| Motherhood and Representation: The Mother in Popular Culture and Melodrama Contributor(s): Kaplan, E. Ann (Author) |
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ISBN: 0415011272 ISBN-13: 9780415011273 Publisher: Routledge OUR PRICE: $42.70 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: May 1992 Annotation: What is the significance of the discourse of motherhood in the United States? How is this white, middle-class mythology constructed? b /b b i Motherhood and Representation /i /b explores the portrayal and ideological coding of "motherhood" in U.S. culture from 1830 to the present, examining the mother within three distinct, but ultimately related spheres: the historical, which charts the changes in the role of the socially constructed, institutional mother from Rousseau, through high-modernism, to the post-modernist present; the psychoanalytic, which focuses on various theories of the mother in the unconscious, from Freud, to Lacan and the French feminists, to more recent theoretical revisions and challenges; and, finally, the mother as she is depicted in cultural representations, particularly literary and film. br br Kaplan focuses on the two dominant Western paradigms of mother as "Angel" and "Witch" in nineteenth century women's writing, and then uses these analyses as the context for an exploration of twentieth century Hollywood cinema, including the films i Imitation of Life, Stella Dallas, Christopher /i i Strong, Now Voyager, Marnie, Three Men and a Baby, The Good Mother /i, and i The Handmaid's Tale /i . The final section interprets the contesting and often contradictory contemporary discourses of the mother, arguing that modern reproductive technologies have created dramatic changes in the representation of motherhood. b /b b i Motherhood and Representation /i /b will be essential reading for all those involved in gender studies, cultural studies, film, and critical theory. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism | American - General |
| Dewey: 810.935 |
| LCCN: 91-45539 |
| Physical Information: 0.71" H x 6.22" W x 9.25" (1.18 lbs) 266 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: 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 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. |