Men and Angels Summary
Mary Gordon

Men and Angels Summary

The multiple examples of motherhood dominate the story. Anne Foster is an educated woman and a "good" mother, the reader understands. Her love for her children is fiercely physical and protective. In the absence of her husband, who is completing a project in Europe, Anne must be both mother and father to her young children. In hiring Laura, Anne begins to recognize that she is being forced into a mothering role to this young woman.

Caroline Watson, the artist whose work Anne is studying, was also a mother — and a "bad" one. Caroline left her son behind when she had to choose between completing her studies in Europe and staying home in America. Presumably because he had suffered from neglect as a child, he was an unstable person who drank himself to death in his twenties. To what degree was Caroline to blame? Her daughter-in-law says of...

(read more from the Short Guide)