Bea, a struggling widow who sells maple syrup to support herself and Jessie, her daughter. Bea Pullman and her daughter Jessie have had a hard time making ends meet since Bea's husband died. When Delilah, an African American woman, shows up at Bea's door, mistakenly thinking it's the address of a potential housekeeping job, a life-long relationship begins to develop. Delilah and her light-complexion daughter named Peola, move in with Bea and Jessie, with Delilah being a housekeeper in exchange for a place to live. In the film ‘The Imitation of Life’, both Delilah and Bea are struggling single mothers who have different ways they see life when first meeting one another, but then realizing their lives were very similar.
Delilah turns out to be an excellent cook, and Bea takes Delilah's special recipe for pancakes and creates a business out of it. The businesses are very successful and everyone gets rich and seemingly happy, except for Peola. She is able to 'pass' for white, and from the time she's a child, attempts to do so, until inevitable appearances by her mother frustrate and destroy the illusion. Meanwhile, Bea's perfect life is upset when a teenage Jessie develops an infatuation with a man, she doesn't realize is her mother's boyfriend.
The film continues to utilize visual and thematic ‘Aunt Jemima’ title for Delilah, which interprets undermines the character’s larger potential as a stereotype-transcending role. She becomes the primary cook, serves as the nurturer of the two families and even continues to work for Bea, even though she owns a significant percentage of the business. On the other hand, Bea and Delilah maintain a deep friendship and the shared experience of difficultly raising their daughters, which increases that bond. Delilah’s daughter Peola bears the brunt of being mistreated by Jessie while struggling with her own biracial identity. Her final decision upon her own coming of age is to pass as white, and she makes every effort to detach herself from Delilah. This causes Delilah to have a deep depression and she eventually passes away from the depression of not having her daughter. When Peola finds out about the passing of her mother, she becomes extremely emotional because she loved her mother, she did not want to kill her mother, or upset her mother, she just wanted to live a life she felt was easier through society pressures. On the other hand, Peola was not thinking of how harsh she was being in reality, she didn’t think about her actions and did not want to lose her mother.
Bea is great example of a 1930’s independent woman. She is motivated and ambitious. She confidently drives a hard bargain when first renting the shop room and she makes no excuse for her enterprising ways, even if they conflict with her potential love life. Bea developing a relationship with a man conflicted fear of just such a capable businesswoman and her own individuality.
‘The Imitation of Life’ portrays African American stereotypes that are harsh but honest. This film confronts the racial issues in motherhood and how it can be hard to address formally by showing the unfair treatment of African Americans in a portrayal of events between mother and daughter, and shows how prejudice and hostile environments can be hard for a mother-daughter relationship.
The more profound racial dilemma is that of Peola as she struggles to accept her identity well into adulthood. She and her mother speak of race along the lines of blame or fault, a tragic way to somehow reconcile their unjust treatment because of their natural skin color. Perhaps more than when she denies her race, Peola’s most heartbreaking renunciation is when she refuses to acknowledge her own mother, to her face. Peola and her mother did not seem that Delilah sees subservience as her life’s duty, Peola sees privilege and acceptance in this time period it makes it hard for a mother to cope with. Peola rebels, going so far as to drop out of an all-Black college and take a job as a cigar girl in a restaurant where she can be a white woman. Then her mother and Beatrice find her after searching for her a long time, only to have Peola cry to a stunned white male, “Do I look like her daughter? Do I look like I could be her daughter?!”.
At their mansion that the two families share in New York, in a nice neighborhood Peola demands to her mother that she’s going away, and she’s never coming back. She’s not a black child any more. Delilah, who has had sadness and frustration but held her emotions throughout, finally loses control of her emotions in this scene: “I bore ya! I nursed ya! I love ya… I love ya more than you can guess! You can’t ask your mammy to do this! I ain’t no white mother! It’s too much to ask of me. I ain’t got the spiritual strength to be that. I can’t hang on no cross! I ain’t got the strength! You can’t ask me ‘ta unborn my own child!”.
Bea is not very happy, she bears her burdens and carries the pain of her dead husband, and knows that fighting back is pointless. White people and black people are different in her view, although Bea truly loves Delilah to the best of her abilities, Bea never pushes back against this attitude speaks volumes to how accepted this behavior is among Caucasian people of this time period because of pure ignorance. Jessie returns from college to find Delilah destitute about Peola’s betrayals. Jessie approaches Delilah, who was a grieving mother at the time, and instead of hugging Delilah, holds her by the hand and shoulder, guiding her. It’s a patronizing gesture to a woman she’s known most of her life, but one that raises no eyebrows. Delilah dies of a broken heart. Peola returns in time for the funeral, a massive procession in tribute to a woman who was devoutly religious and whose faith was all she had.
Peola’s return is frustrating, because on one hand, as a viewer I wanted to see Peola come back and apologize to her mother and realize that rejecting her history and destroying the beliefs her mother held so dearly. I yearned for her to simply burn the church down as it stands as a symbol of a misguided subservient life that led straight to the grave. Delilah, as a female, as a mother, shouldn’t have had to suffer like that. Peola knows it more than anyone else in the movie, but she can’t say it.
This film depicts the lives of four different people living in a world that is beyond their control, from a feminism perspective, about what it means to be a woman living in a male-dominated society, and addresses the perspective of how women of color are affected by racism. It is a story about imitating, pretending to be something that isn’t true. However, what is true is what the characters literally see gender and race, something no one can walk away from. Created by society, race is a pure construct that has no real meaning, and what is underneath the variations of skin color blood is reminder racial distinctions are devastating to Peola in the sense of not feeling at home in any culture. Bea argues through the film as a mother in her own motherhood challenge It’s a sin to be ashamed of what you are. And it is even worse to pretend, to lie about who you are. In the 1930s, it is hard for a Caucasian woman to understand how an African American feels as a person in a time where it was no history for African Americans vocally to express themselves. With Bea being a mother and a woman, she genuinely loves Delilah and Peola and can relate to her friend as a mother, but is not a fellow African American living in a segregated world. Even though Delilah is content with who she is as a black woman, her pain is evident throughout the film. This movie reflects how through motherhood you can lose your sense of self and cognitively lose your children.