Why "not a mother-woman"?

After today’s reading, I kept thinking about Mr. Pontellier’s assessment of his wife as a mother. He makes the statement that she “was not a mother-woman” (9). However, before and after this statement, Mr. Pontellier does not talk about which characteristics disqualify Mrs. Pontellier from being awarded the title “mother-woman.” In fact, he talks first about his children and then about the apparent epitome of a “mother-woman,” Adèle Ratignolle. In his unconscious judgment of his wife, I feel that Mr. Pontellier is overlooking a key component. Perhaps his children are not “mother-tots” (9). Mr. Pontellier throws out the term without defining it the way that he does “mother-women.” I think that Chopin provides an example of “mother-tots” a few pages later when she describes Adéle Ratignolle’s children: “Her little ones ran to meet her. Two of them clung about her white skirts” (13). Perhaps “mother-tots,” then, are, if not anxious about being separated from their mother, extremely eager to be reunited with her after a separation of any length.

With that definition in mind, I would venture to say that the Pontellier children, Raoul and Etienne, are not “mother-tots.” Yes, “Both children wanted to follow their father when they saw him starting out” (5), but neither the omniscient narrator nor Mr. Pontellier offer any reason for their desire. The narrator does say that Mr. Pontellier “promised to bring them back bonbons and peanuts” (5). I wonder if the boys were more interested in the promise than the kiss goodbye. My suspicion is heightened a few chapters later, when Raoul and Etienne are excited to see their mother not “for a little talk and some pleasantry” but “to investigate the contents of the bonbon box” (13). Once the boys get their candy, they leave. It is clear, then, that neither parent is the primary concern in either boy’s mind.

The best evidence that Raoul and Etienne are not “mother-tots” can be found, I think, in Mr. Pontellier’s own reflections about the boys – the reflection that precedes his statement that Mrs. Pontellier “was not a mother-woman.” The narrator describes the boys’ reactions to getting hurt: “[H]e was not apt to rush crying to his mother’s arms for comfort; he would more likely pick himself up, wipe the water out of his eyes and the sand out of his mouth, and go on playing” (9). Mr. Pontellier presents this information as a sort of criticism, as if the boys should be sobbing and running to their mother. But this is not Mrs. Pontellier’s fault. As I said in class, I think that Raoul and Etienne are simply independent children.

So if Raoul and Etienne do not need Mrs. Pontellier to be a “mother-woman,” why is Mr. Pontellier so concerned, however privately, that she is not one?