'The Bad Mother' teaches students about sacrifice and duty to ourselves
CBC Radio | Posted: February 23, 2018 11:44 PM | Last Updated: February 24, 2018
On the blackboard of Lisa Kuruvilla's classroom at Cameron Heights Collegiate in Kitchener, Ont., is a quotation from Henrik Ibsen's 1879 play, A Doll's House.
The lines are taken from the last scene, in which Nora, until then a dutiful wife and mother, announces suddenly to her husband that she's leaving.
Leaving their home.
Their marriage.
And their three young children.
For good.
Their marriage.
And their three young children.
For good.
"I have another duty, just as sacred," Nora declares.
"The duty to myself."
Each year, Ms. Kuruvilla assigns the work to her 11th grade English literature class. They tackle the ideas of sacrifice and self-sacrifice through A Doll's House and Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis.
This year — after hearing a Sunday Edition documentary — Ms. Kuruvilla added a third work into the mix: The Bad Mother, by Franco-Ontarian author, Marguerite Andersen.
Like Ibsen's Nora, Marguerite Andersen is a mother who left.
At age 30, Anderson bid her two young sons — then six and eight — goodbye.
She flew from Tunis to Berlin for medical treatment, but she stayed there to escape a bad marriage.
Mother and sons were apart for a year and a half.
It wasn't until 4 years ago, when she was about to turn 90, that Marguerite Andersen was ready to write about it.
And this year, Lisa Kuravilla added Marguerite Andersen into her lesson plan.
Kafka. Ibsen. And Andersen.
Click 'listen' above to hear Alisa's Siegel's documentary, Life Lessons.
Marguerite Anderson's memoir, The Bad Mother, is published by Second Story Press.