Moral Mothers Research Articles

Modern science, moral mothers, and mythical nature: a multimodal analysis of cod liver oil marketing in Sweden, 1920–1930

This paper offers the first case study of the marketing of cod liver oil in Sweden (1920–1930), following the discovery of vitamins A and D. Drawing upon a large dataset of cod liver oil advertisements from the Swedish Newspaper Archive, it uses multimodal critical discourse analysis to investigate how language and other semiotic resources (e.g. image, typography, color) work together to convey the benefits of cod liver oil intake. It identifies three overarching themes—scientific rationality, scientific motherhood, and nature—noting how advertisements were aimed squarely at mothers and struck a balance between vitamins as scientifically formulated products and mythical, natural substances to convince them that cod liver oil was necessary for their children. Exploring how cod liver oil was marketed from a historical perspective shows how nutritional research gained prominence and became of increasing importance for marketing, as well as how food, through science, became incorporated into a consumerist lifestyle. It also provides a way to deconstruct contemporary marketing practices, thereby enabling consumers to rethink products framed as indispensable for their health.

American Women Activists and Autobiography: Rhetorical Lives by Heather Ostman

Reviewed by: American Women Activists and Autobiography: Rhetorical Lives by Heather Ostman Ana Belén Martínez García (bio) American Women Activists and Autobiography: Rhetorical Lives Heather Ostman Routledge, 2022, viii + 183 pp. ISBN 9781032050768, $160.00 hardcover. American Women Activists and Autobiography examines six case studies of women activists' lives as written by themselves. Heather Ostman approaches the autobiographical projects of Jane Addams, Emma Goldman, Dorothy Day, Angela Davis, Mary Crow Dog, and Betty Friedan by looking at what they shared and what they did not, especially regarding the authors' feminist rhetorics and the various ways their lives and social justice causes were entangled. This premise is particularly exciting for scholars interested in the relationship between life writing and social justice. Ostman's volume can be read as an evolution of themes (womanhood, sisterhood, motherhood, marriage, class, race, gendered body, conversion) threaded along each chapter. Surprisingly, it does not proceed chronologically, which might be interpreted as the author's intent to make readers reflect on the ebbs and flows in feminist activism as it moves from the early twentieth century and into the present. The book is structured into six main chapters, each focusing on the autobiographical work of a single activist. There is an introduction to the volume that guides the reader and offers an overview of the rationale of the book as well as of each woman's life and lifewriting project. The introduction also makes a potent claim—that American women activists ignited the now-common utilization of self-narration in the context of advocacy. Interestingly, Ostman suggests that the "narrative 'self'" of these autobiographies does not conform to the "American individualistic self" typical of canonical male autobiography, and instead points to "situated feminist rhetorics" (1). After this eloquent start to the volume, Ostman draws on scholarship from James Olney and Sidonie Smith, but ultimately relies on the work of Lindal Buchanan and Dana Anderson on women's rhetorical strategies, particularly conversion as a trope. Some more nuance would have been helpful in Ostman's observation of the specific area of women activist autobiographies: "With the exception of Martha Watson's Lives of Their Own (1999), no other volumes have considered the rhetorical value of women social activist autobiography" (12). [End Page 374] The first chapter, "The Progressive Cassandra: Rhetoric in Jane Addams's Twenty Years at Hull-House," explores Jane Addams's advocacy for welfare, education, peace, women's and workers' rights, and the settlement house movement via her autobiographical work. The apparent contradiction between Addams's self-portrayal as a maternal figure and her public persona as "the Mother of Social Work" (18) while she did not have children of her own is connected to biological mothers being shown as powerless in Twenty Years at Hull-House (1910). Addams becomes, by contrast, what Ostman labels a "moral mother" (38), capable of aiding those in need on the streets of Chicago in the early twentieth century. The trope of Cassandra, subject of Addams's 1881 namesake essay, is employed to counter patriarchy, for "an intuitive perception committed to a woman's charge is not a prejudice or fancy, but one of the holy means given to mankind in their search for truth" (20). Thus, Ostman continues, rhetorical success as expounded by Addams hinges upon "one's rhetorical abilities and one's moral assertion to claim the right to speak" (20). In the second chapter, "Anarchism and the Rhetoric of Womanhood: Emma Goldman's Living My Life," we are presented with yet another kind of figurative mother: "the Mother of the Cause" for anarchist supporters (45). Ostman categorizes Goldman's discourse in Living My Life (1931) as that of "rhetorical motherhood" (69), distinguishing it from that of the preceding chapter, even as both Addams and Goldman share the reliance on motherhood as a trope. Rejecting the values her father, a Jewish immigrant, tried to impose on her, in her two-volume autobiography Goldman depicts how she converted, ideologically, to anarchism following the Chicago Haymarket Riot in 1886, then becoming one of the most notorious anarchist women in the United States. Ostman weaves in other writings by Goldman to account for the evolution of her thinking...

