13] The Celeste we see at the beginning of Big Little Lies is unable to admit the truth of her traumatic environment to both herself and her peers; she hid behind “perfect little lies” (485) and kept secrets in order to maintain a semblance of control over her own life. The Celeste at the end of Big Little Lies, however, wants to empower others to share their “own big ugly truth[s]” (485). In testifying to her trauma, Celeste is finally able to reestablish control over her life and take back her identity.
Like Celeste, Jane, who is raped and impregnated by Perry (whom she knows as Saxon Banks) approximately five years before the novel begins, reveals her trauma slowly over time. The first time she discusses her son Ziggy’s elusive father figure, she merely tells Madeline that he was a one-night stand. She never mentions his name or his violent behavior. Yet, hesitant language frames the little information Jane does provide, offering an observant reader evidence that there’s more to Jane’s story than she lets on. Note the descriptions of Jane’s body in the following section:
‘So what about Ziggy’s dad?’ continued Madeline. ‘Is he in the picture at all?’
Jane didn’t flinch. She’d had five years to get good at it. She felt herself becoming very still.
‘No. We weren’t actually together.’ She delivered her line perfectly. ‘I didn’t even know his name. It was a…’ Stop. Pause. Look away if unable to make eye contact. ‘Sort of a … one-off.’ (24)
The narrator’s attention to Jane’s unflinching body, as well as her inability to meet Madeline’s eyes, communicates an understanding that, for some reason, Jane does not like to think about Ziggy’s father; yet, the narrator also communicates that Jane has learned to process Madeline’s question with ease. “She deliver[s] her line perfectly,” meaning she is playing a part, as are most people with secrets. When people lie, they conceal a part of themselves, allowing a performative identity to mask an internal self. Celeste, for example, uses social media to hide her trauma from the world. She adopts the mindset that as long as she is the only one who knows the assault is happening, then it isn’t really happening at all. Jane’s secrecy, however, lies in the unsaid. Not mentioning the name of Ziggy’s father or the circumstances surrounding her pregnancy are, in her mind, not lies but secrets which lead others to construct their own opinions and perceptions of her. Jane tells her mom that “lies get complicated” (26), which is why rather than lie outright, Jane chooses not to say anything at all.
Jane’s choice to conceal her trauma primarily stems from her love for her son and her unwillingness to shatter whatever fiction he has formed regarding his father’s identity. As much as she worries that Ziggy, who is accused of being a school bully, has inherited violent behaviors from his father, she worries more about what the truth will do to Ziggy’s worldview. Jane does not utter the name of Ziggy’s biological father — Saxon Banks — until halfway through Big Little Lies, and even then she does not let Ziggy know it. When Ziggy must complete a family tree project for class, she refuses to tell her son his father’s name — a reluctance that Ziggy, a kindergartner, cannot possibly understand. After Jane tells Ziggy, “I’ve told you this story so many times. Your father would have loved you if he’d known you, but I’m sorry, I don’t know his name,” Ziggy explodes with frustration and yells, “But you have to write a name there! Miss Barnes said!” (192). One would think Jane might give in and relieve her son’s homework-induced anxiety, but she does not budge; rather, she grits her teeth and affirms, “I don’t know his name!” (193). Only, after Ziggy goes to bed, we learn that Jane is in fact lying to Ziggy. Jane tells Madeline that her reason for doing so stems from a desire to “work out exactly what to say” because “Saxon Banks was not a very nice fellow” (194-195). Here, Jane admits to lying to Ziggy to protect him and paint for him a “palatable” portrait of his father, but she is also forced to admit to herself that her lies are not sustainable. As the novel’s halfway point, this scene marks an important turning point for Jane, as she begins to disclose her long-kept secret, embrace (albeit not eagerly) her identity as a survivor of sexual assault, and share her experiences with empathetic witnesses.
To some extent, one could argue that the lies Jane tells Ziggy are in fact lies, as they are intentional falsehoods meant to protect Ziggy’s innocence; yet, it is impossible to fully separate Jane’s protective falsehoods from her post-traumatic recovery. As much as her lies are meant to protect Ziggy, they also serve as measures of self-protection. These measures are more than understandable given that Jane herself is still trying to process what happened to her. Though Jane’s flashbacks suggest that she understands that what she experienced as rape and does not hesitate to label her rapist a “bad man,” she still struggles to admit that her trauma continues to affect her, i.e. that her attacker still infiltrates her thoughts and influences her self-image. Unlike Celeste, Jane is not the victim of ongoing abuse when Big Little Lies begins. Yet, her character reveals the ways in which memory can serve as a site of re-traumatization. Brison tells us, “Memories of traumatic events can be themselves traumatic — uncontrollable, intrusive, and frequently somatic” (69). Throughout Big Little Lies, Jane’s traumatic memories frequently interrupt otherwise pleasant, carefree moments. The first instance of Jane’s intrusive memories comes when she is first introduced to Madeline and Celeste, who eventually become her closest friends and allies. Upon seeing Celeste for the first time, Jane’s “heart [sinks],” because Celeste embodies everything Jane lacks, or, more specifically, everything her abuser told her she lacks. Jane thinks, “[Celeste] was what a woman was meant to look like. Exactly this. She was right, and Jane was wrong” (29). The tragic irony of course is that Jane is more akin to Celeste than she realizes, but all that matters in this moment is Celeste’s outward appearance, her “unacceptably[hurtful beauty]” (29). This beauty transports Jane to the night she was raped and conjures the voice of her attacker calling her a “very fat, ugly little girl” (29). Brison explains that trauma destroys a survivor’s sense of self because “the self exists fundamentally in relation to others.”[14] In this way, Jane’s intrusive memories are linked to her shattered selfhood; though her sexual assault takes place five years before Big Little Lies begins, her memory serves as a site of constant re-traumatization that renders it nearly impossible for her to construct a new, post-traumatic identity. Given Brison’s assertion that “the body and one’s perception of it are nonetheless essential components of the self,” it follows that Jane’s memory of her assault and her attacker’s opinions of her body disrupt her post-traumatic healing and reformation of self.[15]
