Motherhood and Representation: The Mother in Popular Culture and MelodramaFrom novels of the nineteenth century to films of the 1990s, American culture, abounds with images of white, middle-class mothers. In Motherhood and Representation, E. Ann Kaplan considers how the mother appears in three related spheres: the historical, in which she charts changing representations of the mother from 1830 to the postmodernist present; the psychoanalytic, which discusses theories of the mother from Freud to Lacan and the French Feminists; and the mother as she is figured in cultural representations: in literary and film texts such as East Lynne, Marnie and the The Handmaid's Tale, as well as in journalism and popular manuals on motherhood. Kaplan's analysis identifies two dominant paradigms of the mother as `Angel' and `Witch', and charts the contesting and often contradictory discourses of the mother in present-day America. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 88
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... position as mother brought us closer, and enabled a new kind of intimacy that had not been possible before. My mother's intuitive grasp of what my daughter meant to me never ceased to move me: her fondness for my daughter – and her much ...
... position as mother brought us closer, and enabled a new kind of intimacy that had not been possible before. My mother's intuitive grasp of what my daughter meant to me never ceased to move me: her fondness for my daughter – and her much ...
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... position if she ever becomes a mother. The book is also an attempt to account to myself for my difficulties in being the kind of either daughter or mother I really wanted to be. My emphases on history, motherhood as an institution, on ...
... position if she ever becomes a mother. The book is also an attempt to account to myself for my difficulties in being the kind of either daughter or mother I really wanted to be. My emphases on history, motherhood as an institution, on ...
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... position now cloud mothers' horizons, including child abuse in day care centers and with baby sitters, increasing child kidnapping, or the fear that one's child will be killed by a stray bullet. While such happenings have long been a ...
... position now cloud mothers' horizons, including child abuse in day care centers and with baby sitters, increasing child kidnapping, or the fear that one's child will be killed by a stray bullet. While such happenings have long been a ...
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... a careful reading within the framework of my discourse rather than a reading that began to query some of my positions: thanks go to earlier readers (whose names I do not know) who had questioned and probed assumptions at an ...
... a careful reading within the framework of my discourse rather than a reading that began to query some of my positions: thanks go to earlier readers (whose names I do not know) who had questioned and probed assumptions at an ...
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... position white, middle-class women as subjects in very specific ways. The concept of a “Master Discourse” derives ultimately from Nietzsche, who, in his Genealogy of Morale, comments on the difficulty of eradicating ourselves from the ...
... position white, middle-class women as subjects in very specific ways. The concept of a “Master Discourse” derives ultimately from Nietzsche, who, in his Genealogy of Morale, comments on the difficulty of eradicating ourselves from the ...
Contents
WOMENS WRITING MELODRAMA AND FILM | |
THE SACRIFICE PARADIGM Ellen Woods | |
THE PHALLIC MOTHER PARADIGM | |
THE RESISTING MATERNAL WOMANS FILM 193060 Arzners | |
Consumerism science | |
Notes | |
Bibliography | |
Names index | |
Other editions - View all
Motherhood and Representation: The Mother in Popular Culture and Melodrama E. Ann Kaplan Limited preview - 2013 |
Motherhood and Representation: The Mother in Popular Culture and Melodrama E. Ann Kaplan No preview available - 1992 |
Common terms and phrases
American argue articulated baby Barbara body Carlyle Carlyle’s century Chapter child Chodorow Christopher Strong codes complicit concept constructed context culture Cynthia desire developed discussed dominant East Lynne East Lynne film erotic explore fantasies father female spectator feminine feminism feminist fiction figure film versions film’s focus foetus Freud Freudian gaze gender genre Handmaid’s Tale Harriet heroine historical Hollywood husband ideal identification ideology images Imaginary Irigaray Isabel Kristeva Lacanian Levison linked Lois Weber look male Marnie maternal melodrama maternal sacrifice middle-class mother-child mother-daughter mother-figure motherhood discourses narrative nineteenth-century North America notes novel nuclear family nurturing Oankali object Oedipal patriarchal Peola phallic phallus play political popular position postmodern pre-Oedipal produced psychic psychoanalytic theory relation relationship representations represents reproductive technologies resisting role Rousseau sexual social specific sphere Stella Dallas Stowe’s Symbolic terrain unconscious upper-class Voyager Weber woman woman’s Woman’s Film women York