Writing Prompt: Marmee Through The Window by Elisabeth M. Priest

Marmee Through The Window by Elisabeth M. Priest is this month’s Literary Reflections essay. It’s an unusual love story, touching on both a mother’s love for her feverish daughter, and that same mother’s heart connection with Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women.

The author describes how, whilst reading the story she loves so well to her daughter, who is unwell and unable to sleep, she discovers a profound,  new sense of identification with a character in the story she loves so well – the mother:

“While there is a part of me that will always be Jo, it wasn’t her reflection I saw clearly anymore when I looked into the glass of those pages.  As I read this time, I was startled to discover a new reflection smiling back at me. I was Marmee: the mama bear, the protector, the teacher, the homeschooler, the one who tries to lead and guide and light the way, the one who admits her faults to help her girls mend their own.” 

Have you ever seen yourself in “the mirror of motherhood” in the pages of the books that you loved as a child, and / or which you read to your children? How has your journey into motherhood altered your connection with the books you enjoyed as a child, and is there one particular literary mother whom you may have overlooked when you encountered her as a child, but with whom you now  identify deeply?

Submit a 500-word response to this writing prompt by December 15th for feedback from our editors. Email it to LMreflectionsATliterarymamaDOTcom and note “Marmee Through The Window” in your subject line. We’ll publish our favorites on the blog.