Concerning My Daughter
An unusual portrait of a mother in turmoil
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At first glance, the narrator of Concerning My Daughter appears to be an odd choice for a young Korean author in a work of contemporary fiction.
Born in 1983 in Daegu, Korea, Kim Hye-jin debuted in 2012 when her story ‘Chicken Run’ won Dong-A Ilbo’s Spring Literary Award. She has gone on to win more prestigious awards for her writing, including the Joongang Novel Prize for Joongang Station, and the Shin Dong-yup Prize for Literature for Concerning My Daughter.
In Concerning My Daughter, Hye-jin portrays the plight of a seventy-something Korean mother refusing to come to terms with her thirty-something daughter’s sexuality. Simultaneously, the mother is struggling with the attitudes to ageing seen through her care for a single elderly woman in the care home where she works.
But the author’s choice in characterisation here is key: it makes for a rich starting point in which to examine parental hopes and fears, and the ways in which women’s worth is measured in a conformist society.
“That child who sprang from my own flesh and blood is perhaps the creature I'm most distant from.”1
The mother sees her daughter’s homosexuality as an “illness”, something that fills her with shame, unable to face her neighbours or work colleagues if they discover that her daughter has a female partner. She appears more worried about the impressions of others and their judgement of her than she does about the damage she is doing to her daughter by refusing to accept her sexuality.
At the beginning of the book, the daughter - nicknamed Green - asks her mother if she can return home for a while with her girlfriend, Lane, as they are experiencing financial difficulties. The mother is reluctant but there appears no option and the couple move into the home.
“Every once in a while, when I start to think of my daughter, the feeling lingers: Am I being punished? Did I inadvertently pass on something bad to my daughter?”
But it would be easy for Hye-jin to have made us simply dislike the mother narrator, such are her bigoted views and refusal to even call her daughter’s girlfriend by her first name. Instead, she cleverly weaves in the mother’s thoughts and emotions as she worries about her daughter’s single status and future happiness alongside the invisibility she feels herself, and what she sees as the tragic treatment of an older woman in her care called Jen.
Jen, we are told, has had a successful career and is an intelligent and highly respected businesswoman and philanthropist, who contributed much to society. Despite her being one of the most affluent of the care facility’s inhabitants, the owner, Mr Kwon, advises the mother that she must cut costs by refraining from dressing Jen’s bed sores and using less incontinence products as other colleagues do. The mother bristles and makes small attempts to speak up for Jen, but is ultimately aware of her lower rank and status at the home and as a woman within society generally.
Her work colleague, whom she refers to as ‘the professor’s wife’, cannot understand her attitude and why she cares so much for Jen. The professor’s wife makes it clear that, despite Jen’s success in life, she is pitied as she has always remained a single, childless woman, meaning that she is now alone and has nobody to care for her. It is made clear that within this society, these are the measures of a woman’s worth.
“How come she has no family whatsoever? people ask when Jen is not around. Such a pity she’s been alone for years.”
It feels that the narrator pours all the care she feels no longer able to pour into her daughter into the care of Jen instead. In Jen, the mother sees the future she fears for her daughter Green, as she thinks that without marriage to a man and children of her own, she, too, will end up alone and with nobody to care for her.
The story is also a meditation on ageing in a society that no longer values you as a woman. The book is very much a woman’s story in that three generations are seen to be ignored and discriminated against: Green (and Lane) the two young lesbian women; the mother who, as a widow in her seventies, is forced to still work hard to make a living and who’s opinions are ignored; and Jen, the elderly woman who has been so successful yet is pitied and uncared for.
“Everywhere I go, all I see are young people. My face full of wrinkles and age spots, thinning hair and slouched shoulders. I don’t belong here. I fear at any moment, anyone could express their very obvious displeasure at the sight of me.”
The mother struggles to understand why her daughter is doing this to her, bringing shame on her when she is already forced to work so hard to survive. But even more so is the emotional understanding Hye-jin shows us of the complexities of the mother. She genuinely worries for her daughter’s life choices (as she sees it) to choose a female partner and risk becoming an outcast and alone, because she knows that the society she is living in does not accept an unmarried woman without a husband or children.
Her daughter is essentially going against everything that the mother has been brought up to believe, and Green’s refusal to submit to this kind of life offends and worries her.
You get a claustrophobic feeling from the mother’s existence; she works hard and is constantly exhausted; she travels to work and the heat is unbearable on her skin. Above all, she is struggling with the internal emotions around her daughter’s life choices and the love she feels for her. Although she wishes her daughter to conform, there is also a strong sense that the mother feels the sense of injustice within her own conformity, and particularly on behalf of Jen. She is disgusted at the rules surrounding the care for the elderly, and fights her own inclinations to speak back to Mr Kwon on Jen’s behalf. She recognises that Jen’s only ‘crime’ has been to grow old and therefore become useless and a burden on society, even more so because she refused to live by the acceptable dictates of that society.
