Reviewers of Sleepless Nights were tempted to see the woman depicted as the mother of the narrator as the author’s mother. It is likely that “her weight on a stepladder washing windows, her roast and potatoes and fat yeast rolls” and the “peculiar, helpless assertiveness” that reflected “her profound acceptance of the things of life” were true to the facts. In Sleepless Nights, the narrator is perplexed that her mother was “so indifferent to the past. . . . as if she did not know who she was.” But Mary was simply living the life mapped out for her by habit and tradition. (A “relentless finality” haunted Elizabeth’s earlier autobiographical fictional character, Marian Coleman, when she considered the possibility that her life would duplicate her mother’s.)16 By removing herself from the narrative that had been handed to her by family and community, Elizabeth was obliged to reckon with the past and figure out who she really was.