Motherhood and Representation: The Mother in Popular Culture and Melodrama

268 Pages·1992·25.799 MB·English

by  E. Ann Kaplan

MOTHERHOOD AND
REPRESENTATION
From 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 literary and film texts such
as East Lynne, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Christopher Strong, Imitation of Life, Three Men
and a Baby, and The Handmaid's Tale.
Kaplan's analysis complicates two commonly noted dominant paradigms
of the mother as "Witch" and as "Angel," evident in nineteenth-century
women's writing and twentieth-century women's melodrama. She includes
discussion of the appropriation of minority mother-discourse, and then
charts the contesting and often contradictory discourses of the mother
in present-day America through cultural perspectives, with emphasis on
reproductive technologies, science and consumerism, as well as on new
fathers.
E. Ann Kaplan is Professor of English and Comparative Studies and Director
of the Humanities Institute at Stony Brook, the State University of New York.
She is the author of Women and Film and Rocking Around the Clock, and editor
of Psychoanalysis and Cinema.
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MOTHERHOOD AND
REPRESENTATION
The Mother in Popular
Culture and Melodrama
E. Ann Kaplan
I~ ~~o~1~~n~~:up
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published 1992
by Routledge
Published 2013 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY, 10017, USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 1992 E. Ann Kaplan
Typeset in 1O/12pt Linotron Baskerville by
Falcon Typographic Art Ltd, Edinburgh
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kaplan, E. Ann.
Motherhood and representation : the mother in popular culture and
melodrama / E. Ann Kaplan.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
I. American literature - 20th century - History and criticism.
2. Mothers in literature. 3. American literature - 19th century -
History and criticism. 4. Motion pictures and literature - United
States. 5. Women and literature - United States. 6. United States
Popular culture. 7. Motherhood - United States. 8. Mothers - United
States. I. Title.
PS228.M66K36 1992
810.9'3520431 - dc20 91-45539
ISBN 13: 978-0-415-01127-3 (pbk)
For my mother) Gertrude Mercer)
and my daughter) Brett Kaplan
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CONTENTS
List oj illustrations IX
Preface Xl
Acknowledgements XIV
Part I History and theory discourses
INTRODUCTION 3
2 THE HISTORICAL SPHERE:
Motherhood as institution and social discourse 17
3 THE PSYCHOANALYTIC SPHERE AND
MOTHERHOOD DISCOURSE 27
Part II Motherhood and fictional representation
4 WOMEN'S WRITING, MELODRAMA AND FILM 59
5 THE MATERNAL MELODRAMA:
THE SACRIFICE PARADIGM
Ellen Wood's East Lynne and its play and film versions 76
6 THE MATERNAL MELODRAMA:
THE "PHALLIC" MOTHER PARADIGM
Now Voyager (1942) and Mamie (1964) 107
7 THE "RESISTING" TEXT WITH IN THE
PATRIARCHAL "FEMININE": Nineteenth-century women's
writing and the "maternal woman's film" in the silent era:
Uncle Tom's Cabin; Herland; The Blot; The Crowd; Applause 124
8 THE "RESISTING" MATERNAL WOMAN'S
FILM 1930-60. Arzner's Christopher Strong and Craig's
Wije; Imitation oj Lije (l934 and 1959); Stella Dallas
(1937); select Sirk films 149
Vll
CONTENTS
9 SEX, WORK AND MOTHER/FATHERHOOD:
Consumerism, science and reproductive
technologies in the postmodern era 180
Notes 220
Bibliography 227
Names index 239
Subject index 245
Vlll
ILL USTRATIONS
I King Vidor's The Crowd (1928) 4
2 King Vidor's Stella Dallas (1937) 5
3 Cover from Rutgers edition of East Lynne 92
4a Rapper's Now Voyager (1942) III
4b Rapper's Now Voyager (1942) 112
5 Hitchcock's Mamie (1956) 118
6 Weber's Where Are My Children? (1914) 134
7 Weber's The Blot (1921) 136
8 Brennon's Dancing Mothers (1926) 140
9 King Vidor's The Crowd (1928) 143
lOa Mamoulian's Applause (1929) 145
lOb Mamoulian's Applause (1929) 147
II Dorothy Arzner's Christopher Strong (1932) 155
12 Arzner's Craig's Wife (1936) 161
13a Stahl's Imitation of Life (1934) 168
13b Stahl's Imitation of Life (1934) 169
I4 King Vidor's Stella Dallas (1937) 172
15a Sirk's Imitation of Life (1959) 177
15b Sirk's Imitation of Life (1959) 178
16a Mother's Day ads 185
16b Father's Day ads 186,7
17 "The New Traditionalist" 191
18 Shyler's Baby Boom (1988) 197
19a Foetus drawings from New York Times, 30 January 1990 206
19b Foetus drawings from New York Times, 31 May 1990 206
20a Amy Heckerling's Look Who's Talking (1990) 207
20b Amy Heckerling's Look Who's Talking (1990) 208
IX