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shawl who said: 'why are you pulling him, daughter!” Mama, dark under the eyes, her slender cold face. She was breathing hard. She wore the torn seal coat and a red pointed wool cap and thin button boots. Clusters of dry fish hung in the shop, a rancid sugar smell, cheese, soap- a terrible dust of nutrition came from the open door. The bell on a coil of wire was bombing, ringing. 'Daughter, don't sacrifice your strength to children.”Said the shawled crone in the freezing dusk of the street. I pretended not to understand. One of啦's hardest jobs, to make a quick understanding slow I think I succeeded, thought Herzog.

(Bellow, 1996:189)

This memory crystallizes a number of important elements of the main character's relationship to the maternal figure. First, she is self-sacrificing, even when confronted with the practical advice of the wise old crone. Second, Moses' description conveys his pity for his mother, but it also plainly demonstrates his ability to allow self-interest to override even his most tender feelings for her. Clearly, Sarah Herzog personifies the maternal ideal as protector, nurturer and life-giver. And equally clear is the association of pure love with drudgery, domesticity and self-sacrifice.

But Sarah Herzog's role as a nurturer is not entirely defined by her sacrifice and servitude. Another significant aspect of her mothering is her ambition for her children. Despite the privations of slum life, she encourages her children to develop their artistic and intellectual talents. She 'encouraged her children to define themselves through their own experience and taught them about the tragic nature of life without imposing her will on them'(McCadden,1980:148). Her daughter Helen is given piano lessons and the leisure to practice. The sons are allowed to study rather than urged to go out and work. As the memory of the incident on the sled suggests, Mother Herzog particularly spoils her youngest son, Moses.

Recognizing his intellectual talents, she hopes he will become a great rabbi. She boasts to her sister in-1 aw, Moses' Aunt Zipporah, of his intelligence at an early age: 'what a little tongue it has. Moshele could talk to the President!' (Bellow, 1996:192). Aunt Zipporah, whose husband has succeeded in American devotion to pragmatism and hard work, opposes Sarah Herzog's ambition for her children. She sees it as an indication of Sarah's residual gentility. As an adult, Moses concludes that Sarah's ambition derives from the respectable tradition一Jewish devotion to family status, and parents' pleasure taken in their children's accomplishment: 'All branches of the family had the caste madness of外chus. No life was so barren and subordinate that it didn't have imaginary dignities, honors to come, freedom to advance' (ibid:141). Thus, Mother Herzog's ambition for her children is not merely another form of psychological nourishment but also an expression of her tie to the Jewish heritage and of her faith in her children. Sarah survives in her son's memory as an ideal一the personification of maternal nurturing and protection through self-sacrifice. Even Herzog's friend, the failed poet Nachman, remembers her as a loving, generous woman: 'I was hungry and she fed me. She washed my hands and set me down at the table.本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。