Like Mother, Like Mother

Lila is Grace’s mother, who Grace perceives as emotionally absent. However, Lila’s choice to have children who would be raised by her husband is an intentional one. Joe and Lila plan to have two children who are close together in age so the kids would have each other, with Joe as their primary caregiver. Lila tells him, “I’m not fit to be a mother […]. You’ll be a wonderful father. You’ll be enough […]. I feel awful. I can’t do it” (39). Thus, Lila, as a mother, is not a victim of circumstance, as Zelda was. Lila makes a conscious, purposeful choice to have children and for Joe, who is loving and nurturing and patient, to raise them.

Although Grace is a surprise, Lila and Joe raise her the same way they did the Starbirds; she just doesn’t have a close-in-age sibling with whom to relate and share her struggles. Though Grace feels disconnected from Lila emotionally and physically, Lila is consistent in her views and treatment of her children. She is a static character who does not change significantly throughout the text. She tacitly accepts responsibility for the emotional chasm that opens between her and Joe in 2012, and she takes steps to remedy it. When he encourages her to reach out to Grace, she does, becoming a more active presence in Grace’s life. In fundamentals, however, Lila’s character is strong, opinionated, matter-of-fact, and ambitious. She loves her family and wants them to be happy, but she also prioritizes herself and her work, conscious of the happiness it gives her.

Zelda, like Grace, is dynamic. She admits, as Frida, that she gave up trying to improve her life while she was married to Aldo, so she tried to end it. Even her young son could see that she was a “virtual prisoner” in their home, and her constant pregnancies show that Aldo frequently acted on his belief that it was his “right” to expect sex from her. Frida confesses that her doctor at the Eloise offered to help her escape, and she took that opportunity, running away even though it meant abandoning three of her children. The Impact of Unresolved Trauma causes her to have difficulty relating to her children emotionally, especially as Polo, Clara, Lila, and Dennis could very well be products of rape. The narrator describes how Frida cries after Dennis is born, but Frida does not have the same emotional response after the birth of Heidi, her only biological child with Herbert, the man who treats her with love.

Frida’s assertion that she feels no remorse and no guilt about leaving her children behind suggests that she had to put herself first and not look back, as no good would come of dwelling on her history. This is why she tells Grace not to ask her “stupid questions” about such feelings. When Grace calls Frida “gutsy,” Heidi says, “She’s smart, too […]. She wasn’t motherly. She was nice and she was there. Our father was our mother” (295). It is in relation to this statement that Grace thinks of the phrase that becomes the text’s title, “Like mother, like mother” (295). “Zelda” existed during a different time, and she enjoyed none of the financial or family privileges that the Maier clan does. Thus, Zelda and Lila may be more alike than any of them realize, reinforcing The Inescapability of Maternal Legacies.

Joe is a static character and, in many ways, Lila’s opposite: “He was easygoing, thoughtful, slow to anger, forgiving […]. He said he tempered her steel. She said she raised his ruckus” (29). Joe is the only child of a very affluent and powerful family, though he doesn’t act with any sense of entitlement. Even when Grace’s novel makes him look like a “cuckold,” he tells her he’s upset and then immediately moves on, not holding a grudge or attempting to detract from her success. He also never attempts to ascertain the truth of her claim, indicating that—like Lila and Grace—he sometimes finds it easier not to know the truth when it holds painful possibilities. When Lila told him she wasn’t “fit” for motherhood, he thinks, “Why am I surprised when I shouldn’t have been. The question is: Do I want to do it alone?” (39). That his first thought, which is phrased like a “why?” question, is punctuated as a declarative shows how self-aware he is and that he deeply accepts Lila. He tries to help Grace do the same.

Moreover, “Joe didn’t need success as much as Lila did, and he thought she deserved hers more” (63). He doesn’t hold on to any antiquated notions of fathers, husbands, or wives, and he is happy when Lila and his daughters are happy. When they aren’t, he’s a sounding board, though he remains objective. He won’t tell them what they want to hear, and he stands up for himself when Lila’s work encroaches too far on their marriage.

