Analyzing the race, class, sexism, and motherhood in Little Fires Everywhere.
Every woman is different. They live different lives, experience different hardships, and dream different dreams. Yet despite the diversity of their experiences, society often attempts to confine women—especially mothers—to strict expectations about how they should behave, what choices they should make, and what their priorities should be. These expectations rarely account for the complicated intersections of identity, circumstance, and opportunity that shape women’s lives. In her novel Little Fires Everywhere and its subsequent television adaptation, Celeste Ng explores the role of women and motherhood by linking it to every significant character in the book, commenting on sexism, connecting it to race, exploring how its perception is affected by class, and fueling conflict between the mothers in the text, suggests that motherhood is a complex, personal relationship curated by each woman’s unique lives. Through the intertwined stories of women from different backgrounds and with different burdens to carry, Ng highlights the pressures imposed on them and the consequences of failing to meet the impossible ideals set by their communities.
Nearly every woman in the novel is linked to motherhood. Each of them has different desires and relationships with being a mother. Characters like Bebe Chow and the McCulloughs desire children, though they each are under different circumstances: Bebe is stuck being a single mom, unable to afford a child, but wants her daughter, while Mrs. McCullough is able to afford children, but unable to conceive a baby. Because of their misfortunes, Bebe’s child, May Ling, is caught in the crossfire between the two in a custody battle that leads to the morally righteous or otherwise improper relocation of the infant, depending on which mother figure is focused on. Characters like Lexie do not desire children at this point in their lives. When Lexie falls pregnant, she doesn’t want to be a teenage mother, so she makes the decision to abort her baby. Mia Warren, on the other hand, was not meant to raise her daughter, as she was a surrogate for the Ryan family. Deciding she wanted to be there for her daughter, she lied to the Ryans about the outcome of the pregnancy, leaving her as a single mother scraping by unconventional means. In their article, “‘It Came, Over and Over, Down to This: What Made Someone a Mother?’ A reproductive justice analysis of Little Fires Everywhere,” Kimberly D. McKee and Shannon Gibney discuss the complexities of motherhood. They note, “The white, upper-middle class Richardson personifies notions of “good mothering” as she balances her work and home life with a June Cleaver-aesthetic” (McKee and Gibney 130) in contrast with Mia’s unconventional parenting styles and inability to settle as “bad mothering.” By contrasting Elena Richardson’s structured, rule-based approach of parenting with Mia’s unconventional, rule-breaking methods, the two mothers mirror each other. In every way that they differ, they clash. As a result, Ng delves into the struggles mothers face when their ideals for their children clash with reality, leading them to question what truly makes someone a “good” mother.
Throughout the novel, the women in the cast of characters deal with multiple moments of sexism, downplaying the role of women in society and as mothers. When Pearl defends herself against Moody’s accusations of her relationship with Trip, she says, “And for your information, I’m not a conquest. You know what? I was the one who started it with him” (Ng 275). By assuming Trip was the instigator of their relationship, Moody undermines Pearl’s agency, seeing her as someone who is unable to make decisions. Not only is this harmful for Moody’s personal perception of his friend, but he is also inadvertently feeding into the stereotypes of women. According to Ann Hughes, author of “Society and the Roles of Women,” since the existence of documented domestic life, “Popular and educated understandings of the female body concurred in regarding women as the weaker sex, less capable of rational self-control than men” (Hughes 156). Ng’s inclusion of Moody’s underestimation diverts those common assumptions of women as the weaker sex by pointing out that Pearl is equally able to make decisions in their relationship, just as much as Trip is. Additionally, in an argument with Lexie, Brian asks, “What’s wrong with you? Are you PMS-ing again?” (Ng 276). Brian is making a rash assumption that Lexie’s mood is a result of her menstrual cycle. He is undermining Lexie’s emotional state after returning from the abortion clinic. Lexie responds, “You guys. You think everything’s about hormones” (Ng 276), showing that this particular assumption is a common occurrence. By including Lexie’s returning comment, Ng shows how widely the stereotype that moodiness correlates only with hormones released during the menstrual cycle is spread, not only within Lexie’s circle of known men but throughout society as a whole. Therefore, sexism is prevalent enough to be noticed in society. Additionally, “Marriage was a prime aspiration for both men in women for only the rich could survive comfortably alone. Active, competent women were essential to well-run households—some making a direct economic contribution, others supervising children, servants, or apprentices” (Hughes 156). Confining women to these roles through these instances of sexist stereotypes shows how sexism shapes society’s expectations of mothers. In society, women are expected to be active in their households, often relegated to household chores. Ng’s inclusion of these sexist comments made by Moody and Brian reflects on what they believe women should be. They believe these sexist stereotypes and therefore have expectations of what the role of a woman should be.
