What could troubles mothers in fiction? An event or crisis that might have seemed small evolves until it is no longer possible for her to ignore or forget it. Does the trouble come from love, violence, sex, money troubles, loneliness, inner turmoil, or despair? Read more about these few troubled mothers in literature.
1. Anna Karenina
by Leo Tolstoy. Anna Karenina falls in love with Count Vronsky and she leaves her marriage and her child to be with him. Feeling that Vronsky no longer loves her, she later despairs.
2. Hester Prynne: The Scarlet Letter
by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hester Prynne is forced to wear a scarlet letter, but her daughter is much more of a sign of her infidelity and adultery than even the mark upon her clothes. But, who is the father of Pearl?3. Nora Helmer: A Doll's House
by Henrik Ibsen. Nora Helmer lives in "a doll's house." Her husband calls her a "singing lark," a "little squirrel," and a "little spendthrift." She has been married to Torvald for eight years, but she leaves him--after the fiasco of her forgery was resolved.4. Emma Bovary: Madame Bovary
by Gustave Flaubert. This novel is the story of Emma Bovary, who was full of dreams and romantic notions. After marrying a country doctor, and having a daughter, she feels unfulfilled, which propells her toward adulteries and impossible debt. Her death is painful and tragic.5. Edna Pontellier: The Awakening
by Kate Chopin. By exploring Edna Pontellier's life and death, Chopin was breaking down barriers, challenging beliefs and conceptions of marriage, love, happiness, and even the very presence of being.6. Clarissa Dalloway: Mrs. Dalloway
by Virgina Woolf. A day in the life of Mrs. Clarissa Dalloway makes her realize that death is near, what love has meant in the past and what it means in the present, how growing old is cruel, and more.7. Penelope: Odyssey
by Homer. While Odysseus makes his way home to Ithaca through adventures of all kinds, Penelope is left with her own troubles. As Penelope awaited her husband's return, suitors become more insistent.8. Medea
by Euripedes. Jason abandoned Medea in an attempt to improve his station, but she plots against his new wife and escapes, after committing her final horrible act.