Maternal Love

The narrator's desire for maternal love seems to play a large role in Age of Iron. Since her daughter has left her for America, she longs for the love she shared with her daughter. "I thought with envy and yearning of Florence in her room, asleep, surrounded by her sleeping children... Once I had everything..." (40).

When Florence is searching for her son, the narrator remarks, "Would Florence pause? No: amor matrice, a force that stopped for nothing" (94). "Amor matrice" means motherly love in Latin. She affirms the strength of motherly love.

When discussing her cancer, she uses a child as a metaphor to describe it saying, "I have a child inside that I cannot give birth to. Cannot because it will not be born. Because it cannot live outside me. So it is my prisoner or I am its prisoner" (82). It seems odd that even a malignant cancer is even a child to her. everything she thinks about is characterized from the point of view of a mother.

When speaking of the cruelty of the present generation, she says, "What kind of parents will they become who were thought that the time of there parents was over? ...They kick and beat a man because he drinks. They set people on fire and laugh while they burn to death. How will they treat their own children? What love will they be capable of" (50)? It is surprising that her thoughts on problems like the youth's unrest in South Africa seems to dwell on maternal love. She does not consider other consequence of the unrest such as what it means for the country. She just wonders if these children will make good parents.

'Behind closed eyes I saw my mother as she is when she appears to me..."Come to me!" I whispered. But she would not' (54-55). She longs for motherly love so much, that she has daydreams of when her mother used to take care of her.

When referring to the homeless man she takes care of she says, " How easy it is to love a child, how hard to love what a child turns into" (57). She seems to not like this man because he is an alcoholic and is lazy; he does nothing to help himself. Yet, she even takes care of him as if he were her child. Her lack of maternal love seems to dominate her emotions. She needs a way to compensate for that.

Throughout the novel so far, maternal love is an all encompassing philosophy from which the narrator views her external world in South Africa. She seems to miss this love since her daughter has left. She tries to compensate for this love by taking in the homeless man. She thinks that what she lacks is part of the problems of South Africa. People are cruel to each other and lack love for one another. The narrator even uses it to characterize her cancer. Clearly this woman is old and dying and lonely. She wants to be happy before she dies and is seeking to give and recieve love.