Should Love Become A Sacrifice?

             In Bastard Out of Carolina, by Dorothy Allison, the character Anney Boatwright changes throughout the novel from a loving mother to one who abandons her first born. Anney, an unwed mother at the age of fifteen, is one of eight children born to a typical poor Southern family. She is uneducated and became a widow with two children at the age of nineteen. As the story proceeds Anne's love is redirected from her first-born daughter to her new lover Glen.
             Anney was only fifteen years old when she became a mother to her daughter Ruth Anne, otherwise known as Bone. Anney's parents, three brothers, and two sisters helped her to raise Bone and her second born daughter, Reese. Anney repeatedly attempts to legitimize her child, heading down to the courthouse year after year to have the words "illegitimate" removed from her daughter's birth certificate. It was not until a fire burned down the courthouse as well as the hall of records, that she believed she had achieved her goal. Anney was so persistent that her sister, Aunt Ruth, said, "Girl, there ain't a woman in town going to believe you didn't set that fire yourself. Half the country's gonna tell the other how you burned down that courthouse" (16). Aunt Ruth believed this because Anney took pride in her daughters and would do absolutely anything for them.
             In the beginning of the novel, Anney worked her hardest to support her family in the little town known as Greenville, South Carolina. Anney was first working at a grocery store until she became so pregnant that she could no longer lift boxes and do physical work. After Anney gave birth to Reese, she got a job at the White Horse Café. The long hours at work tired Anney out, but she still worked as hard as she could to support her family and protect and take care of her girls.
             Bone looked up to her hard-working mother a great deal. She wished that she resembled he...

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Should Love Become A Sacrifice?. (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 16:40, March 28, 2024, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/27363.html