The last scene of Stella Dallas: The scene depicts the resolution of the film: that moment when the good hearted, ambitious, working class floozy, Stella, sacrifices her only connection to her daughter in order to propel her into an upper-class world of surrogate family unity.
Simone de Beauvoir: because of the patriarchal devaluation of women in general, a mother frequently attempts to use her daughter to compensate for her own supposed inferiority by making "a superior creature out of one whom she regards as her double, ..
W: Clearly, the unparalleled closeness and similariity of mother to daughter sets up a situation of significant mirroring that is most apparent in these films, One effect of this mirroring is that although the mother gains a kind of vicarious superiority and association with a superior daughter, she inevitably begins to feel inadequate to so superior a being and thus. in the end. to feel inferior.
