Control and Uncontrollable Bonding

Control and Uncontrollable Bonding

For my project I studied Mona Simpson’s novel Anywhere But Here, as well as the film based on Simpson’s novel. It is a story of a woman, Adele, and her daughter, Ann. Though the novel deals with potentially universal issues pertaining to motherhood and childhood, Simpson focuses these down into a woman-to-younger-woman relationship. Adele is a single mother, and some of the novel relates the issues of single working mothers’ balancing of motherhood with professional, familial, and romantic relationships. Ann grows up during the novel often contemplating her frustrations with her mother, and how she will react when she is of legal age and can separate herself from her. Much of Anywhere But Here is about control, demonstrated through Adele’s determination to maintain authority over her daughter while balancing her personal and professional goals, while Ann resists her mother, inspired by keeping her thoughts on her own evolving independence as she approaches and turns eighteen.