“[My home is] the only thing over which I can claim control and exercise ownership.”
The mother and daughter struggle to meet halfway in their arguments around Green’s lifestyle. A university lecturer, Green is currently involved in a protest against the firing of gay colleagues. She stands outside the campus with other colleagues and protestors, shouting and handing out leaflets, risking arrest and violence, much to the mother’s horror. She pleads with her daughter to return to her work role and be quiet, pointing out that the other colleagues’ issues are none of her concern. She cannot understand why she wishes to risk her own job or safety for these people, refusing to associate her daughter with the word ‘gay’.
“It’s not too late, find yourself someone decent and get married. Have kids. Everyone makes mistakes when they’re young. You still have time to set it right. I am your mother. Who will say these things to you if not me?”
What becomes clear however towards the end of the book is that both mother and daughter share a rebellious refusal to accept the unfairness of the treatment of others: the daughter through her refusal to sit down and be quiet in the face of homophobic discrimination, and the mother in the care of the elderly Jen.
The mother, discovering that Jen has been cast out of the care home and put into another facility for her worsening dementia much further away, takes a taxi to attempt to find her and liberates her from the home. She takes her to her own home to care for her. Here we see the mother, daughter, and girlfriend Lane caring for Jen in her final weeks, becoming a family together. I think this is a clever way for Hye-jin to show that the mother is a deeply passionate and morally intact person who recognises that sometimes it is necessary to refuse to be polite and accepting. Despite her disagreements with her daughter over her involvement in the protests, it appears that the mother has been inspired to speak up at last.
We could have easily disregarded the mother’s views around her daughter’s sexuality as out-of-date and bigoted. But Hye-jin’s choice of character development in this later part of the story allows for a nuanced view of the mother and her capacity to change. In fact, not only does the mother rescue Jen, she also begins attending the protest site of her daughter after a serious scuffle ends in tragedy for some of Green’s friends and colleagues. It feels that the mother, though still struggling to accept the notion that her daughter is gay, is opening up to the damaging ways in which those in power are able to control and dictate the lives of others, particularly women.
Something that is a surprising element of the story is the character of Lane, Green’s girlfriend of seven years.
The mother, making clear that she does not want Lane in her home, refuses to acknowledge her by her name, and is openly hostile towards her throughout much of the book. Lane, however, is nothing but kind and courteous to her girlfriend’s mother. In fact, she behaves more like a daughter towards her than her own, cooking her delicious and nutritious meals when she comes home exhausted, and helping her to care for Jen in a gentle and compassionate way.
The mother often refuses Lane’s meals and tries to make her leave, telling her that she is making her daughter miserable and ruining her chance of a happy life.
“Please let my daughter live a normal, ordinary life. Please leave. Please let her go. Please let my one and only child go through life without sticking out. Let her blend in and live a natural, ordinary life.”
Lane never loses her temper and speaks to the mother in a reasonable way, letting her know that she cares for Green deeply and works hard to financially provide for her, allowing her to stand on the protest line every day.
“We’ve been together seven years. Do you know how long seven years is? I don’t understand why you still think that Green and I mean nothing to each other. Don’t you think you are being too harsh?”
When the first person narration from the mother finally begins to include Lane’s name, as well as her sharing the meals she has prepared, it feels like progress: whilst the mother’s feelings have not necessarily changed, there is a definite impression that she is thawing and it is Lane and Green who are beside the mother when she lays Jen to rest.
The book feels like a response to finding alternative families, as the mother and the two younger women pull together to care for the elderly Jen in her final hours, making sure that she has an appropriate and fitting funeral.
“The most powerful unit of solidarity in Korean society is the family.” Kim Hye-jin, Korean Literature Now
It would be easy to have the mother declare her mistakes and embrace Green and Lane’s relationship at the end. But it would also have felt unrealistic. What Hye-jin does instead is to provide a relatable understanding: that the mother undoubtedly and unreservedly loves her daughter and that she recognises the unfairness in a patriarchal society which favours women who conform.
Recalling her time as a school teacher, the mother remembers a young boy’s mother weeping at the bad behaviour of her son. She realises the advice she should have given her, which she now must take for herself:
“No matter what his parents want, he will never return to the place where you want him to be. Even so, none of that will change the fact that he is your child and you are his parent. That fact will never change.”
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Another beautifully written piece.
Hi Kate, new paid subscriber here! I love your work. I suggest you also check out another Korean book titled “Please look after mother” by Shin Kyung-sook.