Parents and their children

The constant and unwavering love and support for a child can be detrimental. Throughout the Women of Brewster Place, the relationship between Maggie and her father and Maggie and her son are similar. In these relationships the parents nurture and care for their children so much, that the child becomes spoiled. Maggie’s father cherished and supported her. Even after Maggie discovered she was pregnant, her father did not believe it was Maggie’s fault. Maggie could not do any wrong. Maggie felt the same way about her son. Maggie spoiled and loved her son to the point that his conviction was questionable, not her son’s story . The parents in these situations loved and cared for their children, so much that the child did not fear the consequence of his actions. The child always had support from his parent.
Maggie’s father got fed up, and sent Maggie away. He could not take the hurt of giving his child everything, and knowing that she had defied him. Unlike Sam, Maggie did not give up on her son. She constantly supported him financially and mentally. Maggie had only her son, and he only had her.
The children in both situations are ungrateful. Maggie defies her father in the only way she can. She sleeps with a man her father hates, and gets pregnant. Maggie’s son constantly hurts her while he is in jail he states, “‘when I am getting out of here? That’s what I want to know’. And he snatched his hand away…”(48). He does not appreciate that his mother is trying everything to get him out of jail.
The news constantly covers stories relating to children who do unimaginable acts of defiance. The problem sometimes is not that the child was unloved, but that the child was loved too much. A child does not understand the difference between right and wrong if the parent always believes he is right. However, the parent cannot stop loving his child too much because he doesn’t believe in too much love.

The Effect of the Men on Brewster Place

The women of Brewster Place seem unable to establish true independence, in the sense that they constantly rely on men to satisfy their desires, rather than seeking satisfaction from more permanent and nourishing sources. The male figures in this novel weaken the loving and ambitious emotions each woman possesses deep inside of her being.

When speaking of the child she has with Butch, Mattie says, “This baby didn’t really belong to him. It belonged to something out there in the heat of an August day and the smell of sugar cane and mossy herbs” (22). Mattie’s passions overrule her reason in regards to her relations with Butch. His good looks and suave manner win Mattie over and persuade her to partake in an action in the heat of the moment, without much thought for her own desires or future. Rather than supporting Mattie, Mattie’s father violently reacts to the news of Mattie’s pregnancy, thereby leaving Mattie without a truly loving, supportive male figure in her life. Similar to Mattie, Etta Mae sleeps with a pastor whom she barely knows purely to satisfy her desires, which reflects her lack of strength and independence, as well as his corruption. The pastor does not respect Etta, and Etta does not respect herself by allowing him to feel this way about her. He says, “That’s the nice thing about those worldly women. They understand the temporary weakness of the flesh and don’t make it out to be something bigger than it is. They can have a good time without pawing and hanging all onto a man” (73). The pastor is comfortable with the fact that he can have a one night stand with a Brewster woman, which shows the lack of respect men have for these women in general, but more importantly, the lack of dignity these women have for themselves. Kiswana’s situation is very similar to Mattie’s and Etta Mae’s, in that she also sacrifices some of her individuality and dignity for the pleasures of being with a man. When her mother stops over to see her apartment, she is astonished to see her daughter’s polished nails. She says, “ ‘Since when do you polish your toenails?’, she gasped. ‘You never did that before’”(87). Kiswana sacrifices her own tastes in order to satisfy the sexual desires of the man she is with. These Brewster women have desires and want them fulfilled, but they seek fulfillment in the wrong way by consummating with men that are selfish, superficial, and weak.

What strikes me about these women and their relationships is that their part of the city seems to be a trap, in a way. These women cannot seem escape negative relationships. Rather than making a name for themselves and becoming strong, independent women, these women make poor decisions by submitting their will to men of no worth, and thus continue this cycle in Brewster Place. It is amazing how generation after generation can continue in the same manner, even if there are lessons to be learned. Sometimes the city can be a trap, rather than a place of thriving opportunity. I specifically recall the city report which included a clip from “The Wire”, as it relates to this subject. This clip pertained to the unending cycle of drug use that is prevalent throughout the city of Baltimore. In the same sense, the women of Brewster Place seem to be caught in an additive cycle that takes away from their opportunities and directs their ambitions towards unfulfilling ends, in my opinion.

