Can I Have My Daughter Back? No.

• Lauren B
• 0
• on Oct 06, 2022

Surprisingly, throughout The Gift, Lily May Bell (who was renamed Mabel) was discussed in every single letter despite not actually writing any of her own letters. The only information the reader of her is from the letters of her adopted and biological parents and the afterword. She has such a strong presence in the work and helps serve as a guiding source for both sets of parents. She pushed the Bassets into being better parents and Sarah into trying to find a stable atmosphere. Letters from the Bassets mainly centered around Mabel’s growth and progress, “Our Mabel is now one of the most content of children, and growing out of all her clothes. She has a rosy face and is most affectionate.” They’re proud of her and act as any parent would boasting about their children. Whereas Sarah’s letters all focus on her efforts to get Lily May back from the Bassets or even just to see her. One letter says, “she has a loving mother who has never ceased from inquiring for her and never “abandoned” her . . . Won’t you please tell me how my Lily May is and whether I will be permitted to lay eyes on her again in this lifetime?” It was her greatest wish to just hear something from her. I have never seen a main character that doesn’t even have a voice in the story, but that’s not to say she’s not present because the whole story and situation revolves around her. How she’s doing and what she’s like. Mabel is the cause and one of the effects of the story, holding great power over the narrative.

Something I found interesting was that in every letter or so from Sarah (Mabel’s biological mother) to the Children’s Aid Society she remarks how she got remarried and lives in a new and better house. Though I’m sure she got remarried because she loved this new man, she mostly did it in an effort to create a stable environment that Mabel could return to. But this plan backfired on her, every time she remarried and moved she became more unstable. When writing to tell the society of her new address for the first time she happily says that she has a, “change of fortune . . . We have “a good home” also (just as much as the couple who have got Lily May) and my husband Samuel who is in business is willing to welcome her into that home.” By comparing herself to the Bassets Sarah is trying to show the society that she’s ready for Mabel (who she refers to solely as Lily May) to return to her proper home, with Sarah. But the Bassets refused to give Mabel up. This started a recurring pattern of Sarah getting divorced and remarried, each situation supposedly better than the last only to end eventually and Sarah to end up back where she started. Every time she made an effort to become stable she only became more unstable, it also suggests her high dependency on a man to take care of her. It’s almost like she used the love she thought Mabel had for her to keep going. Thinking that if her daughter loved her then that could keep her going until they could be reunited. She continued to contact the Bassets at least until Mabel was eighteen which continued to set the Bassets on edge and further convince them she was unsuitable for raising a child, much less even seeing Mabel.

Interestingly, the Bassets never directly wrote to Sarah even though they clearly knew about her. This kept a level of separation between them that helped foster the relationship they wanted with the biological mother of their daughter, impersonal and distant. The Bassets wholly considered Mabel their daughter, even going as far as to say, “Mabel is so much our daughter, we look back on the time before God gave her to us, and cannot imagine how we got through the lonesome days.” There wasn’t any fanfare around it, Mabel was their daughter, end of the story. Since they adopted her when she was so young a part of them didn’t see Sarah as her mother but rather as the woman who gave their beloved daughter away even though she did it under tumultuous circumstances. This crafted their opinion of her as someone unreliable. They thought it was quite disheartening to see that Sarah was still trying to get Mabel back as though she deserved her when in their minds she didn’t. What makes their relationship even more interesting is that they didn’t even want a baby whose parents were still attached, “we do not object to her being a foundling or illegitimate. In fact, we would prefer no relations.” Taking that into context it further explains their distant relationship and unwillingness to contact Sarah. They went in believing that she wanted nothing to do with Mabel and then to keep on hearing news about Sarah from the society must have made her seem quite unstable.

One of my questions is that when writing the society on what kind of child they want, it really struck me how they asked for one who wouldn’t stick out. But why did they do this? Was it shameful at the time to take in an orphan? They did mention that they had been to areas with available children before and didn’t see anyone they liked so maybe they were just after someone with a more general appearance so the child could plausibly be theirs.

A large part of me was wondering what happened to Sarah? Beyond that, what happened to parents of adopted children? I know some of them got their children back but for the ones like Sarah that didn’t, did they give up and stop searching for them or just keep trying to contact the adoptive parents? Either arrange a meeting or facilitate a time to take their biological child back. It must have been hard not only on the biological parents who were forced to give up their child due to their unfair circumstances but for the adoptive ones who had to deal with the constant reminder that their child wasn’t theirs no matter how they felt.

It really clicked for me, the importance of love and how it can make people do crazy things but it can also give rise to protective instincts that otherwise would go untouched. The Bassets were fiercely protective of Mabel in a way they didn’t expect, previous to adopting her they hadn’t gone through a different situation and their love for her was completely unexpected but also appreciated. They had no idea the extent they would go to to protect Mabel from her biological mother but I think that truly demonstrates that blood doesn’t equal love. Sarah thought it would be enough but it wasn’t, all she did was remarry in a crazy effort to recreate the same situation Mabel already had with the only set of parents that she knew and that loved her. But this craziness wasn’t exclusive to Sarah, the Bassets never told Mabel she was adopted, going as far as to say that, “We keep the [adoption] papers locked up safe and whoever passes first, the other will burn them.” They thought this was the best thing for her, proving how love can make people do crazy things.