One thing readers have asked about Her Life--and I don't want to give anything away--is whether the mother cared. The truth is, readers don't know. The strength of writing in first person is that it's easier to keep a consistent voice than with 3rd person, especially if the 3rd person (they, he, she) is not limited to one viewpoint. In other words, if the 3rd-person narrator tells the reader what only one person thinks, then it's a lot easier to write in 3rd person, but if the narrator is letting readers into the minds of several people, then it's harder to be consistent. First person solves a lot of the problems with consistency.
The limitation of the 1st-person narrator is that the reader knows only what that person saw, heard, or thinks. In Her Life, readers never meet the mother, so they know only what Caroline thinks, and she could be wrong. Characters, like real people, can perceive events or people incorrectly because of the character's own limitations. Caroline is hurt and reacts from that perspective.
My point is, the mother may not be as bad as Caroline thinks she is at the end. We don't know. We do know that the facts presented are true up to that one scene because others verify them in some way--conversation, etc.
That's a question I wish I had an answer to. Of course she loves, or loved, her children. But, did she squash it because she loved society more? Did she deal with the pain by hiding away the truth that her children existed? Or, trying to think as if I lived 100 years ago, was it shameful for her to be known as the divorced woman whose kids were miles away, so she acted like they didn't exist for the sake of societal position? Her actions are hard to understand, leaving without any further word or contact. As a reader you find yourself wondering how she could do that, how she felt.
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