The Sister-Sister Bond: Creating Drama In Fiction
The Sister-Sister Bond:
Creating Drama and Growth for Female Characters in Fiction
The bond of biological sisters is often considered the second most important bond of a woman's life, being only slightly less important than the bond built with ones parent. The sister-sister bond, as it will be referred to throughout this essay, is of great importance to a young girl as it helps her define who she is and who she will become. Because this bond is integral to many women's development it is only natural that authors, especially women authors, include this relationship in their writing.
There are many examples throughout the history of Literature where women writers have used this bond to help develop the character of the women in their fiction. Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Louisa May Alcott's Little Women and Alice Walker's Color Purple all contain examples of this bond. While each of these texts has much to offer, for reasons of discussion, we will focus on Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson and Toni Morrison's Beloved. In order to better understand this theme in relationship to these two novels we shall explore why the sister-sister bond is important to each of the girls and what happens to the individual sister when the bond is compromised.
Although, there are several examples of the sister-sister theme in Housekeeping, the most prominent and seemingly important is between the sisters Ruth and Lucille, as the story mainly revolves around their life. In Beloved the theme is somewhat harder to see because the character Beloved is portrayed as something more than human. While we should keep this in mind, it is not of great significance to the discussion at hand; as the character is portrayed as the ghost of Denver's dead sister and therefore the sister-sister bond is still effectively introduced in the novel.
First, let us look at the similarities between the sets of girls to find the reason for the importance...
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