Motherhood, and the bond between mothers and daughters in particular, is a very important theme in the novel. The presence of a loving mother is shown to be essential to a young woman’s development, and becoming a mother is presented as a transformative and empowering experience. At the start of the novel, what distresses Maria the most is the enforced separation from her infant daughter. She spends a lot of time worrying about what might happen to her daughter if the two of them don’t reunite, “dwel[ling] on the wretchedness of unprotected infancy” (92). Maria writes the narrative of her past because she wants her daughter to at least be able to read it and know something about her mother, in case she ends up spending the rest of her life in the asylum.

Maria’s strong sense that her daughter needs her, and her fears about what could happen if she isn’t present in her daughter’s life, are supported by both her own and Jemima’s past experiences, which show her “the oppressed state of woman, and to lament that she had given birth to a daughter” (92). Maria’s own mother was cold and distant, and later, the woman who began a relationship with Maria’s father mistreated Maria and her sisters.