Mediated maternity : contemporary American portrayals of bad mothers in literature and popular culture / Linda Seidel.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Seidel, Linda.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature--21st century--History and criticism.

American literature.

Mothers in literature.

Motherhood in literature.

Mothers in motion pictures.

Mothers on television.

Physical Description:

xix, 125 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Lanham, Maryland : Lexington Books, [2013]

Summary:

Mediated Maternity: Contemporary American Portrayals of Bad Mothers in Literature and Popular Culture, by Linda Seidel, explores the cultural construction of the bad mother in books, movies, and TV, arguing that these portrayals typically have the effect of cementing dominant assumptions about motherhood in place-or, less often, of disrupting those assumptions, causing us to ask whether motherhood could be constructed differently. Portrayals of bad mothers not only help to establish what the good mother is by depicting her opposite but also serve to illustrate what the culture fears about women in general and mothers in particular. From the ancient horror of female power symbolized by Medea (or, more recently, by Casey Anthony) to the current worry that drug-addicted pregnant women are harming their fetuses, we see a social desire to monitor the reproductive capabilities of women, resulting in more (formal and informal) surveillance than in material (or even moral) support. Book jacket.

Contents:

Introduction: Mediated motherhood

Nancy Grace and the motherhood critics

Neonaticide in Nancy Grace and Jodi Picoult

Gone baby gone: reproducing the bad mother

Stereotyping the black welfare mother in Precious

Creating the reality of postpartum depression in Shields' Down Came the Rain and Morton's Breakable You

Glenn Close and the monstrous maternal: mothers and daughters in damages

Epilogue: Motherhood in context.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780739171172

0739171178

OCLC:

832604836