Like Celeste, Jane can only begin to heal and take ownership over her identity once she verbalizes her experience. Jane herself acknowledges the power of oral testimony when she thinks, “It was telling Madeline about Saxon Banks. It was repeating those stupid little words he’d said. They needed to stay secret to keep their power. Now they were deflating the way a jumping cattle sagged and wrinkled as their air hissed out” (232). In confessing her sexual assault to Madeline, Jane reclaims the very words Saxon Banks used to cause bodily pain and mental anguish; they become part of her testimony. According to Leigh Gilmore, “testimony names a form through which those who have been harmed claim a right to speak.”[16] Up to this point, Jane had not felt like she had an adequate witness to whom she could discuss her trauma, as evidenced by her unwillingness to share the identity of Ziggy’s father or the circumstances of her pregnancy, so she did not claim her right to speak. In her eyes, “it was perfectly easy” to lie to her family members because they “depended on [her] lie” (294). Yet, Madeline’s relative distance from Jane’s life empowers Jane to open up to her. In this way, Madeline functions in the same way as Celeste’s therapist. She is an adequate witness, invested in Jane’s well-being enough to empathize with her but not too much that she refuses to truly hear her, as Jane worries would be the case with her parents and brother. Once Jane finds an adequate witness, she is anxious to find another one. She “wants to keep talking about [her sexual assault],” which leads her to tell Celeste “a shorter version of what she’d told Madeline” (233). Rather than allowing Saxon’s words to inflict harm, Jane harnesses their power for her own healing; the more she shares, the more she heals. Brison notes the healing power of testimony when she writes, “narrating memories to others (who are strong and empathetic enough to be able to listen) enable survivors to gain more control over the traces left by trauma.”[17] With each iteration of her story, Jane loosens her attacker’s hold on her until, at the end of the novel, she gains the upper hand over Saxon Banks.
When Jane confronts Saxon/Perry at the school fundraiser, she takes him by surprise; after all, how could he expect to run into a woman he raped one time, five years ago, at a silly school fundraiser? In fact, Saxon/Perry does not remember Jane at all. The narrator tells us, “When [Jane] said ‘Saxon Banks’ there was a flicker, not because he recognized her, he still had no idea, couldn’t even be bothered of dredging up the appropriate memory, but because he understood who she must be, what she represented” (440). Here, Saxon/Perry is forced to remember something he has repressed and long refused to acknowledge — not unlike how Celeste and Jane are repeatedly forced to remember what he did to them, how their violent memories assault them when they least expect it. Once Jane reveals her truth, Perry can no longer hide behind his money, his alter ego, his charm, or his wife; in other words, he is forced to hear her.
Prior to the school fundraiser, Jane never had the chance to confront her rapist, as she only ever saw him once, but the fundraiser provides the perfect opportunity to do so thanks to both its Elvis-and-Audrey theme and audience. The Hepburn costume empowers Jane because it renders her momentarily unrecognizable in Perry’s eyes. Donning her outfit, Jane is not the scared, demure girl who Perry once violated; rather, she is empowered and courageous. The Hepburn costume also becomes a symbol of collective resistance and strength. As Jane stands in front of Saxon, ready to confront him, she does not stand alone. She has the emotional support of Madeline, Celeste, Renata, Bonnie — all of whom are dressed as Audrey Hepburn — and their husbands; meanwhile, Saxon, aka Perry, having abused his one ally to the point of no return, has no one in his corner. In both sharing her story and exposing Perry’s secret life, Jane literally expunges Perry from her life; her confession leads Perry to hit Celeste, which then leads Bonnie to push Perry down a flight of stairs and kill him. This expulsion, however, does not mean that Jane no longer thinks about Perry or that her assault no longer affects her. For a period, Perry’s death confuses Jane’s understanding of what happened to her. At the funeral she recalls, “Her memories of him in the hotel room and on the balcony — the casual violence with which he’d treated Celeste — felt flimsy and unlikely. The man with two little boys on his knees, laughing in slow motion at someone off-camera, could not possibly have done those things” (473). Clearly, Jane does not magically heal once Perry is dead. Yet, the Jane we see at the end of Big Little Lies is not the same person we see at the beginning of the novel. She has friends, she feels safe, and the last time we see her, she is entering a romantic relationship for the first time since giving birth to Ziggy. So, while Jane is not radically transformed after sharing her secrets and confronting her abuser, those courageous actions do set her on a route to restoration and provide her with a caring support system to whom she can continue to confess.
Over the course of Big Little Lies, Celeste and Jane learn to live with their traumatic memories and experiences and share their stories with others, but this is not the case with every mother who keeps secrets from herself and her children. The mothers I discuss in the second half of this chapter — Elena and Bebe from Little Fires Everywhere and Polly from The Leavers — do not have the same resources available to them. While Celeste and Jane can share their experiences not only with each other, but also with empathetic non-survivors, Elena, Bebe, and Polly, for various reasons, do not have strong and understanding support systems. Of course, a lack of witnesses is not the only reason why these women struggle to cope with their trauma — culture, geography, and structural inequalities are also at play. For example, Elena, a white upper middle-class suburban mom, is going to have far more coping mechanisms at her disposal than Polly and Bebe, disenfranchised Chinese immigrants. Despite their varying privileges and economic statuses, these women are united in their statuses as trauma survivors and the loneliness they experience in the aftermath of those traumas; together, their stories illuminate the negative effects of physical and emotional isolation on one’s post-traumatic recovery, health, and relationship to oneself and one’s children.
