Archetypes of Mother and Crone in the Novel Everyday Use by Alice Walker, A Worn Path’ by Eudora Welty, and Mothers Tongue by Amy Tan
In the texts ‘Everyday use’ by Alice Walker, ‘A Worn Path’ by Eudora Welty, and ‘Mothers Tongue’ by Amy Tan, You see the at least two different Archetypes occur. The two archetypes are the mother and crone. ‘Everyday use’ by Alice Walker is about a mother and daughter living at home when they receive a visit from the mothers other daughter. The story shows obvious examples of the mother archetype in ways of defending Maggie and doing what is needed to take care of the family. The Crone archetype also appears in a more subtle way. You find it by understanding how wise the mother really is. The reason she was able to provide for the family is because she was wise and knew how to do plenty of tasks such as killing dinner and milking cows.
‘A Worn Path’by Eudora Welty is about a woman who attempts a risk yet important journey. The Crone archetype pops out quickly just by her actions. She walks with a cane and talks to animals on her journey. The mother comes out later in the story when you learn that the reason the woman has to commit to this trek is because she must retrieve medicine for her grandson throat. (Links to an external site.)
‘Mothers Tongue’ by Amy Tan (Links to an external site.) is a story in which Amy explains the difficulties of growing up with a mother who speaks in broken English. The archetype in this story that is most evident is the mother archetype. This archetype isn’t apparent in the most obvious ways because you expect a mother to be the mother but in this story Amy is the mother archetype. This is because Amy spends a lot of time supporting and assisting her mother communicate to the outside world.
A universal truth that can be pointed out about female representations such as the ideas of females, especially mothers, are strong women who sacrifice a lot for the ones they care about. This is apparent in ways such as the mothers life in ‘Everyday use’ which was based around caring and living with Maggie. The mother has no aspirations of looking perfect of feminine because she knows she must do hard work to provide. The mother even deprived Dee of a want to defend Maggie. This is also apparent in ‘A Worn Path’ by the idea of the grandmother understanding that she must journey to get the medication for the well being of her grandson.
In ‘Mothers Tongue’ by Amy Tan this is also apparent. Appear sacrificed a lot to help her mother communicate with others. Even when Amy was embarrassed by her mother she would suck it up and talk to the hospital clerk, or the stockbroker because she knew, even though her mother knew what she was talking about, she needed the assistance to communicate it. Amy was also strong in ways of showing the world that she can beat the stereotype. Even though she knew that because of her environment growing up she wasn’t the best at English,she put her mind to it and worked to get her degree and become a writer.
