Hotel du Lac – Confined Women and Motherhood

Image by David Martyn Hunt

How can we see the spatial impact of social pressure in Hotel du Lac through motherhood?

Hotel du Lac, by Anita Brookner, gives insight into the stereotypical thinking and behaviours that women adopt in order to conform to society's demands. Although at different ends of a continuum, young, beautiful, anorexic Monica and Mrs. Pusey, a widow of “indeterminate age” (17), are both victims of a system controlled by patriarchy.


Worthless Widows


Mrs Pusey was raised in an era which conditioned young women to become wives and mothers and left them with what Florence Nightingale refers to in her 'family manuscript,"Cassandra," “nothing to do” (Norton 1606). Mrs Pusey’s life echoes the words of Florence Nightingale who asked, “Why have women passion, intellect, moral activity - these three - and a place in society where no one of these three can be exercised?” (Norton 1606). Once married, Mrs Pusey became “completely preoccupied with the femininity which . . . provided her with life’s chief delights” (39) and which restricted her self-development and the space allotted to her.

The most socially valued qualities of women, the ability to provide sex, bear children, and provide attractive companionship, are associated with youth. Traditionally, society discouraged young women from developing other qualities, so Mrs. Pusey and women of her generation, according to Rivers, Barnett, and Baruch in Beyond Sugar and Spice: How Women Grow Learn & Thrive, 1983, are unduly viewed as parasites for spending the last stage of their lives leisurely, with travel funded by their late husbands’ estate (233). Widows like Mrs Pusey, denied of a useful function in society, become isolated and enveloped in loneliness. In order to avoid isolation and solitude Mrs. Pusey clings to her middle-aged daughter for companionship. In order to retain her status and usefulness, she endeavours to preserve her daughter’s youth so much so that her “ face . . . sh[ines] the ruddy health of an unsuspecting child” (54); The symbol of the daughter’s loss of personal space and the mother’s spatial authority.

Hotel du Lac’s Smother Mother


Mrs Pusey’s relationship to her daughter calls to mind what Elena Gianni Berlotti, in her book, What Are Little Girls Made Of? The Roots of Feminine Stereotypes, 1976, mentions about developmental psychologists’ assessment of the personality of young children through their drawings. Berlotti states that “The poorest most monotonous content in all these collected drawings is . . . made by suburban little girls . . . who are kept at home to 'provide company' for their mothers (Berlotti, 144). Jennifer obviously suffers from such suburban patterns, for entrenched in her mother’s encampment she “[has little] to say for herself” (38) and “always seem[s] . . . as inexpressive as a blank window” (54). Their interdependence has resulted in “a physical closeness”(39) that blurs the separation between the maternal image of Mrs Pusey and her daughter’s self-images. This symbiosis has occasioned Jennifer to become “ a paler version of [her mother]” (18).

The Invisible Daughter


Juanita Williams in, Psychology of Women-Behaviour in a Biosocial Context, 1987, says that “individuation occurs when the daughter . . . experiences some of life’s milestones including marriage, motherhood, career, making a life of her own” (Williams 188). Within the walls of Hotel du Lac, Jennifer “ . . . occupie[s] quite a large space and ha[s] a curiously insistent physical presence” (38). Yet, she only acquires physical space; her indistinct personality does not extend beyond the perimeter of her mother’s dominating character. Jennifer has been absorbed into her mother’s personal space and denied the opportunity to discover her own boundaries. Groomed by her lonely, self-indulgent mother to become her successor - to appropriate the vacant place available after her death, Jennifer has become a victim of her mother’s solitude.



Sources:

  • Berlotti, Elena Gianni. What Are Little Girls Made Of? The Roots of Feminine Stereotypes. Shocken Books, New York: 1976.
  • Brookner, Anita. Hotel du Lac. Penguin, Harmondsworth, London: 1993.
  • Rivers, Caryl, Rosalind Barnett, and Grace Baruch. Beyond Sugar and Spice: How Women Grow Learn & Thrive. Ballantine Books, New York: 1983.
  • The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Sixth Edition Volume 2, London: 1990.

  • Williams, Juanita, Psychology of Women-Behaviour in a Biosocial Context. 3rd ed. W.W., Norton New York: 1987.

Copyright Lesley Lanir. Contact the author to obtain permission for republication.



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 First published by  Lesley Lanir on Suite101 Mar 3, 2011

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