gosox5's Full Review: Barbara Kingsolver - The Bean Trees
If you are considering reading this book, it is essentiel that you understand Kingsolver’s message: with support for those who care about you, you can accomplish anyhting.
There are many of these relationships between characters in Kingsolver’s novel The Bean Trees. Taylor and Lou Ann form one of the most significant bonds in the work. This relationship is influential in the changes and growth experienced by each of the women. The two single mothers affect each other’s lives in many ways in the book, and numerous examples are found throughout the novel. These instances include helping each other with raising their children, improving self-image, and managing difficult events in their lives.
One of the most consequential results of their relationship is the manner in which Taylor, Lou Ann, and their young children form a non-traditional family. By creating this structure, the women are able to divide the myriad household chores and responsibilities that each might have difficulty managing on her own. She continues to spell out how they arrange paying the rent, vacuuming the house, washing the dishes and such like. Before their mutually beneficial relationship, both Lou Ann and Taylor struggled to maintain and support a home for themselves and their children.
By working together, Taylor and Lou Ann also influence the rearing of their kids, Dwayne Ray and Turtle. Throughout the work, Lou Ann always worries about the safety and well being of the other characters, and in particular, Turtle. However, she does often exaggerate the danger of certain situations. In addition to looking out for the children’s security, the women help each other by taking turns watching the children, until they both become employed, at which time they rely on two elderly neighbors, Edna and Virgie May, for childcare. Finally, while on a trip to the zoo, Lou Ann convinces Taylor that Turtle’s legal name should be April. However, the importance of their relationships extends beyond simply easing the hardships of single parenthood.
Lou Ann and Taylor also affect and change each other on an emotional level. Over the course of the novel, Lou Ann constantly struggles with her self-confidence. Determined to improve her friend’s self-image, Taylor combats every self-abnegating comment of Lou Ann’s with a positive remark. A combination of this support from Taylor and a successful new job at the salsa factory lead to a marked improvement in Lou Ann’s self-perception.
The giving of emotional support does not go in just one direction in their relationship. There are several instances in which Lou Ann is instrumental in maintaining Taylor’s self-confidence. For example, after bringing Turtle out of the social shell that her infancy of abuse had put her in, Taylor is devastated by a new case of attempted assault on her adopted daughter. This event causes Taylor to seriously question her competency as a mother. However, Lou Ann is quick to reassure Taylor that she has done all she can to offer Turtle a considerably better life than she would have received on the Indian Reservation.
Despite the difficult and troubling times faced by Lou Ann and Taylor, their friendship endures throughout The Bean Trees. Whether struggling with their children, friends, or society as a whole, the two women are there for one another, offering a hug, a comforting word, or even a bowl of soup to ease through trying events in their lives. The two single mothers’ relationship is similar to the one between bean trees and microscopic rhizobia. In the end, the strength of the bond between the two women allows for them to overcome obstacles and lead contented lives.
Plot Summary: The wisteria vines on their own would just barely get by, is how I explained it to Turtle, but put them together with rhizobia and they ...More at HotBookSale
Taylor Greer grew up poor in Kentucky in the 60s and 70s, managed to avoid pregnancy through high school, and earned enough money to buy a Volkswagen ...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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