Mothers and Sons Theme Analysis

Mothers play a key role throughout Nine Days, both as sources of care and affection as well as antagonistic and domineering figures in their children’s eyes. By exploring multiple points of view from both sons and mothers, the novel examines the relationship between them from both sides, arguing that although sons often resent their mothers’ control over them, mothers are ultimately operating out of a love for their children and desire to provide safety and stability.

Kip, Alec, and Jack all resent their mothers, seeing them as overly controlling and domineering. The points of view illustrate the resentment—justified or unjustified—that sons often have toward their mothers, especially as they are transitioning from childhood to adulthood. Since Kip quits school to work after his father’s death, his mother Jean immensely favors his twin brother Francis, who is still in school. She lets Francis sleep later and gives him bacon while denying any meat to Kip, even though Kip starts his work at 4:00 in the morning. Although Francis constantly antagonizes Kip, as soon as Kip confronts him, Jean gets angry with Kip since she feels as if all the family’s hopes rest on Francis someday becoming a lawyer. Kip justifiably resents his mother for her unequal treatment, even though he does not know the struggles she herself is going through, demonstrating the sometimes-justified resentment children may hold against their mothers. Jack, Connie’s eventual lover, also feels a similar resentment to his own mother, Mrs. Husting. Jack has been away at boarding school and then to work at a ranch in the Australian bush, and is now nearly an adult. Yet when he returns to visit his parents in Melbourne, Mrs. Husting insists on mothering him and trying to control his future, namely by attempting to arrange a marriage—not to Connie—in which Jack has no interest. Although Jack feels some resentment toward his overly-doting mother, it is less because she treats him unfairly and more because she does not yet give him space to be his own individual: “she is unsure how to mother a grown man.” Jack’s relationship with his mother thus suggests that not all resentment is based in unfair treatment, but sometimes simply in the son’s need to stand on his own, without his mother hovering over him. Alec, too, resents his mother Charlotte, though for considerably less justifiable reasons. Charlotte is dedicated to naturopathy and veganism, and forbids many modern conveniences from their home, such as cell phones, video games, or meat products. To Alec, a 16-year-old, these rules (along with an early curfew) seem a great injustice that he even compares to living in “Nazi Germany,” and he feels they set him apart from his peers at school. Although Charlotte’s rules may seem unnecessary to some, Alec’s view of his own suffering is obviously exaggerated, demonstrating that although such resentment from sons towards their mothers seems understandable, it is not always justified.

Jean and Charlotte’s narratives reveal that while they are far from being perfect mothers, they are also burdened by a difficult role and ultimately trying to do what is best for their sons. By adding in their perspective alongside their sons’, the novel argues that in spite of their son’s resentments, mothers are most often merely doing what they believe to be right. Jean’s narrative reveals that although she is deeply flawed—selfish, bitter, controlling—as Kip sees her, much of the anger and ill treatment of him is not truly about him. She lashes out at Kip primarily due to the fact that he reminds her so much of her dead husband, which gives rise to her grief and anger over his death. Looking at Kip one day, Jean reflects privately, “I’d never confess it to another living soul but some days I can’t bear the sight of that boy. It’s a judgment on me.” In spite of her mistreatment of Kip, Jean also reveals that she is truly doing what she thinks is best to keep her children alive after her husband’s death left her with “three children” and now forces her to “[work] like a slave to feed them.” Although Kip and Jean never reconcile within the text, Jean’s own painful and difficult situation suggests that in spite of their sons’ resentful feelings of unfairness, most mothers are simply doing their flawed best to care for their children. Charlotte, too, is caught in a difficult situation as she raises her son without his father around. But even her decision to keep her pregnancy—Stanzi advises her to have an abortion—demonstrates that she loves her son, in spite of what he thinks of her and her rules. Charlotte’s ban of cell phones and meat is based in her belief that her family will be better off without them. When Alec is tempted by his peers to go driving and drinking with them all night, he abstains because of his responsibility to his family and his mom’s rules, though this makes him resent her even more. However, when he sees on the news that his friends died in a drunk-driving accident later that night, even Alec realizes that in spite of his resentment towards Charlotte and her bizarre rules, she is ultimately loves him and is only trying to keep him safe. Nine Days depicts motherhood as a difficult task. Though the relationships between mothers and sons are often fraught with tension and resentment, their dual perspectives show that most mothers only want what is best for their sons.