Discuss Franny's relationship with her mother. Do you think Franny was still searching for her mother, even after she remembered the truth?

Discuss Franny's relationship with her mother, and the way Franny repressed her mother's suicide. Do you think Franny was still searching for her mother, even after she remembered the truth?

Yes. Or at least searching for the love one expects from a mother.

Franny’s feelings of guilt and responsibility toward her mother defined her. She and her mother were very close when Franny was young. They were identical in their need for wandering, and in my opinion her search for her mother was a search for herself—why she wandered, why she was so apart. Pretending her mother was alive (and certainly her spirit was alive for Franny) meant she could learn more and hopefully understand herself more.

Franny was still seeking to fill the void of parental love that we all need to attain self esteem. She pursued this throughout the book.

Some of Franny's earliest memories of her mother were frightful: they were critical nightmares that never completely left her. Franny tried to reconcile her fears by hoping to prove that her memories were not correct. She kept seeking to return to where the memories might have occurred, hoping to find different endings/answers to her fears. She did not want to face the truth here, at least not yet.

Absolutely. Repressing her mother's suicide was the only way she could survive because she felt so guilty about having left her mother alone for even a short time. What a weight on a child.

Well, of course she loved her mother and they were especially close when she was young. But goodness, talk about childhood trauma, Franny is the poster girl for trauma, and obviously she suffered because of it all her life. She continued to search for her mother because she repressed her suicide. I wonder how many people in the world suffered from this kind of trauma and how they are ever able to get well without psychiatric help. Makes me very sad.