Mothers and Daughters Theme Analysis

Celeste Ng’s fascination with the complicated nature of mother-daughter relationships is evident throughout Little Fires Everywhere. The fathers of the novel are often on the fringes of the action, while mothers and their daughters are brought to the forefront. The mothers in this novel are shown to need their daughters just as much as the daughters need them—and more often than not, even moreso. Overall Ng makes the rather cynical argument that most relationships between mothers and daughters are rooted in longing, dissatisfaction, and an inability to understand one another. Through the morally grey and emotionally intense custody battle between Bebe Chow and Linda McCullough, and through the strained relationships between Mia and Pearl and Mrs. Richardson, Lexie, and Izzy, Ng demonstrates the ever-present longing of daughters—or, in May Ling’s case, the unknown and unknowable needs of daughters—for something other than what their mothers have given them, no matter the amount of wealth, love, or care present in the relationship.

Bebe was unable to be a good parent to her daughter May Ling when she was first born, and, desperate for her baby’s survival, she left her in the care of the state. After the McCulloughs have carefully and lovingly parented “Mirabelle” for nearly a year, Bebe appears in their lives, seeking custody of her daughter on the grounds that not only has she attained stability over the course of the past year, but she is the child’s true mother, and the only person who can raise her daughter “within her own culture.” As the trial unfolds, Ng allows readers a glimpse of the arguments made on both sides. May Ling, when she was found, was undernourished—but Bebe had been unable to produce breast milk, and could not afford formula. Neighbors heard the baby crying, and Bebe cried too, likely in the throes of undiagnosed postpartum depression and unable to seek psychological treatment, a victim of a healthcare system which does not make immigrants or the poor a priority. Bebe, even emotionally stable and working a restaurant job, cannot reasonably hope to provide May Ling with the comforts that the McCulloughs can—but “how [can] a mother’s love [be] weigh[ed] against the cost of raising a child?” Though Mrs. McCullough dotes on May Ling and clearly loves her, Bebe’s representation argues that May Ling already has a mother.

Through these arguments, Ng raises important questions of “what ma[kes] someone a mother.” Though there is perhaps no morally right answer, the narrative creates a solution: Ng draws on a reversal of the precedent set in a real-life, high-profile adoption custody case from the 1990s (that of “Baby Jessica”), in which the adopted child was returned to her birth parents. Though in Little Fires Everywhere the state sides with the McCulloughs, Ng gives the final victory to Bebe, who steals her daughter and absconds with her to China in the dead of night. With this Ng introduces a final blow of total anarchy into the carefully regulated world of Shaker Heights and, in doing so alongside revealing Mia’s “theft” of Pearl from the Ryans (and with the knowledge of the outcome of the real-life case which inspired the fictionalized one), makes the narrative argument that perhaps it is biology, first and foremost, that gives someone the “right” to motherhood.

The complicated moral questions raised by this plot point—tied in with issues of race, class, social stigma, and the state’s imperfect or even harmful attempts at regulating custody—have no clear answers in the real world. But by asking them, Ng interlocks the theme of motherhood and daughterhood with the novel’s companion themes of disruption, manipulation, and identity, ultimately suggesting that the only way to approach such questions is to do so holistically, carefully, and with great awareness of all the wonder and woe that goes into loving another person.

Ng’s mother figures are completely rooted in their identities as mothers, as demonstrated by the difficult struggle between Bebe Chow and Linda McCullough. Another character whose identity as a person is inextricable from her duties as a mother is Mrs. Richardson. As the undisputed matriarch of her family, she must navigate throughout the novel how best to relate to her two very different daughters—who, despite Mrs. Richardson’s best efforts, shirk at almost every turn the values with which they’ve been raised and the things their mother has given them. Lexie, the eldest, is Mrs. Richardson’s golden girl, so to speak, at the start of the novel. Lexie is a hard worker and values the role of order in her life and community. Though Lexie eventually proves herself to be more tempestuous than she first appears to be—and winds up needing an abortion after repeatedly having unprotected sex with her boyfriend, Brian—Mrs. Richardson doesn’t believe that Lexie could possibly behave in any way other than the status quo. Izzy, on the other hand, has been a “problem” for Mrs. Richardson from birth. Born many weeks premature and fighting for her life from the start, Izzy has always been the object of Mrs. Richardson’s most pointed concerns and criticisms. As a result, the narrator points out, Izzy has grown up struggling against her mother’s overprotective tendencies, and lashing out and seeking shelter elsewhere as a result. As Mrs. Richardon struggles for more and more control over her youngest daughter, Izzy squirms away from her grasp harder and harder, ultimately seeking refuge in a friendship with Mia and abandoning her family and her comfortable life in Shaker Heights in order to pursue the recognition and acceptance that Mia offers her. This dynamic feeds into Ng’s argument that children—daughters, especially—will always reject what their mothers have taught them.

Ng deepens this argument through the relationship between Pearl and the stringent, clean-cut Mrs. Richardson. Because Mia and Pearl are so often moving from place to place, their relationship feels slightly transient—Pearl longs for a stable homestead and, in a way, for the control that Mrs. Richardson exerts over her children’s lives. As a result, Pearl winds up spending most of her time at the Richardsons’ house, entangling herself in friendships as well as relationships that eventually tumble over into the emotional (with Moody) and romantic (with Trip). Pearl fantasizes about having a mother like Mrs. Richardson, and, at the end of the novel when Mia tells Pearl that it is time to leave Shaker Heights, thinks that “if only” she could get to the Richardson house, Mrs. Richardson would take her in as her own.