The Marriage Of Opposites

Mothers and their daughters have complicated relationships throughout the novel. Whether through physical or emotional separation, many of the mother/daughter pairs are estranged. The story of the turtle-girl is a metaphor for this idea. The turtle-girl, a half-turtle half-human girl is abandoned on the beach by her mother because her mother doesn’t know what to do with her. Rachel identifies with this myth because she too feels abandoned by her mother. As a child, Rachel and her mother have opposing views of what a woman should be: Rachel believes that she should be able to seek an education in her father’s library, while her mother believes she should be helping her with household chores. Rachel views her mother as a bitter woman who likes Aaron more than her, and wonders if “Perhaps that was what my mother disliked most. I resembled her. I could not help but wonder if for some women, that was the worst of all sin” (7). Although Rachel thinks she’s completely different from her mother, she grows up to treat Camille exactly how her mother treated her.

Since Rachel isn’t close to her own mother, she adopts Adelle as a mother figure. In Rachel’s eyes, Adelle is everything that her mother isn’t: compassionate, caring, wise, and willing to believe in Rachel. While her own mother doesn’t give her any advice on her wedding day, Adelle tells her about sex. While her mother doesn’t actively spend time with her, Adelle lets her and Jestine be around her whenever they want. In this way, Adelle is like the mother turtle that takes the turtle-girl in. However, what Rachel doesn’t realize is that her relationship with her mother is complicated by the fact that Rachel’s father had affair with Adelle, and that Jestine is also his daughter. Knowing this and seeing Rachel grow close to Adelle is likely the reason for her mother’s bitterness.  

Jestine and Lydia are an example of a mother and daughter relationship that has physically been severed due to circumstances beyond their control. When Elise essentially abducts Lydia, Jestine feels like she’s lost the most important piece of herself. Jestine misses many of the most important pieces of Lydia’s life, but when the two are reunited by the end of the novel it’s as if they never left one another. On the other hand are Madame Halevy and her daughter, Rebecca, who have been separated due to circumstances within their control. When Rebecca chooses to abandon her baby son and runs away, she never again visits her mother. In fact, she doesn’t even attend her own mother’s funeral. While Jestine and Madame Halevy’s experiences are quite different, they share the grief of being physically separated from a daughter.