Many of Quindlen’s novels feature a teacher who makes an impact on their students. Polly is no exception. Teaching is more than her job; it is the place where she feels most fully herself. In the classroom, she finds confidence and contentment that she can’t find anywhere else in her life. While her personal world feels increasingly unstable, her classroom and students offer structure and a sense of control. Polly uses literature as a shared language between herself and her students, drawing on female poets and authors both to inspire and challenge them. These texts allow her to say things indirectly, opening up conversations about identity, expectations, and self-worth without lecturing. Her classroom is a safe space where her students can debate their feelings about literature while also being pushed to question the stories they’ve been told.

However, teaching also makes Polly keenly aware of her age. She says, “The thing about being a teacher is that you stay in place year after year, in front of this room, behind this desk, and they move on” (23). This awareness sharpens her sense of being out of sync, especially as she faces infertility and the possibility that she may never experience motherhood. Surrounded by young women on the cusp of their own futures, and even former students who are now mothers, Polly is forced to reconcile the life she imagined for herself with the one she is living. Polly’s interactions with students, particularly Josephine, further illuminate this symbolic role of teaching. Josephine’s struggle to break free from the expectations placed on her reflects Polly’s own struggle to define herself beyond what she thought her life would be. Guiding Josephine helps Polly work through her own questions about identity, pressure, and self-definition.

Moreover, teaching becomes a kind of alternative motherhood for Polly, though she doesn’t realize it until Josephine tells her. Through her care, attention, and investment in her students’ lives, Polly enacts a version of the life she longs for, developing the theme of The Many Faces of Motherhood. Quindlen portrays teaching as both a steadying force and an opening through which Polly comes to understand her students and herself better.