Team Bookends’ Favourite literary mothers we all love to hate

Bernadette in Where’d You Go Bernadette? by Maria Semple

Bernadette is not going to win any ‘best mother’ awards – actually, she’s really quite crap in a lot of ways. Both self-absorbed and absent minded, she abandons her family through the downstairs loo window to embark on a trip to Antarctica. But she’s just one of the most brilliantly conceived characters I’ve read in the past couple of years, and she does mean well… she’s just barking. – Abbie 

Zinnia Wormwood in Matilda by Roald Dahl

I can’t help but love Zinnia Wormwood, even though she’s an awful mother to poor little Matilda. She’s a ridiculous character through and through, but one you can picture so clearly when you’re reading the book, and one that was envisioned perfectly in the film adaptation. She’s vain, lazy, obsessed with bingo and incapable of rustling up a dinner that doesn’t require cooking in a microwave, but you know that she deep down she does love her daughter even if she doesn’t often show it. Where Mr Wormwood is down-right horrible, Zinnia is more…horrible-by-association, and in the end she does the right thing and lets Matilda stay with Miss Honey, wishing for her daughter to be happy. You’ve also got to love her for her classic one-liners: “you chose books, and I chose looks” is one that’s always stayed with me! – Jeska 

Cersei Lannister in the A Song of Ice and Fire series by George R. R. Martin

Cersei Lannister has a lot to answer for. Not least of all, raising Joffrey Baratheon. She’s scheming. She’s completely cutthroat. Here love life is… unconventional. And, yet, she’s totally compelling. She plays the game of thrones – sometimes she wins, more often she looses, but she never does things by halves. – Fleur 

Fantine in Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

Fantine is one of the most tragic representations of motherhood in literature. She loves her daughter Cosette with all her heart and tries to give her a good life by putting her in the care of the Thénardiers whom she believes to be honest innkeepers. In reality they are greedy, selfish and cruel.

She is unaware that they are abusing her daughter and using her as forced labour for their inn, and continues to try to meet their growing, extortionate and fictitious demands. When she is fired from her job their monetary solicitations continue to grow. In desperation, Fantine sells her hair and two front teeth, and she resorts to prostitution to pay the Thénardiers.

She is making every possible sacrifice for her daughter and has no idea how miserable Cosette actually is. Hugo juxtaposes the sacrifices of the mother with the lies of the Thénardiers, and the way they treat Cosette and the gap between her good intentions and the results is simply heart wrenching. – Marie

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