A Good Abortion Is a Tragic Abortion: Fit Motherhood and Disability Stigma

In the context of abortion stigma, most abortion stories remain untold. The stories we do tell of abortion are often told to morally recuperate the status of the woman who has an abortion through a recourse to tragedy. Tragedy frames experiences where every choice produces some suffering, so decisions are geared toward maintaining individual integrity rather than adherence to absolute moral truths. This article argues that one dominant tragic abortion narrative, that of the disabled fetus, works to recuperate the moral status of “fit” mothers while actively constructing disabled lives as unlivable and undesirable. The option to stigmatize disability in recuperating the moral status of the woman who has an abortion relies on eugenic logics that also construct a variety of women (racialized, poor, disabled, and young) as illegitimate reproductive subjects. The article analyzes narratives of Sherri Finkbine's 1962 abortion in relation to contemporary narratives of late‐term abortions involving nonviable fetuses to expose how investment in medical judgments of good births enables particular women to make use of tragic narratives to maintain their status as moral mothers without disturbing broader abortion stigma or eugenic logics.

Editors’ Note: Reproduction, Motherhood, and Sexuality

Editors’ NoteReproduction, Motherhood, and Sexuality Guisela Latorre and Judy Tzu-Chun Wu Perhaps one the greatest satisfactions that comes with the job of academic editor is the unique privilege of getting a glimpse—a sneak peek, if you will—of new intellectual directions happening in any given field. As we enter our second year at the helm of Frontiers, we have become increasingly aware of how fortunate we are to read and publish work that, in our humble opinions, represents the future of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies. Such an insight and foreknowledge has had a tremendous effect on our individual research and teaching endeavors, for Frontiers constantly compels us to renew, reload, and refresh our praxis as scholars and educators. While the scholarly and creative works published in this issue rigorously and thoughtfully engage prior research in our field, these also distinguish themselves for their originality and progressive intellectual vision. We are thus proud to include in this issue a focused section that extends and expands our knowledge on the theme of our latest special issue, namely reproductive justice and reproductive technologies (Frontiers 34, no. 3.) Though that special issue centered more on the social, historical, medical, and political implications of reproduction, the articles in this issue turn more firmly to the field of representation. Both “Misconceived Metaphors” and “Without a Conceivable Future,” written by Mary Thompson and Nicole Sparling respectively, concern themselves with the way women’s reproduction is politicized in literary and film representation. Caitlin E. C. Myers in her essay “Colonizing the (Reproductive) Future” turns to journalistic coverage of arts (assisted reproductive technologies) with the ultimate purpose of exploring how these representations serve the needs of neoliberal rather than feminist interests in our society. For her part Jennifer Denbow in “Sterilization as Cyborg Performance” explores medical discourse that represents the practice of voluntary sterilization as a threat to patriarchal imperatives that impose reproductive and maternal desire on women’s bodies. In different and unique ways all the articles in this focused section speak volumes about how biased discourses and fictionalized representations can have very real effects on reproductive rights. [End Page vii] Closely related to the politics of reproduction is the often-tangled relationship between discourses on motherhood and nation, concerns that also figure prominently in this issue. Feminist and gender scholars have often critiqued, and in some cased denounced, the naturalized relationship between nationalist and family tropes. The gendering and racialization of the maternal have also been at the center of much intellectual debate in our field. Emily Cheng makes important contributions to these scholarly incursions in “Pearl S. Buck’s ‘American Children’” by underscoring the role that famed novelist and “China specialist” in the 1930s, Pearl S. Buck, played in US/Asia relations through her work as a transnational adoption advocate. The image of benevolent and moral mother of the nation that Buck signified is also a symptom of larger conservative discourses on mothering. Because the concepts of both motherhood and reproduction are also closely related to ideas about sexuality, we felt it was pertinent to include scholarly work on the topic in this issue. For instance, Grey Osterud’s article “‘It’s Very Little I Know about the Facts of Life to This Day’” looks closely at the silencing and shaming that surrounded the sexual lives of rural women in turn-of-the-century New York State. Given existing taboos about sex, providing safe and nurturing spaces for the open discussion of nonnormative sexualities has been an important mission for feminist scholars and activists alike. The contributors to the Intimate Matters roundtable offered their commitment to that mission by celebrating and reflecting on the historic publication of Intimate Matters by John D’Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman, the first comprehensive book-length history of sexuality in the United States. The roundtable participants—Joanne Meyerowitz, Cynthia M. Blair, Margot Canaday, Thomas Foster, and Nayan Shah—evaluate the significance of Intimate Matters and also chart the exciting developments in sexuality history since its publication. The pioneering work of Intimate Matters is also mirrored by the role that artists have played in promoting crucial dialogues about sexuality. Chicano artist Joey Terrill, whose visually arresting...