Little Fires Everywhere and Post-Traumatic Fracturing
According to its back-cover blurb, Little Fires Everywhere “explores the weight of secrets, the nature of art and identity, the ferocious pull of motherhood—and the danger of believing that following the rules can avert disaster.”[18] The “secrets” belong to the novel’s two main maternal protagonists, Elena Richardson and Mia Warren, who, apart from living in the same progressive, manicured suburb of Cleveland, have virtually nothing in common — at least on the surface. The two differ in economic status, life philosophy and, most relevant to this thesis, their relationships with their children. Mia, a mysterious nomadic artist, has only one child Pearl, with whom she is extremely close and affectionate; yet, this affection masks unsettling secrets regarding Mia’s pregnancy with Pearl and her own family history.[19] Meanwhile, Elena has four children — two she favors, two she neglects, and none to whom she is especially close; yet, it is her youngest daughter Izzy with whom Elena has the most strained relationship.
The narrator emphasizes Elena and Izzy’s rocky relationship from the beginning of Little Fires Everywhere, though the root of their tension is not revealed at first. The novel opens with a portrait of the Richardson’s family home ablaze, and the reader is led to believe that Izzy is to blame. Speaking of the rumor mill in suburb of Shaker Heights, the narrator states, “Later people would say that the signs had been there all along: that Izzy was a little lunatic, that there had always been something off about the Richardson family” (Ng, 2). The townspeople are not the only ones to assume Izzy’s lunacy; recalling the moment she woke up to the fire alarms going off, Elena remembers, “When she had awoken to the shrill scream of the smoke detector, she ran from room to room looking for [her kids Trip, Lexie and Moody]. It occurred to her that she had not looked for Izzy, as if she had already known that Izzy was to blame” (3). Thus, the book begins with an introduction to Elena’s subconscious disregard for Izzy’s wellbeing — a disregard that haunts Elena throughout Little Fires Everywhere. The chapter ends with a clear assertion that Izzy set the fire intentionally, but we don’t learn her reasons for doing so; instead, the novel jumps back in time to depict the events that led up to Izzy’s departure from the Richardson family, or, more specifically, her mother.
Initially, the narrator depicts Elena and Izzy’s complicated relationship as rooted in their polar-opposite personalities. Elena was born and raised in Shaker Heights, a town in which “there was a plan for everything” (10). Elena, too, has a plan for everything and her life adheres to a very ordered design. She and her husband have traditional, stable jobs — he’s a lawyer and she is a journalist for the local newspaper, The Sun Press; their jobs put them in contact with “important people,” such as the “mayor, the director of the Cleveland Clinic, [and] the owner of the Indians” (36). She drives a Lexus and decorates her home with heavy framed photographs and cushy sofas. Additionally, Elena exemplifies the quintessential Shaker Heights progressive, i.e. someone who likes to label themselves as progressive because they occasionally throw the underdogs a bone. For example, regarding Elena’s motives for renting out her second home on Winslow Road, the narrator reveals:
It wasn’t the money that mattered...because they did not need the money from the house, it was the kind of tenant that mattered to Mrs. Richardson. She wanted to feel that she was doing good with it...she rented only to people she felt were deserving but who had, for one reason or another, not quite gotten a fair shot in life. It pleased her to make up the difference. (12)
Having come from a long line of Shaker Heightsians, Elena strives to be a model citizen and prides herself on her ability to do it all: raise four kids, maintain a job, look put together and, on top of all that, help struggling community members. In fact, she has been conditioned to think that any deviation from this way of life is a step in the wrong direction. Growing up, Elena learned that “Rules existed for a reason: if you followed them, you would succeed; if you didn’t, you might burn the world to the ground” (161). She buys into the idea that Shaker Heights is “a perfect place” whose residents are expected to be “smarter, wiser, more thoughtful and forethoughtful, the wealthiest [and] the most enlightened” (158) than the rest of the population. To her, passion and spontaneity are worth sacrificing if it means obtaining “a beautiful house, a steady job, a loving husband, [and] a brood of healthy and happy children in return” (161). Therefore, at least on the outside, Elena’s life is perfectly ordinary within that class milieu.
Izzy neither fits this orderly suburban mold, nor is she one of these so-called “happy” children. When they first describe Izzy to Pearl, the Richardson children say she is more than “a little impulsive” and claim that in seven to ten years, they can expect to see Izzy on an episode of Jerry Springer. Over the years, according to her siblings, Izzy’s impulsive behavior has led her to free cats from the Humane Society and give away new boutique dresses to strangers on the street. To Lexie and Trip, who inherited their mother’s commitment to the status quo, Izzy is crazy, and their stories serve to color Pearl’s, and the reader’s, perceptions of Izzy before she even appears in the novel. When we finally see things from Izzy’s perspective, however, she comes across not as a rash, apathetic teenager but as a young woman with a deep desire to advocate for others and express her own individuality. Referencing Izzy’s attachment to T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” the narrator explains, “The poem made her think of her mother, doling out her creamer in a precise teaspoon, flipping out if Izzy bit into an apple without washing it, rigidly drawing restrictions around her every move… so concerned about wearing the right things, saying the right things, being friends with the right people” (79). Here, Izzy expresses a desire to make her own decisions and live fearlessly. It is her inability to do so and her mother’s constant surveillance that sparks her fury, not an inherent craziness or recklessness. As Mia puts it, “Izzy had the heart of a radical, but she had the experience of a fourteen-year-old living in the suburban Midwest” (80). Izzy’s radical heart leads her to snap her racist orchestra teacher’s bow in half for picking on the shy black girl in class, jam the locks to every bathroom door in her school as an act of rebellion against her suspension for the orchestra incident, and, ultimately, spark “little fires” throughout her childhood home.
