What is the importance of the necklace Bette gives to Frankie after her miscarriage in the book, The Women: A Novel?

The necklace Bette passes on to Frankie symbolizes the way in which the mother is trying to help her daughter but also the degree to which Bette wants Frankie to hide her feelings and difficulties the same way she did. Bette gives Frankie a necklace after Frankie has a miscarriage. This is a necklace Bette had made after she had her own miscarriage, and it has her miscarried baby’s name on it. Prior to this, Frankie did not know the significance of the necklace or that her mother had miscarried a baby. Bette kept the pain to herself. When she gives Frankie the necklace, she is sharing her pain to help her daughter, but in essence, she is urging her daughter to keep her pain to herself as she does not want her to talk about Rye or any of the rest of her suffering. In this way, the necklace symbolizes how ineffective coping techniques have been passed down through the generations.