Enlightenment Geisha: The Sex Trade, Education, and Feminine Ideals in Early Meiji Japan

During the mid-1870s, fearing the legal innovations of a “civilized” state, geisha and their employers recast Tokugawa-era practices of civic engagement and educational attainment in the language of enlightenment. Proprietors built schools intended to transform geisha into productive and moral mothers, and geisha donated to local educational institutions and suggested that their own studies would lead to self-sufficiency and freedom. These efforts associated geisha with the values of productivity and enlightenment, although similar strategies proved less successful for prostitutes. However, by the 1880s, both geisha and prostitutes were increasingly denied access to education and excluded from ideals of enlightened femininity that were predicated on marriage. This article considers how a group of unlikely actors deployed the Tokugawa past to become civilized, and in the process promoted ideas about the purpose of women's education that would later be expressed by an icon of Meiji modernity: the “good wife, wise mother.”

Furthering the sceptical case against virtue ethics in nursing ethics

In a recent article in this journal I presented a sceptical argument about the current prominence of virtue ethics in nursing ethics. Daniel Putman has responded with a defence of the relevance of virtue in nursing. The present article continues this discussion by clarifying, defending, and expanding the sceptical argument. I start by emphasizing some features of the sceptical case, including assumptions about the nature of sceptical arguments, and about the character of both virtue ethics and nursing ethics. Then I respond to objections of Putman's such as that, according to virtue ethics, virtue is relevant to the whole of a human life, including one's behaviour in a professional context; and that eudaimonia should be central in explaining and motivating a nurse's decision to enter the profession. Having argued that these objections are not compelling, I go on to discuss an interesting recent attempt to reassert the role of virtue ethics in the ethics of professions, including nursing. This centres on whether role-specific obligations - e.g. the obligations that arise for a moral agent qua lawyer or mother - can be accommodated in a virtue ethics approach. Sean Cordell has argued that the difficulty of accommodating role-specific obligations results in an 'institution-shaped gap' in virtue ethics. He suggests a way of meeting this difficulty that appeals to the ergon of institutions. I endorse the negative point that role-specific obligations elude virtue ethics, but argue that the appeal to the ergon of institutions is unsuccessful. The upshot is further support for scepticism about the virtue ethics approach to nursing ethics. I end by gesturing to some of the advantages of a sceptical view of virtue ethics in nursing ethics.

