Saturday Seven is hosted by Long and Short Reviews.
Happy Mother’s Day! In honour of this holiday, today I wanted to talk about characters who never got the chance to be mothers but who would have done an excellent job at it if they did.
Some characters are childless or childfree because that’s what they genuinely wanted out of life, and I completely respect that. There have been other characters, though, that ended up not having kids for a variety of reasons that could have changed if the plot had turned out to have a slightly different arc to it.
A couple of the people on this list died far too early in life to become parents. Others simply had other things going on for them during their childbearing years. If I wrote fanfics, I’d tweak those endings so I could see what their lives would have been like if this wasn’t the case. Every person on this list would have been a loving parent if she’d had the chance to do so.
1. Prof. Mcgonagall from the Harry Potter series.
I’d like to think that her potential children would have been much less mischievous than all of the Weasley boys she had to deal with as a professor. Even if her kids did turn out to be rambunctious, at least she would have known how to react to them thanks to the many years of practice she had keeping the Weasleys from hurting themselves too badly during their adventures at school.
2. Beth March from Little Women.
Beth was a quiet and often painfully shy girl who had a heart of gold. I can’t think of any character more generous or loving than she was. Her sisters amused me in this story, but Beth was the one who truly touched my heart. There was an earnestness about her that made me wish she could have had a long and happy life.
She would have made a doting mother, especially for a child who might have developed the same kind of severe anxiety issues that Beth had to deal with.
3. Helen Burns from Jane Eyre.
Helen was a sweet, patient orphan-friend of Jane’s who died from tuberculosis when they were young. She kept such a calm and hopeful demeanour no matter what was happening around her.
I was so upset when this character died. She was honestly someone I thought might live to see radical improvements in the way orphans – and especially chronically ill orphans – were treated in the 1800s.
4. Ms. Frizzle from the Magic School Bus series.
She handled her sometimes-rowdy class so beautifully that I have no doubt she would have been wonderful at raising a much smaller number of children full-time.
5. Captain Janeway from Star Trek: Voyager.
Fair Use Rationale: This image is being used as a visual identification of Captain Janeway.
Yes, I know this is a TV show, but there are hundreds of Star Trek novels that have been written about this universe. Some of them are specifically about this ship and captain, so I’ve decided that Janeway counts for the purposes of this list. LOL.
One of the things I liked the most about her was how much serious effort she put into making the right decision for her crew even if it wasn’t the easiest decision for Janeway herself. It takes a strong person to make that choice over and over again, but protecting people who count on you is exactly what being a parent is all about.
6. Aunt Josephine from the Anne of Green Gables series.
Honestly, the world needs more parents – and adults in general – who remember what it felt like to be a misunderstood kid. One of my favorite things about Aunt Josephine in this series was how easy it was for her to recall life when she was Anne Shirley’s age. Being around two playful preteens made this character revisit her own childhood in the best possible way. In a different timeline, Aunt Josephine would have had the opportunity to do the same thing with her own children.
7. Jean Louise “Scout” Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird.
Scout was such a compassionate girl. She would have been an excellent role model if she’d had children when she grew up.
Which of your favourite characters do you wish could have been mothers?
My choice for this week’s prompt is Mrs. Dorothy Quimby from the Ramona Quimby series by Beverly Cleary.