Though the friction between Mia and Elena and their roles as mothers has more to do with race in the miniseries, the book prioritizes the racial issues between the McCulloughs and their proposed adoption of May Ling. First, the couple decides to Americanize the baby’s name, renaming her to “Mirabelle,” erasing her Chinese identity and connection to Bebe. Second, when asked how they would integrate her ethnicity and birth culture into her childhood, the couple responded, “Pearl of the Orient is one of our very favorite restaurants. We try to take her there once a month. I think it’s good for her to hear some Chinese, to get it into her ears. To grow up feeling this is natural. And of course I’m sure she’ll love the food once she’s older” (Ng 261). Though they plan to make an effort to educate May Ling about her birth culture, they do so minimally and shallowly. Choosing to educate her by going to their favorite Chinese restaurant, they are not doing May Ling’s cultural education justice. Since restaurants in America serving foreign food often cater to the American audience, May Ling would not get the full experience. Additionally, they would do so when convenient to them—once a month, as mentioned—and would only be there for the length of the meal. In the article, “‘Real’ Families,” Kit Myers reveals that “adoptive parents frame the public’s perception of families who adopt transnationally as a ‘battleground’ because the ways in which their families are stigmatized as less than, second-rate, and non-normative” (Myers 182). Myers explains how the adoption system, being full of love and supposedly transcending racial and cultural differences, creates symbolic violence. As parents shower their adopted children with love and attempt to integrate them into society, it creates friction between the child’s new culture and identity and their culture and identity of the past. By displaying their shallow efforts to educate May Ling of Chinese culture, Ng is challenging the McCulloughs’ right to adopt a child, arguing that the couple is not making enough of an effort to incorporate Chinese culture into their adopted daughter’s life. This is a perspective that characters like Mia hold, and it creates conflict between those who support the McCulloughs, like Elena. Mr. Richardson argues, “Maybe at birth everyone should be given to a family of a different race to be raised. Maybe that would solve racism once and for all” (Ng 269), which calls back to when Lexi said, “I mean, we’re lucky! No one sees race here” and Moody responded, “Everyone sees race, Lex. The only difference is who pretends not to” (Ng 42). These viewpoints on racial differences conflict. Mr. Richardson and Lexi are enchanted by the idyllic nature of Shaker Heights and society as a whole, which makes them unable to think critically about racial issues. They believe that because they choose to ignore racial tension, it doesn’t exist at all. Sure, Mr. Richardson offers a solution to racism, but it is so far-fetched and impossible to logistically and emotionally handle. Mr. Richardson is supporting the McCulloughs’ claim on May Ling, but he glosses over how the birth parents—Bebe in this instance—would feel about being separated from their flesh and blood. Unlike the book, the series delves into the complex effects of race on of the mother-daughter bond and motherhood. In the miniseries, the “performances embody the racial identities and tensions explored in the book in a much more direct and visceral way on screen, as the casting of Kerry Washington (Mia Warren) and Reese Witherspoon (Elena Richardson) make evident stark racial differences between Black and white motherhood. In the novel, Mia and her daughter Pearl Warren exist as racially ambiguous subjects, effectively rendering some of the interactions between the Warrens with white characters in the novel less precarious than when envisioning the Warrens as Black Americans” (McKee and Gibney 130-131). The inclusion of the Warrens as black in the miniseries adds another layer of racial tension, shifting it away from the McCulloughs and May Ling to between Elena and Mia. The two have different ideas of what it means to be a “good” mother, as they have different parenting styles.