The Portrayal of Women in the Periodicals of the First Lithuanian Republic

This article aims to add to the study of the culture, advertising history, and conception of woman of the first Republic of Lithuania. It examines articles and advertisements for women published from 1920–1940 in the periodicals “Naujoji romuva”, “Moteris” and “Naujas žodis.”The image of woman demanded by the traditional society was in large part formed by the Lithuanian Catholic women’s society through the newspaper “Moteris.” The patriarchal society wanted women to appear modest, healthy, and naturally beautiful, cherishing folk traditions and the image of the village girl with blonde braids. The image of woman-as-sacrificial-hero was also popular. Connotations of femininity were applied to the good, moral mother, the unconditionally loving wife, the guardian of the home, the saviour of the nation, the tutor and teacher who follows the word of God. However, the desire to also see women as active, determined, educated people who were able to hold jobs and take care of themselves demonstrates the broad outlook of the female Catholics.The image of the free-willed Lithuanian woman, as dictated by Western culture, appeared in “Naujoji romuva” and “Naujas žodis.” At its core it emphasised the cult of the body, fashion, external beauty, and personal and sexual freedom. The modern woman was always young, active, dominant in her relationships with men, and took an active interest in cultural events. Emancipated women were not necessarily married, and could raise children without husbands just as well. Yet femininity and faithfulness were valued.The study of the sources shows that women’s individuality, self-identity and need to be active were most likely to be expressed in the social, cultural and artistic spheres. These provided women not only with the opportunity to be educated and emancipated, but also with a place for self-expression, a chance to open their inner world, to form a well-rounded world-view. It is likely that the interwar Lithuanian woman – a middle-class city dweller – was in search of harmony and freedom: to be a bit of a temptress, to be beautiful, to create a happy family, and to make these differing social feminine roles work with her own economic and spiritual emancipation.

Reclaiming a moral identity: stillbirth, stigma and ‘moral mothers’

Objectivesto understand the effect of expectant motherhood discourses on parents who suffer a stillbirth. Designa qualitative, exploratory study using in-depth interviews to understand parental experience of stillbirth. Settinginterviews took place in the homes of bereaved parents across several English health authorities. Participants10 couples and 12 mothers who had experienced a stillbirth. Findingsmothers were keen to distance themselves from behaviour that might be seen as stigmatising, that is, smoking, drinking, etc., while pregnant. Fathers, while keen to stress that their partners had behaved well in pregnancy, made no such claims. Key conclusionsstillbirth constitutes a threat to a maternal ‘moral’ identity, which results in a differential experience of loss for mothers than for fathers. Implications for practisecomprehending that the experience of stillbirth might lead the mother to feel that her identity as a ‘moral mother’ is under threat is essential in understanding the maternal experience of stillbirth.

Motherhood, risk and responsibility: Infant care in Northern Thailand

The cultural construction of childrearing and infant care in northern Thai society is discussed on the basis of in-depth interviews with 30 women in Northern Thailand. The results indicate that Thai mothers observe and practise many socially and culturally acceptable tasks to ensure the health and wellbeing of their infants. These beliefs and practices tie them not only with their family and their society at large, but also the supernatural world. Mothers see themselves as responsible parents and hence follow numerous rules to avoid risks which may pose threats to the health and wellbeing of their infants. This attempt is used as a means to prove that they are good and moral mothers.

Infant feeding in risk society

A large percentage of British women, in common with women in other Western countries, feed their young babies formula milk. The paper reports some findings of a study of infant feeding that focussed on women's experiences of feeding their babies this way. Data about this issue were collected through detailed, qualitative face to face interviews with 33 mothers and through telephone interviews using a structured questionnaire with 503 mothers. The study found overall that mother's accounts of feeding babies formula milk draw attention to contradictions and tensions in motherhood and mothering. Formula feeding is predominantly experienced by mothers as ‘easy,’ enabling them to address a wide range of demands and difficulties that mothering a small baby poses for them. At the same time, mothers demonstrate awareness of the socio-cultural construction of the ‘moral mother’ as the mother who minimizes and avoids risk, and so does not use formula milk for infant feeding. How women react to this tension between ‘real life’ and ‘doing what is healthy’ varies, but the study reported here found a large minority of women experience manifestly difficult and debilitating feelings as they attempt to reconcile a pragmatic wish or need to formula feed with dominant constructions of the ‘moral mother.’ By detailing women's accounts of this aspect of motherhood, the paper contributes to sociological investigation of everyday experiences of risk society. To contextualize this discussion, a brief account of the relationship between eating, feeding babies and risk society is also offered.

The Conservative sixties

The Conservative Sixties tells « the other story of America in the era of left-wing protests, countercultural experiments, and a civil rights revolution. Ten original historical essays focus on Phyllis Schlafly, Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater, the John Birch Society, the Minutemen, « Moral Mothers and Goldwater Girls, « Cowboy Conservatives, « National Politics versus Community Interest, « Below-the-Belt Politics, and the « Politics of Law and Order. The Conservative Sixties demonstrates that throughout the 1960s, right-wing activists organized at the grass-roots, re-thought their priorities, discovered new allies, and prepared to defeat liberals in the political and cultural arenas. This history of the 1960s puts the presidencies of Ronald Reagan, George H. Bush, and George W. Bush - as well as the conservative turn of Congress and the American people - into historical perspective.

