All the Other Mothers Hate Me

Florence Grimes is the protagonist and point-of-view character in All the Other Mothers Hate Me. Florence is a complex character who, over the course of the narrative, transforms from a woman defined by her regrets and jealousies to someone who uses her agency to help others. She is characterized throughout by her desire to be an ideal mother to her 10-year-old son, Dylan. Although she tends toward immature, self-destructive behavior, she overcomes this to act to save her son.

Florence is a washed-up, former minor pop star who, as a teenager, performed in a British girl group called Girl’s Night. She is 31 years old and beautiful but reckless, argumentative, and immature. Florence is defined by her outsider status. She comes from a working-class American family and has found herself amid the wealthy, status-obsessed world of the London bourgeois. While the other mothers are rich, sexually conservative, and career-oriented, Florence is middle-class, sexually promiscuous, and has a job selling balloon arches. She has a chip on her shoulder about British class stratification and feels discontent with her life.

After a drunken hookup with her manager, Will, she becomes pregnant. Will marries her, only to leave her when their son, Dylan, is two months old, to marry her bandmate, Rose.