floor shows that she cares more about her floor than her roots. This distaste for her
             family is a recurring them throughout the novel, and it motivates Marie to be a strong
             person. It motivates her to compensate for the social handicap her last name has given
             her. It is one of the key themes/driving forces that spurns Marie to be a good, strong
             woman and mother, striving to make the best of herself and her children.
             A second theme that can be explored to further define Marie is her relationship
             with older female authority figures like Sister Leopolda and Rushes Bear. Marie's
             relationships with these two women shape her character in a multitude of ways. At age
             fourteen, Marie goes to live in a convent under the supervision of Sister Leopolda, a
             particularly abusive nun bent on "getting the devil out of" Marie. Throughout Marie's
             stay at the convent, she and Sister Leopolda have a number of battles, some due to
             Marie's ignorance and arrogance (Marie believes that she should be a Saint, yet has no
             real devotion to God), and some due to Leopolda's obsession with "beating the Hell out
             of" Marie. The most brutal of these occasions is chronicled below when Marie kicks
             ...