The Moral Mother Syndrome

This paper briefly explores a crucial component of Sinhala nationalism that is articu lated through the reiteration of a moral and maternalised historical role model, namely, the legendary queen Vihara Maha Devi, within particular cultural and political spaces in Sri Lanka. Describing this phenomenon as the 'Moral Mother Syndrome', the author extends its original delineation by Micaela di Leonardo—as providing the framework for an ideology that primarily 'speaks for peace'—to one that speaks for peace through a call to violence that is nevertheless formulated as being moral and just due to it being prentised upon an argument about the vulner ability and victimisation of the majority community, the Sinhalese.

In Memoriam Mitzi Myers (1939-2001)

News that Mitzi Myers, the distinguished UCLA scholar and teacher, had died at home November 5, 2001, came as a shock to many, who had only then heard the tragic story of how, fifteen months before, a fire had destroyed her home and extensive library. The colleagues who posted tributes to Myers on the major list-serves for children's literature and eighteenth-century studies attested to her influence when they expressed dismay at the premature loss of one of her generation's most far-ranging and rigorous scholars. First and foremost a student of the late eighteenth century, Mitzi's command of the texts, cultural context, and literary theory relating to her areas of interest was unparalleled. After finishing her dissertation on the philosopher William Godwin, she began studying Mary Wollstonecraft, which led her to reconsider the literary importance of other Georgian women writers such as Sarah Fielding, Hannah More, Lady Fenn, Mrs. Barbauld, and Sarah Trimmer, whose works had been largely neglected. In spirited polemic essays published in a wide variety of journals and monographs, Mitzi defended the contributions of those late Enlightenment "impeccable governesses, rational dames, and moral mothers" by recontextualizing their works. When she demonstrated that they were hardly as unreadable, unenjoyable, or insignificant as their detractors had insisted, she challenged the prevalent Whiggish view that insisted on a movement from dry, colorless instruction to the open-ended delights of fantasy. Of all the women writers whose reputations Mitzi recovered, Maria Edgeworth was her favorite. Some of Mitzi's finest essays argued for Edgeworth's readmission to the canon: the "wee-wee stories" for young readers were central to Edgeworth's achievement, which Mitzi brilliantly revalidated by demonstrating their rich allusiveness, autobiographical underpinnings, their engagement with contemporary sociopolitical debates, and their shrewd but sympathetic awareness of actual children's psychology, language, and behavior.

The creation of ‘motherhood’ and Women's responses in Britain and France, 1750–1914

This article argues that an ideology of privatised motherhood became increasingly important in the master public narratives of Western history and that motherhood became a highly contested concept both in Britain and France as a result. It shows how women were prioritised in their capacity as mothers, particularly in nation-state building with its focus on population politics, and in middle-class formation. Then it explores how groups of women, who presented themselves as moral mothers, militant mothers, virgin mothers and citizen mothers, extended and subverted this domestic identity precisely to authorise their energetic activity in the public sphere

The creation of ‘motherhood’ and Women's responses in britain and france, 1750–1914

Abstract This article argues that an ideology of privatised motherhood became increasingly important in the master public narratives of Western history and that motherhood became a highly contested concept both in Britain and France as a result. It shows how women were prioritised in their capacity as mothers, particularly in nation-state building with its focus on population politics, and in middle-class formation. Then it explores how groups of women, who presented themselves as moral mothers, militant mothers, virgin mothers and citizen mothers, extended and subverted this domestic identity precisely to authorise their energetic activity in the public sphere

Unstable Bodies: Victorian Representations of Sexuality and Maternity (review)

