Shawl response question - motherhood

This is another story about motherhood. Reflect on the way motherhood affects a woman's identity. How is Rosa's survival mitigated by the loss of her daughter/motherhood?

As we started to discuss in class motherhood affects a woman’s identity by her capability to protect and sacrifice for her children. Although we find out in Rosa’s story that Stella is not her child this clarifies and justifies Rosa’s opinion of her. To a mother who gives her child everything she can which in Rosa’s case is the shawl that is the only thing she has left to give Stella is an evil cold hearted person for taking it form Rosa’s daughter. Rosa is mad at her niece for being selfish however Stella just wanted to be loved in the way Rosa loved Magda. Rosa worries about her daughter much more than she does about Stella because as a mother her natural instincts are to put all of herself into finding a way for her daughter to survive and give her what is best for her. In Rosa’s case because she can not give her to someone on the street or provide her with any more food than she has for herself she feels the shawl is the only way she has left to protect and care for her child. A mother lives for child and as it is said a parent should never have to bury their child and Rosa no longer has anyone to live for after Magda is thrown again the electric fence. She wants to save her, to run to her after she has fallen from the fence but she knws she will be killed if she moves from the line. Her life purpose is taken from her when her daughter dies she has no one else to live for which is why I believe in her story she destroys her store. She has no reason to make money anymore because she only has herself to support and we see her stages of grief that she does not get over when she writes the letters to her daughter and her niece. We see the denial that her daughter is dead and the anger at her niece for partial blame of her daughter’s death. By remaining in her room and isolating herself from others in Florida she shows significant signs of depression and feels as though nobody understands what she went through because she tells the man she meets that “[his] Warsaw is not [her] Warsaw” meaning this new friend never had to face the trials and tribulations of a mother losing her daughter to the Holocaust and watching her die right in front of her. He has no idea what a mother’s loss such as her own or what the loneliness such a mother like herself faces after everything is over and she is suppose to move on with her life. She can’t, she won’t because she will never be the same. She will never love the same way again the way she loved her own child because of her struggle with herself to believe that as a mother she could have done more for her daughter and that in some ways she is to blame for her daughter’s death because as a mother she should have been able to do more.