The Women of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor is a classic novel highlighting the struggles of inner-city women. As they live and work, the reader is exposed to the hardships these women have faced over their stay on Brewster. Many characters are similar and connected in some ways, but none are so like Mattie Michael and Etta Mae Johnson. They are so similar but yet so different at the same time. Friends since their younger days on Brewster Place, these two women led two opposite lives that led them away from Brewster Place and each other and back.
             Mattie Michael was quiet and sheltered as a young woman. Her father's sheltering stronghold was just the thing that changed Mattie's life. A slick young fellow by the name of Butch Fuller was infamous on Brewster for loving and leaving women. He left her with a son that tore Mattie's family apart and sent her away from home eventually settling with an old woman known only by Miss Eva. Mattie spoiled her son, Basil, rotten. Any little smile or whine was enough to get Mattie to cave into his selfish wishes. Mattie's extraordinary love, comfort, and "care" backfire when Basil skipped bail and left Mattie with no place to live and no place to go...except Brewster Place.
             Etta Mae Johnson was a fast woman living the fast life. She was a child from Rock Vale, Tennessee who decided to get out and find a man that could support her and show her the good life. This was known to the residents of Brewster and upon her return she was greeted with the same whispering and lack of respect that she had come to call common with respect to the people's attitude towards her. Despite how she may seem on the outside, as a woman moving from city to city, chasing man after man, Etta Mae does
             not want that life. She is representative of the days when a woman believed that she could attract a man that would make her a queen and elevate her to the status of the upscale women l...