Izzy rebels against the possibility of becoming her mother, or at least the mother she knows to be intense, hypervigilant, and detached. The tragedy here is that Izzy doesn’t even really know the person she doesn’t want to be. She is not aware of the root of her mother’s lack of affection or need for control. In Of Woman Born, Adrienne Rich writes that is “easier by far to hate and reject a mother than to see beyond her to the forces acting upon her.”[20] In Elena’s case, these forces are the combined effects of unresolved postpartum post-traumatic stress disorder and elite societal expectations which dictate that any deviation from a perfectly ordered life is cause for concern. Izzy was born eleven weeks early, and subsequently spent two weeks in the hospital during which she was monitored for everything from heart problems to seizures to vision or hearing loss; Elena’s remaining memories of those two weeks have profound impacts on her physical and emotional health. In 2015, Ilana Strauss wrote in The Atlantic, “Postpartum PTSD sufferers...experience typical PTSD symptoms like hypervigilance, intrusive memories, flashbacks, severe emotional distress, irritability, trouble sleeping and nightmares.”[21] Elena experiences these symptoms of PTSD for years after bringing Izzy home from the hospital. In the following months, Elena developed a “microscopic focus on each thing Izzy did, turning it this way and that, scrutinizing it for signs of weakness and disaster” (10), a behavioral pattern that aligns with post-traumatic hypervigilance. Eventually, however, Elena’s PTSD manifested itself not as hypervigilance, but as avoidance: “As time went on, the concern unhooked itself from fear and took on a life of its own. She had learned, with Izzy’s birth, how your life could trundle along on its safe little track and then, with no warning, skid spectacularly off course” (110). Izzy’s birth thus shattered Elena’s perfectly predictable, ordered life.
According to Strauss, the unexpectedness of traumatic pregnancies is precisely what makes them so traumatic. She writes, “Mothers often don’t anticipate having a problematic birth, so when it happens, it can leave lasting psychological scars.”[22] It follows that a woman like Elena, who has been conditioned to have a plan for everything, would experience extreme duress when those plans go out the window. Unfortunately, rather than discussing her shattered reality with a licensed therapist or trusted ally, Elena projects her pain on to her daughter, who becomes a physical representation of her trauma. When Elena looks at Izzy, she has “that feeling of things spiraling out of control coiled around her again, like a muscle she didn’t know how to unclench” (110). Because Elena never informs Izzy of her traumatic pregnancy or communicates her inability to look at her without feeling anxious or out-of-control, Izzy never knows her mother loves her. To cope with her trauma, Elena tries to control everything and everybody in her life, but this compulsion comes at the expense of her relationship with Izzy. In micromanaging Izzy and projecting her fears upon her, Elena unintentionally communicates that she doesn’t love her own daughter.
Though Elena never lies to Izzy in the sense that she never intentionally misleads her, her traumatic pregnancy leads her to construct a second maternal identity rooted in fear and paranoia — an identity that is notably absent in the presence of her three other children. Elena is not able to shed this identity by the end of Little Fires Everywhere because doing so would require her to acknowledge her PTSD and seek help — a step that Elena never takes. Elena’s singular behavior toward Izzy logically leads Izzy, and the other children, to believe that Izzy is less loved and less wanted than them. As the narrator writes, “The sense all the children had—including Izzy—was that she was a particular disappointment to their mother” (111). Thus, Elena’s trauma inevitably leads her to unintentionally lie to Izzy about her feelings toward her. With every scolding, punishment, and rejection, Elena lights “little fires” in Izzy. As theorized by Rich, Izzy is “The child [who] does not discern the social system or institution of motherhood, only a harsh voice, a dulled pair of eyes, a mother who does not hold her, does not tell her how wonderful she is.”[23] The house fire is Izzy’s ultimate reaction to years of such perceived disappointment; it simultaneously represents Izzy’s full acceptance of her mother’s lie and her retaliation against it. Believing she can never earn her mother’s affection, Izzy decides not only to stop trying but also to go the extra mile and blow up her mother’s picturesque life. But of course, Elena’s life was never that picturesque to begin with; Izzy doesn’t stick around to find that out.
The Effects of Trauma on Marginalized Women
Elena obviously struggles to grapple with her postpartum PTSD and establish an authentic relationship with her daughter, but her interference in the lives of those around her allows her to establish a modicum of control over her own life. Though she chooses not to seek the help she needs, Elena, like Celeste and Jane, has choices thanks to her economic status and racial privilege. These words, choice and control, are virtually unavailable to the poor, working class mothers of color in Little Fires Everywhere and The Leavers. Because of their socioeconomic standing, race or immigration status, mothers of color often feel powerless within systems that are not designed to support them. While Elena’s privilege allows her to seek control through invasive practices, women of color must constantly look for ways to assert themselves and challenge the system from the outside. Patricia Hill Collins writes:
A dialectical relationship exists between efforts of racial orders to mold the
institution of motherhood to serve the interests of elites, in this case, racial elites,
and efforts on the part of subordinated groups to retain power over motherhood so that it serves the legitimate needs of their communities. [Women of color] have long been preoccupied with patterns of maternal power and powerlessness because their
mothering experiences have been profoundly affected by this dialectical process.[24]
Collins goes on to name three themes related to this concern with power/powerlessness present among African American, Native American, Hispanic and Asian American women: 1) the right to control over one’s body and ability to have children 2) the freedom to keep one’s children, even if unplanned and 3) the need to protect their children from the dominant group’s indoctrination. [25] Unlike the white mothers discussed above, Bebe and Polly, the poor Chinese immigrants in Little Fires Everywhere and The Leavers, experience profound feelings of powerlessness specifically resulting not only from their status as mothers, but also from the traumas resulting from their socioeconomic statuses and lack of high-quality financial, emotional, and legal support. Within these novels’ white, patriarchal societies, Bebe and Polly must work twice as hard to maintain their bodily autonomy, access to their children, and cultural integrity.
