Who is your favourite literary mother?

[MissHoneyPenny]

Your favourite mother/mother figure from literature.

I think my top choices would be Marmee from Little Women, Miss Honey from Matilda (hence username) and Ma Joad from The Grapes of Wrath.

PermanentTemporary · 19/07/2025 21:59
Sadie Alconleigh in The Pursuit of Love. I loved that book and enjoyed reading about an interesting and unusual mother rather than a plaster saint or perfect woman

I agree. And I enjoyed Polly’s mother, Lady Montdore, if only because she was so awful!

She never did work out timing a turkey ❤️

My comfort reads are Donna Andrews' Meg Langslow mysteries (cosies set in rural and small town Virginia). Meg becomes a pretty good mother herself as the series progresses, but her mother is both terrifying and wonderful. A woman to not be messed with.

Oh, can I have Louisa Durrell too? I know she was a real person not a literary character but in the books she's so funny.

Edit to add Ma Larkin.

Roo’s mother Kanga in Winnie the Pooh.

DD (aged 12 and obsessed with Percy Jackson) would like to add Sally Jackson to the list. Does everything she can to protect her son, goes from candy store worker to novelist and always manages to feed all the random gods and monsters her son brings home.

I’d forgotten her . Wise woman and that husband was not easy.

Val from The Women's Room. I really loved her relationship with Chris though (spoiler!) it ends sadly.

My kids are all obsessed with Percy Jackson and having read the books myself I completely agree with your DD. She even married a man she hated to protect Percy (but got her happily ever after).

I also love Matty from the Old Baggage trilogy. My favourite quote: Hobbies are for people who don't read.

Another vote for Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan, and I’d add Lady Alys Vorpatril as well.

As a maternal figure, Nancy from Oliver Twist who lives in a cruel and brutal world but bravely tries to help Oliver escape to a better life.
The scene in the film ‘Oliver’ where she is surrounded by adoring orphaned little boys singing “I’d do anything for you” pulls at my heart strings.

Dr Ruth Galloway - such an amazing mum to Kate

Moominmamma.

Raksha, Mowgli’s wolf mother in The Jungle Book.

I like the mother in Railway children, let's them get on with it and buys them cream buns when she sells her writing.
Best Dad is Danny the champion of the World's.

It's a book as well, by Mary Rogers.

Rosamund Stacey.

Oh me too! I adored that book.

Yes!!

Another vote for Louisa Durrell and Molly Weasley.

Not a mother but a maternal figure, Betsey Trotwood in David Copperfield.