Motherhood is an intriguing concept in this book, because the typical picture of motherhood is that as a parent, mothers provide something essential to their children: life, nourishment, training, support, etc. But when Susan Vernon needs to improve her station in life, there is a problem and a solution. The problem is that as a woman there is very little she is allowed by her community to do to attain the wealth she desires. The solution? Motherhood.
What she needs is for her daughter to be like her, so that the daughter will be interested enough in wealth to marry someone rich enough to share that wealth with Susan. But the widow goes about it through control. She begins conniving, hoping to gain something by arranging people in a certain way that she believes will get her what she wants. She has become the archetypal "meddling mother," in a literal sense, because she literally invades the private lives of a whole host of characters.
This doesn't mean she is evil or something. Far from it. In fact, one could even interpret her character as symbolic, pointing to the strange timeliness of fate. By subtracting the mother's character from the plot, the novel becomes a regular drama about a young girl trying to get married, choosing between suitors and attempting to allure them. In that case, the mother is a tool of fate, and therefore a symbol of fate. She represents the way that life seems to contrive stories out of the private emotional lives of young people.