In the series, where race is more prevalent, it is impossible to ignore how race and class collide. Moody, early in the novel, expresses a desire to keep Pearl and Mia a secret, “If he had kept her to himself, perhaps the future might have been quite different. All he had to offer her, he felt, was what his family had to offer, his family itself, and it was this that led him to say, one afternoon in July, ‘Come over. You can meet my family” (Ng 32-33). This indicates a somewhat possessive view of their friendship and an instinct to control the situation. He initially feels he can only offer Pearl what his family has: stability and conformity to the norm. This puts expectations on Mia to provide a stable life for Pearl if they are going to fit in with the community of Shake Heights. The class differences can be seen when Brian says, “My dad thinks [May Ling is] better off with the McCulloughs. He thinks she has no future with a mother like Bebe. He said moms like Bebe are the kind of parents who keep the cycle of poverty going” (Ng 154). Brian’s comment about his father’s beliefs highlights the expectations that parents like Bebe face when struggling with poverty. It is this view in which instances of wealth and stability are always more valuable than living with the birth parents and poverty. However, through Mia, Ng challenges this idea and shows the value in those situations. According to Inasa Hana Farihah and Lucia Lusi Ani Handayani, authors of “A Critical Discourse Analysis of Mother-Child Relationships in Little Fires Everywhere: The Influence of Race and Social Class,” elaborate “The challenges are grander for nonwhite mothers who must work harder to keep the balance between work and family, unlike most white mothers, who focus more on their children while their husbands work” and that Little Fires Everywhere epitomizes a society where “capitalistic ideas that expect nonwhite families to have a nuclear family and high-paying jobs, and racist discourses that insinuate nonwhite mothers as incompetent for not having a conventional family and a stable income, which has resulted in the marginalization and alienation of nonwhite mothers from the hegemonic white mothers” (Farihah and Handayani 203). This alienation leads not only to further discourse between Elena and Mia, but also alienates Mia within the white, wealthy suburban Shaker Heights community. There is no doubt that this is purposeful on Ng’s part. The conflict between Elena and Mia is crucial for fueling Elena’s interest in her history when her youngest daughter, Izzy, becomes enthralled with Mia. Additionally, “This [class] discrimination affects not only nonwhite mothers but also their family members, and it can lead to identity issues. Identity issues among nonwhite teenagers are inclined to happen with the development of social media, and they may cause damage to their relationships with their loved ones” and reveals that the conflict between mothers and their daughters results from “not just racial structure in the society, but also structures in a typical American suburb in the Midwest and is established in the series through dialogue and language use and to study how these issues affect the two mothers (Elena Richardson and Mia Warren) relationship with their respective daughters” (Farihah and Handayani 203). Ng shows that these systemic pressures complicate the mother-child bond, suggesting that a mother’s effectiveness is often judged without acknowledging the unequal conditions in which they are forced to parent. In this way, the novel argues that motherhood requires recognizing how race, class, and environment shape both the opportunities available to mothers and the identities formed by their children.
What is a “good” mother then? Ng claims that a “good” mother cannot be defined by one rigid standard—especially not the white, middle-class, traditional ideal that characters like Elena and the McCulloughs represent. Instead, Ng shows that good mothering is shaped by context, love, sacrifice, and moral complexity. By fueling discourse between Elena and Mia through class and racial differences, connecting motherhood to every woman in the novel, and commenting on sexism, Ng explores the role of women and what it means to be a “good” mother. Whether through the struggles of Bebe, the rigid control of Elena, or the unconventional resilience of Mia, Ng reveals that society’s judgments of mothers are deeply intertwined with bias and inequality. The novel challenges the reader to question who has the authority to decide what “good” mothering looks like. Ultimately, Ng asserts that motherhood cannot be reduced to a formula or a social ideal. Instead, it must be understood as a complex, deeply personal relationship shaped by love, intention, and each woman’s lived realities.
Works Cited
Farihah, Inasa Hana, and Lucia Lusi Ani Handayani. “A Critical Discourse Analysis of Mother-Child Relationships in Little Fires Everywhere: The Influence of Race and Social Class.” Journal of Pragmatics and Discourse Research, 2024. Journal of Pragmatics and Discourse Research, https://doi.org/10.51817/jpdr.v4i2.960.
Hughes, A. (2013). Society and the Roles of Women. In L. L. and introd. Knoppers (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Literature & the English Revolution (pp. 154–169). Oxford University Press.
Myers, Kit. 2014. “ ‘Real Families’: The Violence of Love in New Media Adoption Discourse.” Critical Discourse Studies 11 (2): 175–93.
Ng, Celeste. Little Fires Everywhere: A Novel. Penguin Publishing Group, 2019.
McKee, Kimberly D., and Shannon Gibney. “‘It Came, Over and Over, Down to This: What Made Someone a Mother?’ A Reproductive Justice Analysis of Little Fires Everywhere.” Feminist Formations, vol. 35, no. 2, June 2023, pp. 129–53. EBSCOhost, research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=c9ffe8a9-ae38-3d1c-b248-ca199cdfdd8a.
Tang, Fang. “Claiming Motherhood: Reproductive Justice and Surrogacy in Chinese American Literature of the New Millennium.” The Palgrave Handbook of Reproductive Justice and Literature, edited by Beth Widmaier Capo and Laura Lazzari, Palgrave Macmillan (Cham, Switzerland), 2022, pp. 445–63. EBSCOhost, research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=295a3ed8-c112-357b-b370-4fa33cabe787.
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