The narrator’s mother Character Analysis

Although her maiden name provides the namesake for the titular boat, the Jenny Lynn, MacLeod never reveals the narrator’s mother’s current last name. The narrator’s mother is a tall, strong woman who comes from a long line of people who lived by and fished the sea. She was beautiful when she was younger, and was many years younger than her husband, the narrator’s father, when they married. Together they had several daughters (the narrator’s sisters), with the narrator being the youngest child. Her brother (the narrator’s uncle) works her husband on the boat. By the time the narrator’s memories begin, his mother hasn’t slept in the same room as his father for a while. Perhaps more than anything else, the narrator’s mother values her family’s traditional life and order. She keeps her house neat and organized, with the exception of the one room she can’t control: her husband’s bedroom (which spills over into the common kitchen area). Initially, her daughters help her keep the house in order, but as they get older, the mother loses them almost as soon as they discover their father’s books, which sets them on a path to eventually leaving home to marry wealthy men in distant cities. The narrator’s mother disdains these men as effete and worthless despite their financial success, and cuts off contact with her daughters. Eventually, when the narrator’s sisters all leave home, the narrator’s mother pins all her hopes on him to keep alive the family tradition, even pressuring him to quit school in order to help with the boat. (She herself hasn’t read a book since high school and finds them a waste of time.) The narrator wants to please her, but ultimately, he ends up leaving the community to get an education, in large part because his father’s tragic death at sea leaves him nothing to uphold or continue. The mother, however, never leaves her community, continuing to live in relative poverty and resenting the narrator for leaving all the while. Throughout the story, she never changes, and MacLeod shows through her how her devotion to tradition offers strength and resilience but also a suffocating rigidity that can lead to loneliness and misery in an always changing world.