s;t accept her. Through her mother a daughter first begins to learn about the cultural expectations of feminine role behavior. "Emotional independence is less easy to define than physical independence, but it is equally crucial" asserts Edith Neisser. A mother's emotions can have a powerful effect on a daughter and can become part of the "glue" that binds a daughter to her mother from guilt and fear.
             Also through her mother's responses to and initiatives toward her body and its needs, a daughter begins to form her developing sense of sexual identity. The social climate in which girls discover what kind of value is placed on their being girls, as opposed to being boys, will strongly affect their sense of their sexual identity. Perhaps a girl's mother creates the most important aspects of this social climate. It is in the context of her relationship with her mother that a daughter will learn whether she is free to explore and enjoy the potential of her own body. From her mother she will get her first cues as to how she should feel about her sexuality, cues that may become clear only when she has matured. We could see in The Family as well as The Bluest Eye, that the two main characters, Gwendolen and Pecola lack this trust with their mothers because both of them get raped by their own fathers, and are afraid of telling their mothers because of fear of them not believing them.
             The lives of women are changing. The generation of women who are now in their late twenties, thirties, and early forties are women who have been raised in a traditio
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