She seemed to know, to accept, to welcome her position, the citadel of the family, the strong place that could not be taken. And since old Tom and the children could not know hurt or fear unless she acknowledged hurt or fear, she had practiced denying them in herself.
– John Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 8. Steinbeck uses a metaphor to describe Ma Joad as the "citadel" of her family. Indeed she is a formidable fortress against the hurts and fears of life that the Joads experience. A remarkable woman, she denies such hurts and fears in herself so that her husband and children don’t feel them. Ma is the foundation upon which the family is built and relies. The description is not atypical of a woman in the novel, when you remember that in the early chapters women were shown as looking to their men for the answers and solutions. As the backbone of her family, Ma is in stark contrast to this. She will prove to be the Joads’ matriarchal leader and Steinbeck’s great heroine of the Depression era.