In or Out

In Mattie Michael's story, the first of the seven woman's stories Naylor chronicles in "The Women of Brewster Place", the reader meets Miss Eva. A strong, proud, "old yellow" woman, Miss Eva represents a stability that Mattie was desperately in need of as she wondered through the city that day with her child in her arms and no place to go. When Miss Eva appears from behind the fence, and offers her indefinite shelter and care, I could not help but be reminded of the Housekeeper in Wendt's "Black Rainbow"; "The young black woman, and the old yellow woman sat i the kitchen for hours, blending their lives so that what lay behind one and ahead of the other became indistinguishable."(34) Miss Eva's unexpected willingness to discuss her most inner secrets, "and without even realizing she was being questioned, Mattie found herself talking about things she had buried within her,"(34), is reminiscent of the Free Citizen and the Housekeeper, willingly, unabashadly, and seemingly unconciously sharing the stories of theri pasts with one another.
The connection that the two made ran deep, and lasted for the several years that Miss Eva was still alive and Mattie remained at the house. However, we begin to see that departing from reality and remaining in the safety of the haven of the house has its drawbacks, just as in "Black Rainbow". By precluding herself from the outside world, and thus avoiding danger, content with her surroundings in her home, Mattie missed out on crucial opporunities and experiences; it can be argued that her son mirrored that inexperience with trials and tribulations when he constantly retreated to the safe haven of his mother rather than facing his problems head on. When the Free Citizen left the house, he faced many trying situations, but the point is that he faced them, learned from them, and grew as a person, despite some of the serious consequences. I believe that that is the purpose of living in a city--to strive for the opportunities despite the face of adversity, rather than hiding from the inconvienances. Everyone can find that special place tucked in a nook of a city that serves as a personal cache from reality, and where you return to for support (just as Etta returned to Brewster Place to find Mattie waiting up for her). But you must balance that comfort and stability with unpredictability, the diversity of experienc--that is how a city makes us grow.

Diver-City

During our last class meeting, we spent a lot of time commenting on diversity at Loyola, how we define diversity as students, and how outsiders like The Princeton Review view our student population. I'm still not so sure myself whether or not the Loyola College student body is diverse. To argue that it is, I could say that we each have a different story, regardless of the color of our skin or our place of origin. However, anyone who doesn't have the time to get to know Loyola College students can see that many of them are white and wear clothing that doesn't deviate much from the current fashion. Our nation's response to this superficial lack of diversity is affirmative action, but this response is just as superficial as the diversity it tries to encourage, because the real problem is not in the diversity of the people but the diversity of the environment. For Jane Jacobs, in her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, diversity is defined foremost as an economical condition, capable of thriving in cities because of the high concentrations of people. As she writes "City diversity itself permits and stimulates more diversity." (145).

One would think that, because Loyola College is located in Baltimore, the city would attract a more diverse population to the school. However, most students at Loyola College experience and live the suburban features that Jacobs mentions: "Towns and suburbs, for instance, are natural homes for huge supermarkets and for little else in the way of groceries, for standard movie houses or drive-ins and for little else in the way of theater." (146). Until recently the Colltown Shuttle stopped as far south as MICA and as far north as Goucher College. There are no movie theaters or grocery stores at any stop south of Loyola so any freshmen or sophomores who didn't have cars and used the shuttle did grocery shopping, etc. in Towson. Before I had a car on campus, which wasn't until my junior year, it was difficult to imagine myself living in a city. Now that I have a car and commute twice a week to my internship downtown, I finally feel as if I'm living the city life I had hoped to live when I came to Loyola.

During freshman and sophomore years, I was miserable here and desperately wanted to transfer. My hopes of living in a city were not fulfilled. It wasn't the lack of diversity on this campus that bothered me, but moreseo the lack of access to diversity in commerce and entertainment; "...wherever we find a city district with an exuberant variety and plenty in its commerce, we are apt to find that it contains a good many other kinds of diversity also, including variety of cultural opportunities, variety of scenes, and a great variety in its population and other users." (148). I knew that once I had access to the "mom and pop" restaurants, the clothing boutiques and quirky theatres, I would no longer feel bored by the sameness here. I would like to think that a college-age person is more open-minded and curious than seems to be the case with many first-year students on this campus, who don't make any efforts to look around. My desire for newness and exploration was a source of great frustration and deep sadness for the greater part of two years.

Another point that Jacobs makes that really resonated for me was actually about Baltimore specifically: "Consider the problem posed by the street with the pretty sidewalk park in Baltimore...Mrs. Kostritsky is quite right when she reasons that it needs some commerce for its users' convenience. And as might be expected, inconvenience and lack of public street life are only two of the by-products of residential monotony here." (144). Early in my sophomore year, I was determined to figure out the Baltimore public transportation system. I set out early one Saturday morning and rode a bus downtown to a subway station. I was profoundly disturbed by the stillness of the city, which seemed like an evacuated place to me. Even in the downtown business district, where men and women walk around in business attire, making and breaking deals during the week, I was afraid. Other parts of the city are like that too. Two of the only neighborhoods you can visit on a weekend during the day are the Inner Harbor (which is swarmed with people who aren't even from this city) and Hampden because both have lots of commerce concentrated in a relatively small area. Actually, I feel so safe in Hamden most days that I was shocked to read in the City Paper about a murder occuring, on more than one occasion, during the day on the Avenue...