The Mothers

by

Brit Bennett

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on The Mothers makes teaching easy.

The Mothers Character Analysis

A group of elderly women who attend Upper Room, the church that Nadia and her father attend in Oceanside, California. Deeply religious and moralistic, the Mothers practice “intercessory prayer,” which means that they pray on behalf of other people in the congregation. In keeping with their belief that they can “become” other people through intercessory prayer, the Mothers narrate portions of the novel using a collective voice to provide insight into how the church community views Nadia and the secret of her abortion. One of the women in this group is Mother Betty, the pastor’s secretary who overhears Robert Turner yelling at Mr. Sheppard and learns that the pastor paid for Nadia’s abortion. Betty repeats this news to the other Mothers, who spread the gossip throughout Upper Room, ultimately forcing the church to close its doors in response to the scandal. Throughout the novel, the Mothers create and perpetuate gossip, seen even in the final moments of the novel, when the Mothers still speculate about Nadia even though she has long since left California.

The Mothers Quotes in The Mothers

The The Mothers quotes below are all either spoken by The Mothers or refer to The Mothers . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Secrecy, Gossip, and Storytelling Theme Icon
).
Chapter One  Quotes

All good secrets have a taste before you tell them, and if we’d taken a moment to swish this one around our mouths, we might have noticed the sourness of an unripe secret, plucked too soon, stolen and passed around before its season. But we didn’t. We shared this sour secret, a secret that began the spring Nadia Turner got knocked up by the pastor’s son and went to the abortion clinic downtown to take care of it.

Related Characters: The Mothers (speaker), Nadia Turner
Page Number: 2
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter Three Quotes

If you don’t become them, even for a second, a prayer is nothing but words. […] That’s why it didn’t take us long to figure out what had happened to Robert Turner’s truck. Ordinarily waxed and gleaming, the truck hobbled into the Upper Room parking lot on Sunday with a dented front bumper and cracked headlight. In the lobby, we heard young folks joking about how drunk Nadia Turner had been at some beach party. Then we became young again, or that is to say, we became her. Dancing all night with a bottle of vodka in hand, staggering out the door. A careless drive home weaving between lanes. The crunch of metal. How, when Robert smelled the liquor, he must have hit her or maybe hugged her. How she was probably deserving of both.

Related Characters: The Mothers (speaker), Nadia Turner, Robert Turner
Related Symbols: Robert’s Truck
Page Number: 38
Explanation and Analysis:
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The Mothers PDF

The Mothers Quotes in The Mothers

The The Mothers quotes below are all either spoken by The Mothers or refer to The Mothers . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Secrecy, Gossip, and Storytelling Theme Icon
).
Chapter One  Quotes

All good secrets have a taste before you tell them, and if we’d taken a moment to swish this one around our mouths, we might have noticed the sourness of an unripe secret, plucked too soon, stolen and passed around before its season. But we didn’t. We shared this sour secret, a secret that began the spring Nadia Turner got knocked up by the pastor’s son and went to the abortion clinic downtown to take care of it.

Related Characters: The Mothers (speaker), Nadia Turner
Page Number: 2
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter Three Quotes

If you don’t become them, even for a second, a prayer is nothing but words. […] That’s why it didn’t take us long to figure out what had happened to Robert Turner’s truck. Ordinarily waxed and gleaming, the truck hobbled into the Upper Room parking lot on Sunday with a dented front bumper and cracked headlight. In the lobby, we heard young folks joking about how drunk Nadia Turner had been at some beach party. Then we became young again, or that is to say, we became her. Dancing all night with a bottle of vodka in hand, staggering out the door. A careless drive home weaving between lanes. The crunch of metal. How, when Robert smelled the liquor, he must have hit her or maybe hugged her. How she was probably deserving of both.

Related Characters: The Mothers (speaker), Nadia Turner, Robert Turner
Related Symbols: Robert’s Truck
Page Number: 38
Explanation and Analysis: