Good Bad Girl: A Novel

Very few of the mother-daughter relationships in Good Bad Girl reflect commonly held narratives about what “successful” motherhood should look like. Most of the novel’s mother-daughter relationships are defined by estrangement and surrogacy: Patience is estranged from both her biological and surrogate mothers, Clio is estranged from Edith, and Frankie is given up for adoption and then forcibly estranged from her biological mother by her grandmother when she attempts to reconnect. Though the precise reasons for these ruptures vary, they symbolically evoke the strain that societal pressures place on mother-daughter relationships.

Feeney principally uses Clio’s backstory to explore those societal pressures. When the police come to Clio’s house after the abduction, Clio reflects that they are all “Looking at her. Judging her. All thinking the same thing no doubt: Bad mother. They’re not wrong. That is how Clio thinks of herself too” (252). Even though the crime of Eleanor’s abduction was entirely outside of Clio’s control, she is still seen as liable for her child’s safety in a way that Clio’s husband is not. This unfair and illogical expectation marks her as an unsuccessful mother not only in the eyes of those around her but also in her own eyes: Clio, already struggling with motherhood due to postpartum depression, internalizes the sexist expectation that she alone is responsible for what happened to Eleanor, and the guilt she feels because of this comes to define her through the years that follow.