Not only is Bebe the only mother of color in Little Fires Everywhere, making her an automatic “other” within the mostly-white and wealthy suburb of Shaker Heights; she is also the only mother to give up her child, though she eventually fights to have her custodial rights reinstated. Therefore, struggle and powerlessness define Bebe’s maternal arc. At first, Bebe’s decision to abandon her child is described as selfish and irresponsible. Lexie, who does not know Bebe but knows the couple who adopted her infant child May Ling (who they rename Mirabelle), casts judgement when she tells Mia, “They found [the baby] at a fire station, can you believe that? Someone literally just left her there” (118). Thus, before we even meet Bebe, we hear what type of mother she might be, i.e. one who can willfully surrender her child to the elements and walk away without remorse. In introducing Bebe through the eyes of a white, upper class suburban teenager who has no conception of hardship, let alone the cost of raising a child, Ng exposes the societal trend of judging mothers of color without acknowledging the unique obstacles and oppressors they face daily. Mikki Kendall elaborates on this trend in her book Hood Feminism when she writes:
We assume that a lack of financial stability is an indicator of parental ability, despite knowing that the reasons for the wealth gap have very little to do with what might be best for a child emotionally and socially...When your income is substantially below what you need to raise your child, and every possible economic solution is unavailable, ineffective, or illegal, then what do you do?[26]
Lexie, and the rest of the Richardson family except for Izzy, make similar assumptions regarding Bebe’s right or ability to parent based on her economic status. Rather than give Bebe the benefit of the doubt or try to understand her point of view, the Richardsons assign her the label of “bad mother,” which, once declared, cannot be taken back.
Of course, when we finally do meet Bebe, we realize that she very much loves her child and very much regrets what she did, but she, as Kendall might have predicted, felt like she had no other choice but to give her up. When she gave birth, Bebe had no job and no money for food or formula; she was desperate, and “in desperation, went to a fire station and left her baby on the doorstep” (118). After receiving some medical care and shelter, Bebe begins looking for her daughter, “but no one would help her” (120). Speaking to Mia, her only ally in the novel, Bebe says, “Sometimes...I wonder if I am dreaming. But which one is a dream...That I can’t find my baby? Or that I have the baby at all?” (121). Here, Bebe describes a sense of disillusionment when it comes to her status as a mother. She knows she has given birth, but she has been repeatedly denied access to her child and left to wonder where her child is and who is taking care of her. Luckily, Bebe’s child is just a baby, too young to feel an immense sense of abandonment or to ascribe to the fiction that she was unloved or unwanted; otherwise, Bebe’s inability to access her child could have resulted in a permanently severed mother-child relationship. In fact, the only reason Bebe ever finds out that her daughter has been adopted by a white couple is because Mia tells her. Mia’s intervention provides Bebe with a sense of hope, and this hope inspires Bebe to fight to regain her maternal power and custodial rights to her child, though she must first battle a traumatic legal process fraught with attempts to diminish her maternal qualifications. In other words, she must confront the lie that she is an unfit and undeserving mother.
At every point in her legal battle, Bebe has her maternal authority questioned and invalidated. The first time Bebe attempts to visit her child, albeit without a lawyer or social worker present, the McCulloughs reject her, call the police, and repeatedly tell her that she has no right to be on their property. Then, in an interview with the local news agency, Mr. McCullough claims, “There’s no one out there...who can honestly say [our adopted daughter] Mirabelle isn’t better off in a steady home with two parents,” (153) suggesting that part of Bebe’s inability to mother well stems from her lack of compliance with the heteronormative marital conventions that push two-parent, two-gender households as more caring and safe environments for children. Bebe is further vilified as a mother in court when the McCulloughs’ lawyer (who conveniently is Elena’s husband) reveals the state of May Ling’s health when she was first found at the fire station (malnourished dehydrated with a severe diaper rash). According to Kendall, arguments like the McCulloughs’ stem from the “racist lie that only white parents have the emotional capacity to actually want their child.”[27] When Bebe left May Ling in the cold, when she didn’t feed her or change her enough, she gained the title of bad mother from the McCulloughs and their supporters — a group of people who refuse to believe that there’s more to love than physical comfort. Their arguments do more to condemn structural inequalities than to disparage Bebe’s love for her child. When a mother cannot afford new diapers or formula, when she doesn’t speak English or know how to apply for welfare, when she must choose between having electricity and having groceries, who is really to blame — the mother or the society that, despite its wealth of resources, fails her time and time again? In Bebe’s eyes, her status as May Ling’s birth mother should matter most, but because she does not (read: cannot) mother the way she is expected to, this status ultimately means nothing to the court.
Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, the court eventually buys in to this racist lie that the mother, and not society, is to blame and grants the McCulloughs permanent custody of May Ling. Having been let down by a system never meant to serve her in the first place, Bebe ultimately decides to circumvent it, and the novel ends with the implication that Bebe “stole” her daughter back from the McCulloughs. Taking her daughter back allows Bebe not only to assert her maternal identity but also to eliminate the possibility of her daughter growing up and believing that she was not wanted or unloved. After trying and failing to defend herself against the racist lies being circulated about her ability to mother, Bebe refuses to let her daughter become the product of a lie as well. In doing so, Bebe becomes the only mother discussed in this thesis to not actively lie to her child, not even unintentionally, but this title is only won through traumatic legal procedures and the illegal seizure of her daughter. Thus, Little Fires Everywhere communicates a dismal message that if mothers of color, immigrant mothers, and poor mothers cannot expect help from within a predominantly white patriarchal and capitalist society, they must be prepared to harness their own maternal power and resist.
