The Maiden, The Mother, The Crone
Ancient tales tell of the three stages of a woman’s life merged with the archetype of the triple goddess – the maiden, the mother, and the crone. Each stage is further symbolized by a phase of the moon, and what the ancient astrologers thought each of these phases represented. The new moon waxing to full, as a maiden waxes to mother; the full moon waning to a dark crescent, as the mother wanes to crone. A Raisin in the Sun features three women embodying these three stages. Beneatha is the waxing maiden with an idealistic, hopeful view of the future. Ruth is the mother with her life full of the demands of others and very little time to think about her own needs. Lena is the wise, waning matriarch and the old ways of family life. Each of these stages informs the place where these woman make the decisions that will affect the entire Younger family.
Because of Lorraine Hansberry’s early death at thirty-four, she never experienced all of the stages of a woman’s life, though she accomplished much in the time she had. Through Beneatha, Ruth, and Lena, she lived all of these milestones on the page and on the stage. Perhaps, with her background in activism, Hansberry was also saying something about the fight for equal rights with each of these stages. Beneatha was the fresh, energized fight for equality, Ruth the disillusioned middle generation who would like to see change, but is so tired of fighting. Lena is the old status quo way of thinking, where women make the best of their lot in life and are submissive to men. The man currently in her life being her son, Walter Lee. While his actions drive the plot of A Raisin in the Sun, it is the relationship and reactions of the three women that really tell the story.
Lorraine Hansberry has said that she modeled the character of twenty-year-old Beneatha after herself. A young, radical, feminist woman with big dreams beyond the expected trajectory of a woman’s life in the 1950s. As Hansberry stated in her 1964 speech to the United Negro College Fund creative writing contest winners,“I wanted to be able to come here and speak with you on this occasion because you are young, gifted, and black. … I, for one, can think off no more dynamic combination that a person might be.” (Nemiroff 256) Hansberry could have been talking about Beneatha. Beneatha is the still fresh, idealistic archetype of the maiden represented by the new moon, a time for setting intentions and looking toward the future. She is energy, the discovery of creative potential, and the planting of seeds. In Act I, Lena asks Beneatha, “Why you got to flit so from one thing to another, baby?” Beneatha then replies, “I don’t flit! I—I experiment with different forms of expression—.” (Hansberry_, A Raisin in the Sun_ 50)
Beneatha has a dream to be a doctor and heal the world, and she has not yet been required to modify or give up those dreams. Beneatha has not yet had to shoulder the duties and expectations of the older Younger women, and while the true fight for equality wouldn’t happen for another decade, she enjoys opportunity not afforded to Ruth and Lena when they were her age. Beneatha feels free to express her atheistic views in the naive way of a younger generation who believes their opinions will be shared with everyone. Lena slaps her for disrespecting God in Lena’s home. After this exchange, Ruth says to Beneatha, “You think you a woman, Bennie—but you still a little girl. What you did was childish—so you got treated like a child.” (Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun 54) This is how the maiden can be viewed by the mother and the crone, as someone to be corrected rather than respected.
Hansberry said, in her 1959 keynote speech at the First Conference of Negro Writers, “I have come to maturity, as we all must, knowing that greed and malice and indifference to human misery, bigotry and corruption, brutality and, perhaps above all else, ignorance abound in this world.” (Hansberry, The Negro Writer and His Roots 11) Surely Ruth Younger has seen plenty in her thirty-two years of life to be exhausted by the indifference of the world to her suffering. In much of the play, Ruth is a mothering presence for everyone. She wakes Walter up for work, makes him get up on time, gets everyone in and out of the bathroom in an organized way, and makes sure everyone is fed before they leave the house. This mothering phase of a woman’s life, and the corresponding symbolism of the full moon, is when women are said to be at their busiest. It is a time to reap the harvest of the seeds sown in the maiden phase of life, to realize a woman’s full potential, to accept responsibility, and to practice selfless compassion.
Ruth does not take her mothering lightly as is shown in all of the ways she desires a better life for Travis. While she has put a down payment on an abortion, it isn’t because she doesn’t want this new baby. It’s because she sees all the ways the family she already has will suffer and the mother in her wants to protect them all. Lena tells Walter, “When the world gets ugly enough—a woman will do anything for her family. The part that’s already living.” (Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun 77) Ruth has moved beyond the idealistic, carefree years of youth and into the depths of life. A life crowded with work, household duties, children, the realities of society, and a settled, but somewhat troubled marriage. Her dream is a better life for Travis, and to take some of the tension off of Walter so they can enjoy their marriage again. She has been informed by three decades of living that have worn her down, but in the scene after Walter has invested the family’s money and her marriage is enjoying a rejuvenation, it is clear how much life and passion remain in this vital phase of Ruth’s life.
