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... d with her current location and circumstance and she plans to leave and go to New York, but instead she stays and waits for Mattie to arrive and get settled. Etta Mae lets Mattie know that [she] was ready [to leave] months ago, but when [Mattie] wrote and said [she] was comin, [she] stuck around to see [her] settled with the baby (27). Etta put her friends needs before her own concerns. She recognizes how important her presence is to her friend right now and she sacrifices her own happiness to stay and console Mattie.
Etta even invites Mattie to come along with her to New York but Mattie turns down her enthusiastic invitation. Etta Mae stays with Mattie six weeks to help with the baby and make sure Mattie is settled. When she does finally leave, she leaves Mattie eight cases of condensed milk and coupons for fifty pounds of sugar. Etta Mae is not much more well off than Mattie but she still does everything in her power to provide comfort and assistance to her friend. Later in the novel, Etta Mae visits Mattie on Brewster place but this time it is Etta Mae who is in need of a friends encouragement. Etta Johnson has traveled through many major cities in search of the good life and the right man and by the time Etta comes to Brewster place her dreams have been dissipated in her pursuit of good times (Hairston, 1484).
Mattie welcomes Etta into her home with open loving arms. Her searching and traveling have defeated Etta Mae but she finds almost instant relief in the presence of Mattie. When she enters Mattie's small apartments she breath[es] deeply from the freedom she [finds] in Mattie's presence. [There] she has no choice but to be herself (Naylor, 58). During the course of their lives, Mattie and Etta have taken totally different roads but they still managed to maintain a deep friendship. Even though Mattie doesnt approve of many aspects of her friends lifestyle, she remains loyal to her.
Mattie is never judgmental; she accepts Etta Mae and all of her faults. She gives her a place to stay and they share life stories and humor with each other. When Etta attends church with Mattie, she is not as much interested in soul searching as she is in searching for a man. Etta happiness still remains in men. Thus, she finds herself listening, not to the reverends sermon but to her old instincts telling her to lasso someone who can support her in the style that complemented the type of woman she has fought all these years to become (Hairston, 1484).
Despite admonishment and warning from Mattie, Etta engages herself with the good reverend who proves to be just as much a man of the world as of the cloth. When Etta comes home with her dreams of marrying the respectable preacher sordidly ended, she finds Mattie was waiting up to meet and comfort her (Gottlieb, 1483). Mattie's love for Etta is unfailing, like that of a real sister. Etta realizes that no man can ever offer her the type of love and loyalty that Mattie has given her. She has loved one man too many and even though she comes to Brewster place defeated, she finds light and love and comfort in the friendship of Mattie (All, 1; Naylor, 74) Ironically, Mattie is a more effective mother figure to Ciel than she proves to be to her own son.
However, Mattie's failed relationship with Basil teaches her valuable lessons that help her to be a more effective mother on Brewster place. Mattie's mistake with Basil is that she uses him to fill a void. She loves the fact that he was solely dependent on her and that her bed hasnt been empty since Basil was born (38). Mattie spoils Basil to the point he would always has to have his way. He knows his mother will always be there for him, and because of that, he takes advantage of her. Mattie is determined not to make the same mistakes she made with Basil with Ciel.
It is hard for Mattie to watch the turmoil and sadness Lucielia has to encounter in her love life. It is like watching her child suffer. However, Mattie lets Lucielia take control of her own life and learn from the consequences as well. She never tells her what to do, she just listens and gives her support.
When Lucielia questions Mattie's approval of her, Mattie shoots back a loving but uninvolved answer, Its your life, honey (91). Ever since Lucielia moves to Brewster Place, Mattie shows concern for her in a motherly fashion... When Ciel is abandoned by her man in a time of suffering, Mattie takes on a more active role as her mother and Lucielia gains from Mattie the determination to survive her time of tribulation. Lucielia loses her only child to a tragic accident. The death of her daughter is devastating to her. Not only does she lose her daughter, but her selfish, incompetent boyfriend and father of her child abandons her as well.
Lucielia's unfortunate circumstances leave her literally dying of grief and rage. She completely gives up her will to live, and until Mattie's intervention, she is close to death. Mattie is also grief stricken by the death of Lucielia's daughter, but it is hurting her more to watch someone who she has accepted as her own daughter put herself through such physical and emotional turmoil. Mattie's love for Lucielia, whom she calls Ciel, is evident even before the childs death through her constant concern about Lucielia's situation with her boyfriend.
Her love is now demonstrated by her unfailing attempts to nurse her daughter back to health. Mattie refuses to sit back and watch Ciel kill herself. Mattie cries out a prayer and desperate to protect her young, surges into [Lucielia's] room. While Ciel moans, Mattie rocks her back to life. Mattie rocked her out of that bed, out of that room, into a blue vastness just underneath the sun and above time. She rocked her over Aegean seas so clear they shone like crystal, so clear the fresh blood of sacrificed babies torn from their mother's arms and given to Neptune could be seen like pink froth on the water.
She rocked her on and on, past Dachau, where soul-gutted Jewish mothers swept their children's entrails off laboratory floors. They flew past the spilled brains of Senegalese infants whose mothers had dashed them on the wooden sides of slave ships. And she rocked on (103). She magnificently wrestles Ciel, dying of grief, back to life (Gottlieb p. 1484).
Mattie's motherly love and commitment heal and renew Lucielia physically and mentally. Author Felice All comments, It is Mattie's intervention and her ability to place Lucielia's grief in a historical context and to know it as one more instance of murdered dreams in a long history of such murders that undergirds her life saving and healing intervention (All, 2) Mattie takes on the role of a mother when she nurses Ciel back to health. Mattie treats and nurses Lucielia as if handling a newborn (Naylor, 104). She gives Lucielia the determination to live and she does. For the first time since her daughters death Lucielia cries. However, Mattie is overjoyed because she knows the tears will england morning will come (Naylor, 105).
Mattie touched the lives of Ms. Eva, Etta Mae and Lucielia. They all needed eachother. The role Mattie played in each womans life was critical.
All these women vary in age and personal background. However, what they do share is a common oppression and, more importantly, a spiritual strength and sense of female closeness. Mattie was the backbone of these women. All the women found light, love and comfort in the friendship of Mattie. Mattie has will always be an African American woman whose words and actions are grounded in reality.
Together these women do what one woman could not do alone remove pain. Black Writers: A Selection of Sketches from Contemporary Authors, Gale, Second Gottlieb, Annie. Women Together. The New York Times Book Review, August 2 1982 pp. 11, 25. Rpt. in Black Literature Criticism.
Ed. Shoaron Malinowski. vol. 106. Hairston, Love. The Women of Brewster Place Review. The New York Times Book Review, July 10 1983 pp. 12, 15, 20.
Rpt. in Black Literature Criticism. Ed. Shoaron Mailinowski. Vol. 1 o 6 Naylor, Gloria. The Women of Brewster Place.
New York: Penguin, 1983. Naylor, Gloria: The Women of Brewster Place: A Novel in Seven Stories 2 Mar. 2000 web Bibliography:
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Research essay sample on The Women Of Brewster Place
