NON AFRICAN DRAMA
Lorraine Hansberry: A Raisin in the Sun
What impression do you form of Mama’s character in the play?
Explanation
Mrs Lena Younger, otherwise known as Mama, is a lion hearted woman, a dutiful housewife and a loving all rolled into one. To that extent she is a remarkable character.
Mama is a strong willed widow who who proves herself to be effective matriarch of the younger family after the death of her husband. In this regard she exercises a firm grip on her household. Like her late husband, she teaches her family to learn to love and never to be subservient. She cautions Bennie when she is becoming too atheistic in her views and prevails upon Walter to recognize the worth of Ruth, his wife. Significantly, she prevents the family from falling apart by buying a decent house for their comfort with a substantial portion of her husband’s pension. She also prepares the family to brace itself for Ruth’s second child rather than entertain such a morbid thought as abortion because of their economic difficulties.
As an understanding woman and dutiful housewife, Mama recalls with nostalgia, the wonderful time she spent with her late husband, its hardship notwithstanding. She downplays his waywardness, especially with women, but extols his virtue as a loving father, teaching his children to learn to live and be on their own. “working and working and working like somebody’s old horse” and grieving himself almost to death when she lost Claude, her little baby.
Mama symbolizes the indomitable dream, the will and the consciousness of the average coloured person to work himself/herself into the middle class and get integrated into the larger American society by fighting racism in all its facets. This explains why she spends 35% of her late husband’s pension to acquire a befitting house for her family in the so-called non-coloured area of Clybourne Park in spite of the risks.
As a caring, loving and listening mother, Mrs. Lena Younger epitomizes the universal image of motherhood. In this regard, she is very close to and profoundly shows affection to her children, her daughter-in-law and her grandson. She shares Bennie’s aspirations to become a medical doctor. She relates with Ruth caringly and offers to help her with her domestic chores. Rather than give the pension money away to charity, she decides to utilise it for the welfare of the family and provide a decent place for Travis and the baby Ruth is expecting. In order to keep the peace in her home, she transfers the headship of the family to Walter-her elderest child- and entrusts to him the safe-keeping of a larger percentage of the pension money.
Surely Mama’s goodness and sense of judgement are fittingly rewarded with surprise presents from her appreciative family. Her emphasis on freedom rather than money as the defining attribute of real happiness is reflected in her belief that people should “sit down and talk to each other… to understand the other fellow’s problem”.
Bennie’s choice of Asagai to achieve the object of her quest-the return to her African roots – and Walter’s living up to expectation as the family head as he derisively rejects Lindner’s condescendingly racist offers, all stand to Mama’s credit as a remarkable character.
Points to note:
(a) Lena Younger, popularly referred to as Mama, is Walter’s and Beneatha’s mother and head of the family.
(b) Mama is the binding force in her family.
(c) Mama sacrificially provides for her family and willingly gives Walter the insurance money to manage.
(d) Mama loves her grandson, Travis, symbolizing her love for all the family.
(e) Mama has the family’s comfort at heart.
(f) Mama epitomises the determination of blacks to move out of the poverty-striken and racially segregated life to black Americans have been consigned.