The Leavers continues this important conversation on poor, immigrant motherhood by offering a more robust portrait of the everyday plights of mothers of color in the United States; the novel also more fully explores the relationships that mothers of color have with their children and the generational trauma present in poor and immigrant families. The novel’s maternal protagonist, Polly, lives in America for years before she is suddenly deported and forced to leave her son Deming behind. Unable to contact his mother, Deming is eventually adopted by a white family and grows up wondering where his mother is and why she left him.[28] For years, Polly is locked into the unintentional lie that she abandoned her son willingly, that she stopped searching for him or thinking about him; she must leave her son to form his own fictitious narrative regarding her disappearance. Stripped of her bodily autonomy, familial relationships, and resources, Polly experiences Collins’ three forms of powerlessness. Even before she is forcibly deported from the United States and separated from her son Deming, Polly navigates an unplanned pregnancy, workplace exploitation, and economic uncertainty. Then, when she is deported, she is deprived of the choice to take Deming back to China with her and is subjected to years of unknowing his whereabouts or condition. And, finally, when Deming gets in touch with her years later and tells her he was adopted by a white couple, Polly must reckon with her son’s lost connection not only to his mother but to his culture. In depicting Polly’s journey from China to America and back to China again, The Leavers simultaneously depicts the ways in which “racial domination and economic exploitation” can sever a woman of color’s relationship both to her child and herself.
The Leavers spends the first chapter introducing us to Polly, Deming, and their life in New York City only to forcibly remove Polly from the narrative without explanation. We learn they speak Fuzhounese and live with Polly’s boyfriend Leon, his sister Vivien, and her son Michael in a cramped apartment. We also learn that Polly works as a nail technician and that Deming lived with his grandfather in China for the first years of his life before coming to America. Though the narrator speaks in third person, we are more closely aligned with Deming’s point of view, and this alignment makes it more tragic when, a week after his mother doesn’t come home from work, Deming decides, “She’d left for Florida and left him, too” (Ko, 13).[29] Here, Deming adopts the same lies that Bebe worked so tirelessly to prevent in her daughter: that he was purposely abandoned and that his mother did not love him anymore. Unlike Bebe, Polly is not granted the opportunity to disprove those lies, for just as she physically disappears from Deming’s life, Polly’s voice is literally absent from the novel’s subsequent chapters. This absence forces the readers to make their own assumptions regarding Polly’s disappearance and abandonment of her child. In this way, Ko proves Kendall’s earlier argument regarding how easy it is to make assumptions about a mother of color’s intentions or ability to parent, especially when that mother is repeatedly silenced or removed from the narrative. Before we even see things from Polly’s perspective, before we step inside her mind or learn the truth regarding her disappearance, we are conditioned to believe that it was intentional; in other words, we are conditioned to believe a lie.
The chapters immediately following Polly’s disappearance explore the ways in which Deming, too, has been conditioned to believe lies regarding his mother’s disappearance. One night, five months after Polly’s disappearance, Vivian chastises Deming for dropping a pile of rice on the table and tells him, “Maybe your mama left because she was tired of feeding such an ungrateful boy” (39). While Leon quickly discredits this statement, saying “She didn’t leave because of you,” the damage is already done. Vivian, too, is a poor, tired, and disenfranchised immigrant mother suddenly forced to care for a child who is not hers, so her frustration is understandable. But comments like hers enforce Deming’s natural assumption that his mother left because of him and not circumstances beyond her control. Following his mother’s disappearance, Deming starves himself and strives for good grades with hope that these extreme behaviors will bring his mother back. It doesn’t help that Deming is haunted by a seemingly simple promise his mother made when he was six years old to never leave him — a promise which she obviously couldn’t keep. Bureaucratic inefficiencies also enforce Deming’s assumption that his mother left intentionally. When Polly’s coworker calls Immigration to see if they have knowledge of Polly’s whereabouts, they tell her that they have no record of her. Even though Immigration is notorious for its lack of record-keeping and blatant disregard for the well-being of their detainees, Deming takes this knowledge as a sign that “Mama was okay, not in danger” (42).[30] Then, when Leon leaves and Vivian decides to enter Deming into foster care, Deming finds himself living in a new home with strangers without any conception of what foster care/adoption really entails. No one, not even his foster/adoptive parents Peter and Kay Wilkinson, tell Deming what’s happening to him or shed light on what happened to his mother. Deming only begins to comprehend the severity of the situation when he finds the Wilkinson’s “Initial Permanency Hearing Report,” which reveals Peter and Kay’s plans to “petition for termination of mother’s parental rights on grounds of abandonment” (79, emphasis added). Presumably abandoned by his mom, Leon, and Vivian, Deming officially adopts the lie that he is unwanted and unloved. He, like Izzy, becomes another one of the children Rich describes as unable to “discern the social system or institution of motherhood,” or any of the other institutions that he is unaware are forcing him and his mother apart, namely xenophobia and the American immigration system.[31] Furthermore, because she is absent from the country and the narrative, Polly is stripped of the decision to care for and keep her child; thus, against her will, Polly enforces Deming’s negative assumptions about her feelings toward him.
Polly finally reappears 100 pages into the novel, though the circumstances surrounding her disappearance are not revealed at first. Polly is sure to communicate one important truth, though: she did not choose to leave Deming, and she very much wanted to keep him. She says:
For so long I had wanted to find you. Leon had told me you’d been adopted by Americans, that they were taking care of you, he insisted you were in good hands, and I tried so hard to believe him, because the only way to keep going was to act as if you were totally gone, that we were both better off staying put in the lives we had. But if I’d had a choice in it, and I hadn’t, I would never have let you go, never! (118)
Before revealing how or why Polly disappeared, Ko makes sure to refute all the “racist lies” that had been circulating throughout the novel up to this point by emphasizing Polly’s lack of autonomy when it came to her departure from Deming. It is also significant that the narration here switches to first-person because it allows the reader to have full access to Polly’s thoughts and memories — access that not even Deming has. Perhaps the most important memories to which the reader has access are those regarding the circumstances of her pregnancy with Deming, which we eventually learn was entirely unplanned and unwanted.
