Barbara Kingsolver's novel The Bean Trees exhibits a feminist consciousness concerning the meaning of family, which emerges in this novel on several levels. The main character, Taylor Greer, leaves her own family behind as she strikes out on her own to find a more fulfilling life, but along the way she develops a new family group in Arizona. The idea of family projected in this novel is associated with a concept of community, and the latter centers on a group of women demonstrating their growing sense of personal power and identity in a world that often requires them to sublimate both in service of a patriarchal family structure.
Nancy Chodorow notes the way the family structure developed through history and the fact that the Western family has been largely the nuclear family for centuries, being households which rarely have more than one married couple with children. In the traditional family, the women's role became centered on child care and taking care of men (Chodorow 4-5). In Kingsolver's novel, this traditional family form disappears to be replaced by a mixed family unit, with adults and children from different households; without a male figure; with duties and responsibilities being shared, including those for child care; and indeed with several people in one household who are not related. The idea of family in this novel is derived from what a family should provide rather than how a family should be structured. Women are still the nurturing force, but they are so by choice and do not take care of men but of themselves.
One of the primary themes of the novel is friendship, and Karen FitzGerald notes that the topic has become of consuming interest for contemporary feminist writers:
The surge in theoretical dissections of friendship underscores the importance that these relationships play in women's lives, but it is the fictional treatments that capture their spiritual and emotional texture (FitzGerald 28).
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