Hansberry didn’t get to reach the crone stage of life, although she said, “I wish to live because life has within it that which is good, that which is beautiful, and that which is love. Therefore, since I have known all of these things, I have found them to be reason enough and — I wish to live. Moreover, because this is so, I wish others to live for generations and generations and generations and generations.” (Hansberry, The Negro Writer and His Roots 11) Through the play’s matriarch, Lena, Hansberry lived for generations. Lena is the matriarch who demands the respect she has earned after a life of sacrifice. There is a belief that “older women hold the energy of the menstrual blood within their bodies and make internal wisdom instead of external children” (Pinkola Estés 504), Lena is this wise crone.
Lena’s life stage is further symbolized by the Younger’s apartment. Once the rugs, furniture, and walls were new and spotless, now time has worn them both old and tired. Yet, like the apartment, Lena is sill a home and a strength for her family. She is the strong backed matriarch who demands the respect of her children, and the soft hearted grandmother who allows them their failures. The crone stage is symbolized by the waning moon, a time for release. In Act II, Lena decides it’s time for her to let go of her place as the head of the family and pass it on to Walter. She is ready to put her faith in the next generation. “I want you to take this money and take three thousand dollars and put it in a savings account for Beneatha’s medical schooling. The rest you put in a checking account—with your name on it. And from now on any penny that come out of it or that go in it is for you to look after. For you to decide. It ain’t much, but it’s all I got in the world and I’m putting it in your hands. I’m telling you to be the head of this family from now on like you supposed to be.” (Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun 107) Her only dream is a little garden with enough sunshine to grow some flowers, and a home for her family.
Throughout A Raisin in the Sun, the Younger women are met with challenges to the family, to their dreams, and to their small sense of security, especially through the actions of Walter Lee. Their different ways of dealing with their struggles are most pronounced in Act III when they discover Walter has lost all of the money they had left for Beneatha’s schooling and for the family’s future. In this act we can almost see Beneatha cross a threshold from naive maiden to informed woman. In the scene with Asagai, Beneatha is mourning the loss of her dream, the loss of her medical school money through events outside of her control. She’s ready to give up on school, on being a doctor, on saving the world, until Asagai asks her if she had earned the money. Had that money truly been hers to lose? “Then isn’t there something wrong in a house—in a world—where all dreams, good or bad, must depend on the death of a man?” (Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun 134) Beneatha is furious, as she should be, at Walter. She is ready to forsake him as her brother, yet the burgeoning woman in her sees the truth of this statement.
Ruth, on the other hand, is ready to look past this incident as long as she can still achieve her dream of getting the family out of the ghetto. When Lena decides that they aren’t moving now that the money is gone, Ruth becomes desperate and promises to clean all the houses and wash all the sheets in America if she has to. Lena, who has already seen so much misery and sacrifice, is willing to tell herself that her dream was just too big. “Lord, ever since I was a little girl, I always remembers people saying, ‘Lena—Lena Eggleston, you aims too high all the time. You needs to slow down and see life a little more like it is. Just slow down some.’ That’s what they always used to say down home.” (Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun 139) Lena has decided that her due has finally come. That she needs to give her dreams a rest. She tells Beneatha that now is the time to love Walter. Now is the time for forgiveness. Now is the time for release of all the anger they have felt towards Walter. From anger, to desperation, to resolve, each woman’s reaction is somewhat dependent on their stage of life and the experiences that have had.
Beneatha, the maiden, the energetic new moon. Ruth, the mother, the surrendering full moon, and Lena, the waxing crescent due her rest and release from worry. Menstruation, birth, and the ceasing of the reproductive years, and the moon symbolism that has come to represent each of these phases, can be a very powerful force in the lives of women. Each stage brings challenges, experiences, and subtle shifts in energy and relationships. Informing how a woman problem solves, how she dreams, and how she loves. Lorraine Hansberry gives them all a voice in A Raisin in the Sun, and through her they come to life and truly tell the story of all of humanity.
Works Cited
American Playhouse, “Raisin In The Sun (1989).” YouTube, uploaded by Reelblack One, 13
November 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzfgwxENvLk
Hansberry, Lorraine A Raisin in the Sun, Vintage Books, 1994
Hansberry, Lorraine, “The Negro Writer and His Roots, The Black Scholar, vol. 12, no. 2, 1981,
pp. 2-12
Louisiana Public Broadcasting, “Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes / Feeling Heart | American
Masters | Panel Discussion”, YouTube, 22 March 2018,
Nemiroff, Robert, To Be Young, Gifted, and Black, Prentice Hall, 1969
Pinkola Estés, Clarissa Women Who Run With the Wolves, Random House, 1992
Savage, Linda E., “The Three Phases of a Woman’s Life”, Therapists of San Diego,
https://www.sandiegotherapists.com/threestages.html, Accessed 12 October 2023