According to Polly, she began a relationship with a village boy named Haifeng when she was fifteen, though it did not become sexual until she was 18, after they had both moved to Fuzhou to work factory jobs. She only had sex twice before getting pregnant. She did not love Haifeng or want to marry him, but she knew she would have to if she were to have the baby. She considered getting an abortion, but even if she managed to circumvent the strict Chinese marriage and pregnancy permits, the fines were sure to bankrupt her and her father. Part of her even hoped that her long, tiring journey to America would cause a miscarriage; it didn’t, and by the time she arrived in the country, she was seven months pregnant and legally barred from obtaining an abortion. Rather than plunge Polly into despair, however, this knowledge encourages her to resist all the structural forces trying to weigh her down and tell her she is undeserving of success and affection. Collins elucidates how giving birth can empower women of color when she writes, “For many women of color, choosing to become a mother challenges institutional policies that encourage white, middle-class women to reproduce, and discourage and even penalize low-income racial ethnic women from doing so.”[32] Polly expresses a similar understanding when she thinks, “A baby might soothe the sharp edges of my loneliness… I could raise my child to be smart and funny and strong. I want you [Deming] to know that you were wanted. I decided: I wanted you...and two months later, when I have birth to you, I would feel accomplished, tougher than any man” (143). These lines yet again debunk Deming’s (and society’s) assumptions that his mother left him on purpose; while there was a point in Polly’s life when she did not want to give birth and, in fact, did everything she could to not give birth, she committed to motherhood when Deming entered the world. Though she did not love Deming’s father, though she did not have any money or know any English, though she did not even choose to have a baby, Polly ultimately chose to give life to Deming every single day after he was born until one day, a choice was made for her.
Polly battles an unplanned pregnancy, makes the harrowing journey from China to America, and works thirteen-hour days in a garment factory to provide a promising life for her son — only to have the government take him away from her. Two hundred pages into the novel, we finally learn that Polly was deported after Immigration raided the nail salon where she worked. She was transported to a detention center, where she remained for two years before being transferred to a different facility in Texas. The phones were broken, though she couldn’t remember anyone’s phone number anyway, she had no soap and the lights stayed on 24/7, making it impossible to sleep. Unable to fully comprehend what was happening to her, Polly processed her trauma by dissociating from it, by contending that it was “the life of another person [she] was watching in a movie” (299). Polly endures countless other traumas — a lack of proper legal representation, arrival back in Fuzhou without shelter or economic security, and, chiefly, an inability to contact her son and tell him where she is. It is easy to judge Polly for her hesitancy in reaching out to Deming, for her decision not to track him down after Leon finds her in China and tells her of Deming’s adoption; Deming himself angrily interrogates Polly’s years of silence. But it is important to keep in mind that Polly, like the other trauma survivors examined in this chapter, lacks access to the proper tools and language with which she can process all that’s happened to her. She tells Deming, “You being gone like that, given over to a family like a stray dog, was too much to comprehend… As long as we stayed inside your adoption would not be real” (308). Here, Polly invokes the same coping strategies as Celeste and Elena, that is she tries to push her traumatic memories and painful reality away, to pretend that everything is okay. She knows she can’t return to America, so she decides all she can do is try to “survive” (309).
Even if Polly could recall her experiences and could adequately describe them, even if she had a solid grasp of the English language and the American legal system, she has no one who she can ask for help. While Celeste, Jane, Elena, and Bebe have friends and loved ones to whom they can share their testimonies — though they might choose not to — Polly is forcibly isolated from her support system when she is deported. Often, survivor testimonies fall on deaf ears, as Brison notes when she writes, “As a society, we live with the unbearable by pressuring those who have been traumatized to forget and by rejecting the testimonies of those who are forced by fate to remember.”[33] Polly is one of these survivors pressured to forget what happened to her, because doing so was the only way she could move on with her life. Tragically, when Polly can finally tell Deming what happened to her, when she can finally tell him that she never stopped loving him, he doesn’t believe her. Having believed for so long that Polly went away “because [he] did something wrong” (310) and because she didn't want him, Deming is unable to accept any other possibility; he is unable to hear the truth. Even though Deming, after living with his mother for several months in Fuzhou, eventually forgives her, he never feels quite at home with her; the novels ends with Deming sharing an apartment with Vivian’s son Michael, unable to live comfortably with either his mom or his adoptive parents.
Polly’s deportation physically and symbolically strips her of her identity as a mother and caretaker. She challenges the system and commits to motherhood, only to have immigration officials deprive her of that choice years later. In this sense, Polly must battle the same racist lie as Bebe, i.e. the lie that because she is a poor immigrant, she does not deserve to care for her child. Laura Briggs notes how this devaluing of mothers of color and their children is ingrained in American society. She writes, “We are haunted by a collective inability to think of those who lose their children to foster care or face criminal charges as having claims to their kids that deserve to be taken seriously.”[34] Unfortunately, Polly pays the price for this “collective inability” when she loses the physical, emotional, and cultural bonds she once shared with her son. All the women in this chapter undergo some traumatic experience that severely alters their relationship to themselves and their children, but only Polly’s trauma is state-sanctioned. Thus, The Leavers goes one step farther than Big Little Lies and Little Fires Everywhere to criticize the ways in which American society at-large is responsible for separating mothers from their children and stripping them of their maternal identities. And, in separating mother and child, the state is equally complicit in the assumptions the child forms regarding his mother’s motives and affection. Mothers should never be condemned for the unintentional lies they tell themselves and their children for protection following a traumatic experience, but they should especially not be blamed when that trauma is government-sponsored. Yet, because its victims often have no way of sharing their stories, this type of state-sanctioned trauma and separation of families continues to thrive. The government forcibly removed Polly from her home and subjected her to years of trauma, forcing her to unintentionally lie to her son and make him feel unloved and unworthy; therefore, the government, and not Polly, is to blame for her fractured relationship with her son. Rather than blaming Polly for a situation beyond her control, it is important to show her the same level of compassion and sympathy granted to the white, upper-class mothers discussed previously in this chapter.
