Monstrous motherhood
Subtitle: eighteenth-century culture and the ideology of domesticity
By: Marilyn Francus
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 2013
Place of publication: Baltimore
Language: eng
Number of pages: 297
ISBN-13: 9781421407371; 9781421407982
Subjects: Motherhood; History; Mothers in literature; Mother and child in literature; Intellectual life; English literature; History and criticism
Description: "Although credited with the rise of domesticity, eighteenth-century British culture singularly lacked narratives of good mothers, ostensibly the most domestic of females. With startling frequency, the best mother was absent, disembodied, voiceless, or dead. British culture told tales almost exclusively of wicked, surrogate, or spectral mothers - revealing the defects of domestic ideology, the cultural fascination with standards and deviance, and the desire to police maternal behaviors. Monstrous Motherhood analyzes eighteenth-century motherhood in light of the inconsistencies among domestic ideology, narrative, and historical practice. If domesticity was so important, why is the good mother's story absent or peripheral? What do the available maternal narratives suggest about domestic ideology and the expectations and enactment of motherhood? By focusing on literary and historical mothers in novels, plays, poems, diaries, conduct manuals, contemporary court cases, realist fiction, fairy tales, satire, and romance, Marilyn Francus reclaims silenced maternal voices and perspectives. She exposes the mechanisms of maternal marginalization and spectralization in eighteenth-century culture and revises the domesticity thesis. Monstrous Motherhood will compel scholars in eighteenth-century studies, women's studies, family history, and cultural studies to reevaluate a foundational assumption that has driven much of the discourse in their fields." -- Publisher's description.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Mothers of the apocalypse: maternal allegory and myth in Swift and Pope; title: All too human: maternal monstrosity and Hester Thrale; title: Suffer the little children? the infanticidal mother in literature; title: Until proven innocent: infanticide in the public record and in court; title: Be monstrous or be marginal: stepmothers in literature; title: Pin the tale on the stepmother: Elizabeth Allen and the Burneys; title: But she's not there: the rise of the spectral mother.