An Analysis of the Relationship Between Mother and Daughter:
The Liars Club, and a look at childhood through the lens of adulthood

Marry Karr’s The Liars Club is a haunting memoire, depicting a young Texan girls struggle to survive the trials of adolescence in home that finds stability in chaos and comfort in the abusive habits of her parents. Illustrating both fond and painful memoires from her past, Karr paints a complex image of the relationship she shared with her mother; giving readers everywhere the ability to relate and empathizes with the emotional complexity of their mother daughter relationship. This complexity of relationship can be explored in three main ways: the conflicting views Karr formed of her mother, In Karr’s
Karr’s struggle to decipher her mother’s moods is a constant theme throughout The Liars Club. In some instances she is incapable of understanding her mothers erratic behavior; At other times Karr is successfully steers her mother from disaster, on chaotic sometimes self-destructive evenings spent in. An example of this comes later in the book when Karr describes the nights she and her sister would spend listening to opera, “watching Mother drink and hearing her grieve for New York.” (131)
Through getting to understand her mother’s likes and dislikes Karr developed an ability to predict how her mother was feeling. For instance “if she were feeling high-minded… she would play opera.” (128) For Mother, Opera represented an escape from her life in Leechfield. By putting on a record she was able to remember her youth in New York. The power of Mother’s ability to escape through music is clearly illustrated when Karr and her sister argue over whether or not Karr has ever seen a fountain. It is clear to Marry that their bickering frustrates her mother, and she watches as her mother “[look] out the screen door… [when] the music surges a little… and she fades… back into… the metropolitan again.”(129) As if through her memory of the music, Mother is able to relive the fresh days of her youth, spent ‘free’ in New York. The imagery of Mother being a caged animal becomes apparent in scenes such as these; as if the nights of drunken