Though their traumatic experiences vary in nature, Celeste, Jane, Elena, Bebe, and Polly are bonded through their collective identities as mothers and survivors. All these women suffer at the hands of the institution of motherhood which, according to Rich, “finds all mothers more or less guilty of having failed their children.” [35] Big Little Lies, Little Fires Everywhere, and The Leavers explore that guilt and failure through the trope of lying, but rather than demonizing these mothers for the “little lies” they tell their children (and themselves), these novels explore lying as an unintentional response to trauma. Within the context of sexual assault, traumatic pregnancy, poverty, and deportation, lies function not as intentional and malignant falsehoods but as unintentional withholdings meant to distance and protect oneself and one’s children from the traumatic event. By exploring the relationship between truth and trauma, these novels argue for a new definition of “to lie” rooted in empathy and force us to interrogate the ways in which the institution of motherhood unfairly expects mothers to surrender all of themselves to their children — including their shattered post-traumatic “selves.”
[1] Memmott, Carol. “‘Big Little Lies,’ by Liane Moriarty, reveals parents’ ugly secrets in quiet Aussie town,” The Washington Post, 4 August 2014, https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/big-little-lies-by-liane-moriarty/2014/08/04/9d4261a0-169a-11e4-9349-84d4a85be981_story.html. Accessed September 18, 2020.
[2] The title of the Refinery29 review, “This Novel Promises There’s No Wrong Way to Mother,” itself points to an evolving interpretation of maternal fiction that seeks to understand the mother’s position rather than condemn it. Selvin, Rachel. “This Novel Promises There’s No Wrong Way to Mother,” Refinery29, 27 September 2017, https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2017/09/173650/celeste-ng-interview-motherhood. Accessed September 18, 2020.
Brooks, Katherine, Jillian Capewell and Claire Fallon, “The Best Fiction Books of 2017,” HuffPost, 6 December 2017, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-best-fiction-books-of-2017_n_5a26dfd7e4b069df71fa292c. Accessed September 18, 2020.
[3] The Routledge Companion to Critical and Cultural Theory, edited by Paul Wake, and Simon Malpas, Taylor & Francis Group, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/georgetown/detail.action?docID=1221495, p. 167.
[4] Ibid, p. 168.
[5] Ibid, p. 168.
[6] Ibid, p. 168.
[7] Brison, Susan, “Outliving Oneself,” Aftermath: Violence and the Remaking of a Self, p. 47.
[8] Ibid, p. 51.
[9] Bulman-Janoff, Ronnie. “Characterological Versus Behavioral Self-Blame: Inquiries into Depression and Rape,” Journal of Personality and Social Pyschology, vol. 37, no. 10, 1979, file:///Users/kathrynbaker/Downloads/Self-Blame.JPSP.79.pdf. Accessed 14 Dec. 2020.
[10] “Characterological Versus Behavioral Self-Blame.”
[11] Brison, Susan, “Acts of Memory,” Aftermath: Violence and the Remaking of a Self. p. 68.
[12] Bonnie is a relatively quiet and minor character in Big Little Lies, which makes her rash act of manslaughter against Perry all the more surprising. The book goes on to explain that Bonnie grew up in a violent home and watched her father hit her mother; seeing Perry’s act of violence brought back years of repression and pain. Of course, Bonnie, too, is thus a trauma survivor who certainly keeps part of herself hidden from the world and can be discussed in tandem with Celeste and Jane, though I do not have room to do so in this thesis.
[13] “Acts of Memory,” p. 68.
[14] Brison, Susan, “Outliving Oneself,” Aftermath: Violence and the Remaking of a Self. p. 40.
[15] Ibid,p. 46.
[16] Gilmore, Leigh. Tainted Witness: Why We Doubt What Women Say About Their Lives. Columbia University Press, 2017, p. 24.
[17] “Acts of Memory,” p. 71.
[18] Ng, Celeste. Little Fires Everywhere. Penguin Books, 2017.
[19] See chapter two for a full discussion of Mia’s relationship to Pearl.
[20] Rich, Adrienne. Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution. Norton & Company. New York, 2010, p. 235.
[21] Strauss, Ilana E., “The Mothers Who Can’t Escape the Trauma of Childbirth,” The Atlantic, 2 October 2015, https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/10/the-mothers-who-cant-escape-the-trauma-of-childbirth/408589/. Accessed September 20, 2020.
[22] Ibid.
[23] Ibid, p. 245.
[24] Collins, Patricia Hill. “Shifting the Center: Race, Class, and Feminist Theorizing About Motherhood,” Maternal Theory: Essential Readings. Demeter Press, 2007. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1rrd94h. Accessed 13 Nov. 2020, p. 318.
[25] “Shifting the Center,” pp. 318-320.
[26] Kendall, Mikki. Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women that a Movement Forgot. Viking, 2020, p. 246.
[27] Ibid, p. 234.
[28] The issue of naming/renaming children of color once they are adopted into white families is explored in both Little Fires Everywhere and The Leavers. The McCulloughs decide to rename Bebe’s daughter May Ling “Mirabelle,” and Deming’s adoptive family, the Wilkinsons, assign him the new name “Daniel.” Though I do not have time to discuss this theme in this chapter, it is important to note that the renaming of children of color is integral to the desire to erase all memory of the birth mother and perpetuate the “racist lie” that these children are unloved or unwanted. I refer to May Ling and Deming by their birth names to pay respect to their mothers and emphasize children’s rights to form their own identities.
[29] Ko, Lisa. The Leavers. Algonquin Books, 2017.
[30] Saccheti, Maria. “House Democrats call Trump’s family separations ‘reckless incompetence and intentional cruelty.’” The New York Times, 29 Oct. 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/family-separations-house-democrats-report-cruelty/2020/10/29/047ea38c-196a-11eb-befb-8864259bd2d8_story.html. Accessed November 5, 2020.
[31] Of Woman Born, p. 245.
[32] “Shifting the Center,” p. 317.
[33] Aftermath, p. 57.
[34] Briggs, Laura. Taking Children: A History of American Terror. University of California Press,
2020, p. 166.
[35] Of Woman Born, p. 223.
