The Absent Mother in the Cultural Imagination : Missing, Presumed Dead

264 Pages·2017·12.54 MB·English

by  Berit Åström

The Absent Mother in the Cultural
Imagination
BeritÅström
Editor
The Absent Mother
in the Cultural
Imagination
Missing, Presumed Dead
Editor
BeritÅström
DepartmentofLanguageStudies
UmeåUniversity
Umeå,Sweden
ISBN978-3-319-49036-6 ISBN978-3-319-49037-3(eBook)
DOI10.1007/978-3-319-49037-3
LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2017941012
©TheEditor(s)(ifapplicable)andTheAuthor(s)2017
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Francus,Marilyn.MonstrousMotherhood:Eighteenth-CenturyCultureandtheIdeologyof
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CKNOWLEDGMENTS
This anthology was made possible by generous contributions from The
Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences, and the Umeå
Centre forGender Studies.
v
C
ONTENTS
Introduction—ExplainingandExploringthe Dead orAbsent
Mother 1
Berit Åström
PartI Theorizingthe Absent Mother
The LadyVanishes: The Riseof the Spectral Mother 25
Marilyn Francus
PartII TheAbsent Mother asProtector andAdvisor
Saintly Protection:The Postmortem‘Mothers’
of MedievalHagiography 45
Mary BethLong
‘BeWar Be MyWo’: Gaynour andHer Mother
in TheAwntyrs offArthure 59
Amanda Bohne
Dead MothersandAbsent Stepmothers in Slovak
andRomani FairyTales 73
KatarinaLabudova
vii
viii CONTENTS
‘Adumme thynge’: The Posthumous Voice asRhetoric inthe
Mothers’ Legacies of DorothyLeigh andElizabeth Joscelin 91
Ailsa GrantFerguson
PartIII Shakespeare’sAbsent MothersRevisited
‘Born ina tempestwhenmy motherdied’: Shakespeare’s
Motherless Daughters 111
Jess Hamlet
Ophelia’s Mother:The Phantom ofMaternity inShakespeare’s
Hamlet 127
RebeccaPotterandElizabeth Ann Mackay
Missing Mothersonthe Page andStage: Hamlet
andHenry V 143
AnnaFraser Mackenzie
PartIV The Absent Motheras Expendable,or aThreat
ASide ofFamily,Hold the Mother: Dare Wright
andHer FictiveKin inthe LonelyDoll Series 161
HeatherBrown-Hudson
Dead, ButNot Gone:Mother andOthermother
in HollyBlackandTed Naifeh’sThe Good Neighbors 175
KirstenMøllegaard
VictimsandVillains: The Legacyof Mother
Blamein Violent-Eye American Literature 191
JoannaWilson-Scott
SymbolicMatricide GoneAwry:On Absent and—MaybeEven
Worse—PresentMothers inHorror Movies 207
Eike Träger
CONTENTS ix
PartV Absent Motherson theBig andSmall Screen
in the NewMillennium
Television andthe Absent Mother:Why Girls
andYoung WomenStruggle toFind the Maternal Role 225
RebeccaFeasey
MarginalizingMotherhood: Postfeminist Fathers
andDead Mothersin AnimatedFilm 241
Berit Åström
Index 259
—
Introduction Explaining and Exploring
the Dead or Absent Mother
Berit Åström
WhyaresomanymothersinDisneyfilmsdeadormissing?Whyarethere
so few mothers in Shakespeare? Why are there so many dead mothers in
Victoriannovels?Variationsofthesequestionsareposedagainandagain,
in popular media, blogs and other online conversations as well as in
scholarly research, attesting to the existence of a recurring trope of dead
or absent mothers. It is a commonplace that the concepts of mother and
motherhood occupy a central place in Western culture, which makes the
dead/absentmother-tropeallthemoreintriguing.Whatfunctiondoesit
fulfil? What meanings does it take on? What questions does it enable
narratives to raise? These are some of the questions that underpin this
anthology. The contributors, studying narratives that range widely in
terms of period, genre as well as medium, analyze the trope from a
broad variety of perspectives. In doing so, they demonstrate that the
dead/absent mother-trope is a transhistorical phenomenon, a cultural
conversationaboutmothers,motheringandmotherhoodthattranscends
historicalandgeneric divisions.
B.Åström(*)
DepartmentofLanguageStudies,UmeåUniversity,Umeå,Sweden
e-mail:[email protected]
©TheAuthor(s)2017 1
B.Åström(ed.),TheAbsentMotherintheCulturalImagination,
DOI10.1007/978-3-319-49037-3_1
2 B.ÅSTRÖM
ABSENT MOTHERS IN ONLINE MEDIA
Thequestionthatappearstobediscussedmostonlineiswhymothersare
absent,andinparticularwhytheyareabsentintheoutputoftheDisney
corporation(see,forexample,MommyNaya2009,Mullins2014,Amidi
2014, Blevins 2015, Morris n. d.). A very popular theory, which resur-
faced again in online media following the publication of an interview
with Disney producer Don Hahn (Radloff 2014), is that the lack of
mothers is due to Walt Disney’s supposed guilt for accidentally killing
hisownmother.Othercommentatorspointtosocio-economicfactorsin
the US, such as that more women have been able to divorce their
husbands and take the children with them after World War II (Danae
Cassandra, qtd in Wilson 2010).1 Yet others suggest that mothers are
removed so that fathers and children can form a closer bond (Boxer
2014, Wilson 2010).
Another explanation is offered in Emily Heller’s cartoon If Disney
Princesses Had Mothers, in which she shows how the stories of, for exam-
ple,Ariel,Jasmine,andBellewouldendbeforetheystarted,ifthemothers
were present to calm down overreacting fathers and give sound relation-
ship advice (2015). Heller suggests that the dead mother is simply a plot
devicethatcreatesaconflictwhichneedstoberesolved.Or,asHahnalso
notes in his interview, she is ‘a story shorthand’ (Radloff 2014). The
quickest way to make a character grow up is to kill his or her parents, he
claims.2
Thesedifferentattemptsatansweringthequestionwhycanbeboiled
down to four different causes for the use of the dead/absent mother-
trope: the biography of the author; period-specific historical and/or
socio-cultural conditions; the power and influence of a mother, which
will hinder the narrative; and the lack of mothers in fairy tales, which
form the basis of many animated films. Generally, these explanations
tend to present the dead/absent mother-trope as an isolated phenom-
enon.Justassomecommentatorsclaimthatdeadmothersonlyoccurin
Disneyfilms,ignoringthefactthatthetropeisalsousedinfilmsby,for
example, Sony, DreamWorks, and Twentieth Century Fox, others
appear to assume that the trope is unique to the US, or the post-war
period, or children’s literature, or fairy tales. However, as is evident
from the work of the contributors to this volume, the dead/absent
mother-trope is not an isolated phenomenon, but a recurring feature
through the centuries.