Who are the worst mothers in literature? Readers pick their candidates

The first sentence of Anna Karenina is now a literary cliche, yet contains a nub of truth. “All happy families,” writes Leo Tolstoy, “resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Literature brims with thwarted parents wreaking havoc in unique ways. We’ve considered the worst fathers . Now we look at troubling mothers.

A recent contender here is Arundhati Roy’s depiction of her tyrannical, infuriating yet seductive mother Mary in her new memoir .

But my choice for the worst mother is a fictional character, also a Mary. In the US author Sapphire’s arresting 1996 novel, Push , Mary is a violent, jealous woman who follows her husband in sexually abusing their teenage daughter, “Precious”. Amid poverty and deprivation, Mary challenges every matern