A Mother Themes

In “A Mother,” Joyce describes Mrs Kearney as an upper-class, educated woman. She attended school at a “high-class” convent, learned skills that made her an attractive prospective wife, and married her husband for financial security rather than romance. But despite her comfortable lifestyle, including regular vacations and good educations and dowries for her daughters, she still feels compelled to climb the social and economic ladder and will take advantage of the people around her to…

“A Mother” takes place during the time of the late-19th- and early-20th-century Irish Revival, a movement to uplift Ireland’s precolonial Gaelic and Celtic language and culture. While the Irish Nationalist movement was intended to help the Irish people to resist their English oppressors and celebrate their own culture, the Kearneys only take part in the Irish Nationalist movement to benefit themselves, since the movement is both fashionable and lucrative for them. In addition to the…

In “A Mother,” Mrs Kearney is an ambitious, upper-class, educated woman who mistreats the people of the Eire Abu Society whom she deems beneath her. While she ends up ruining her family’s reputation and her daughter’s music career with her efforts to climb the social ladder, Joyce also includes details about Mrs Kearney that invite the reader to pity her: as a woman, her piano-playing was only seen as useful for its ability to charm…