The Lost Daughter

“When my daughters moved to Toronto, where their father had lived and worked for years, I was embarrassed and amazed to discover that I wasn’t upset; rather, I felt light, as if only then had I definitively brought them into the world.”

At the start of The Lost Daughter, Leda’s daughters have recently moved away. The embarrassment she feels at enjoying their absence is the first instances of the motherly conventions that Leda breaks and the guilt she feels about breaking them. She likes having her house to herself, but she feels that a proper mother would miss her daughters more. At the same time, the experience allows her to finally feel the satisfaction that she hoped motherhood would bring.

“Once, twice, three times she threatened us, her daughters, that she would leave, you’ll wake up in the morning and won’t find me here. And every morning I woke trembling with fear. In reality she was always there, in her words she was constantly disappearing from home.”

Leda often thinks of her mother, particularly her threats to leave. Although she never followed through, Leda lived in fear of her mother’s disappearance, even suggesting that it would have been better if her mother had gone. These memories suggest that Leda understood what it was like growing up with an unhappy mother, and she didn’t want to subject her own daughters to the same trauma.

“I suspected that she was playing her role of beautiful young mother not for love of her daughter but for us, the crowd on the beach, all of us, male and female, young and old.”

This is the first moment where Leda’s admiration of Nina begins to change. Seeing her and Elena playing on the beach, Leda thinks that perhaps Nina is only pretending to be the perfect, beautiful mother to receive the admiration of beachgoers. Leda doubts that her devotion to Elena is real after all.