Ruth is Grace’s foil. Where Grace is prickly, Ruth is friendly; while Grace complains, Ruth looks for her good luck. Ruth is compassionate and empathetic from the start, and Grace must cultivate these qualities. Like Grace, she is ambitious and hard-working. Her “imagined future was carefully mapped out,” but simultaneously, she admits that she’s “going for maximum happiness” (157). She longs for both professional and personal fulfillment, and she seizes opportunities when they come, like Zelda and Lila do. Ruth does not resist Nico’s love as Grace does Xander’s, nor does she have difficulty expressing her feelings. In fact, Ruth is the one who forces Grace to “practice” saying “I love you” so Grace can say it to him.

Ruth is careful, and she likes to maintain control. When she goes on her long-awaited ski trip after working for two years for Joe, she tells Nico, “The only spontaneous thing I’ve ever done is this ski trip, and it took me two years to plan it” (194). She’s a planner, careful to weigh her own options and her opinions of others. It’s telling that she wants to be “fair,” she says, while Grace prefers to be “right.” Ruth is thoughtful and intentional, compared to Grace’s reactionary and somewhat emotional way of responding to others. This is why Ruth never has a second drink when she goes out: “She still worried she’d get drunk and do something stupid and calamitous” (195). She may be an overthinker, but not when it comes to Nico or her work, and this allows her to find personal fulfillment much sooner than Grace does.

Aldo is the abusive first husband of Zelda and the father of Polo, Clara, and Lila. Biologically, Dennis is also his son. Aldo is static, never developing an understanding of the effects of his abuse on his wife or their children. He sees sex with his wife as his “right,” so he rapes Zelda, getting her pregnant without regard for her ambitions or wishes. He would never have allowed her to work, as her second husband does, as he is tremendously sexist and oppressive to women. When Zelda couldn’t take care of the house or kids, he demanded that his mother take over, grudgingly paying her the salary she demanded because he refused to do domestic work himself.

Aldo abuses his children after his wife escaped from Eloise Hospital, and he lies to them about her death. He is so vicious that Lila begins goading him into attacking her before he can go after her siblings, though this prompts Polo to experience a new and different trauma resulting from his guilt. At one point, Lila casually refers to the arthritis in her hands, the result of Aldo stepping on them while she was lying on the floor and doing her homework. In the end, Aldo refuses to speak to Grace unless she pays him, and when they do meet, he describes how he made Zelda “do dirty things” instead of regular “clean sex” when she became heavily pregnant, making a “crude gesture” and asking Grace—his granddaughter—if she “like[s] dirty sex” (264). He is presented as a despicable human being, and the actions of his character highlight The Importance of Women’s Personal and Professional Fulfillment and the impact of unresolved trauma.

Frances is the Maier clan matriarch, Joe’s active and lively mother. Though she marries the son of family friends to escape her verbally abusive father in her youth, she later finds freedom in widowhood, refusing to “settle” for a second time and choosing to remain single. Only when her former college boyfriend, whom she seems to have always loved, reaches out does Frances link herself to a man again.

Frances is “bracingly direct” and unfailingly generous. She does not give out of a sense of charity but, rather, because she feels so fortunate and wishes to share her good fortune with others. Frances loves hosting and planning events at her sprawling estate in Bloomfield Hills, an affluent Detroit suburb, and orchestrating weddings and other celebrations gives her immense pleasure. When Joe tells her she should have been a lawyer, Frances disagrees, saying, “Whatever I should have done, I should have been the boss” (250). She dispenses advice without regard to herself, always trying to lift others up, especially other women.

Although Frances often looks back at her past, as Ruth points out, and Lila always looks to the future, the women are similar in many ways: “An old friend of Joe’s had recently called Frances ‘spry.’ […] ‘but it is sexist and belittling’” (124). Like Lila, who does not keep quiet when faced with blatant sexism and misogyny, or Grace, who points out when Xander fails to observe polite conversation protocol and takes center stage when asked a single question, Frances does not shy away from pointing out men’s social mistakes and offenses.