Reviewed by: Unstable Bodies: Victorian Representations of Sexuality and Maternity Jane Eliot Sewell Jill L. Matus. Unstable Bodies: Victorian Representations of Sexuality and Maternity. Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 1995. vii + 280 pp. $69.95 (cloth), $24.95 (paperbound). While some academic books take a lot of plodding, this did not. Jill Matus is thoughtful and writes well. She gives her readers five interesting essays examining literary, medical, and “social” texts between the 1840s and 1870s in Victorian England. Each essay explores images in canonical and noncanonical literature. The author develops insights into the intermingled definitions and images (as well as realities) of womanhood, maternity, and female sexuality. Matus’s approach follows deconstructionist lines similar to those employed by Mary Poovey in her important Uneven Developments: The Ideological Work of Gender in Mid-Victorian England (1988). She also draws upon the work of Ludmilla Jordanova, George Levine, Thomas Laqueur, Judith Butler, and Nancy Cott. One of her stated aims is to “historicise the work of Victorian novelists in relation to biomedical and social scientific discussions of sexuality and maternity, and to consider particularly how women’s writing participated in and shaped the way Victorian culture represented sexuality” (p. 4). Her chief conclusion is that images and representations of women were much more malleable and “unstable” than has been acknowledged: she argues that popular and medical texts discussed the [End Page 347] instability of actual bodies, and that such textual representations were themselves an “unstable body” of discourse. The introduction, which is especially clear, carefully sets up the substantive chapters and facilitates access for a broader audience. In chapter 1, “Sexual Slippage and Approximation in Victorian Biomedical Discourse,” Matus examines representations of sex as dynamic processes influenced by nonbiological environmental factors. She explores works ranging from Wilkie Collins’s Woman in White to James Young Simpson’s article on “Hermaphroditism.” Her discussion of the sociocultural contingency of sexuality is well taken, if not entirely original. Matus also explores representations of working-class female sexuality and portrayals of the “moral mother” with particular reference to Mary Barton. Instead of focusing on the class dynamics and the working conditions of the poor, as so many Gaskell scholars have done, she centers our attention on depictions of women’s lives, roles, and behavior. She elegantly considers metaphors and convincingly establishes her point about the instability of women’s roles and the discourse surrounding them. Although comparison with middle-class images in Gaskell’s North and South could have been constructive, this section of the book is impressive. So too is Matus’s examination of the images and discourse involving the “underside” of Victorian society—desire, prostitution, and passionlessness. Particular emphasis is placed on the Brontë sisters’ Agnes Grey and Villette. Matus uses Foucault’s “gaze” to analyze, for example, Lucy’s interest in exotic art during her time abroad in Villette. This approach works and fits neatly with the “instability” theme. The fourth and fifth chapters treat, respectively, maternal deviance—using Adam Bede, among other works—and references to Saint Teresa (or Theresa) and the Madonna in Middlemarch. The latter essay demonstrates both the strengths and the weaknesses of the book. Matus carefully uncovers many aspects that an untrained reader would miss, drawing out subtleties and analyzing them effectively. However, her own “gaze” sometimes carries her quite far from the novel itself. George Eliot referred to Theresa only in her short prelude to Middlemarch, and otherwise one could read the entire novel without any real thought of the saint (as most readers probably have done). In brief, Matus builds a large case on a flimsy and presentistic base of evidence. As a professor of English, Matus brings to this material the detail-seeking eye of a textual analyst. In addition, she has the imagination to illuminate elements that have often been overlooked by many, including historians. Unfortunately, too frequently this same imagination leads her far from the novels she discusses and prompts her to gloss the books too heavily with her own rather than the authors’ views. Matus’s account also suffers from a lack of historical understanding of the history of medicine and science. She repeatedly refers to Victorian “biomedical” texts, an...

Unstable bodies: Victorian representations of sexuality and maternity

Sexual slippage and approximation in Victorian bio-medical discourse the making of the moral mother - working-class sexuality in Mary Barton confession, secrecy and exhibition - Agnes Grey, Ruth and Vilette maternal deviance - Adam Bede, Sorrow on the Sea and Lady Audley's Secret from hysteria to maternity - Saint Teresa and the Madonna in Middlemarch.

Where Did Mary's Mother Come From?

Where Did Mary's Mother Come From? Mitzi Myers (bio) Once upon a time, I had fantasies of keeping up with all the current scholarship on mothers and daughters. I wanted to put that material in dialogue with what I knew about feminist literary criticism and historical children's literature. I thought the interplay might disclose an originary moment and a textual ur-form. Histories of families, childhood, and mothering; psychoanalytic studies from Freud to Klein to Chodorow and Gilligan; literary criticism from old-fashioned "images of" surveys to new-fangled postmodernisms; anthropologies and ethnographies from every culture—I bought, borrowed, or xeroxed them all. I tried to make sense of them in ever lengthening footnotes until an irate editor called up and demanded that I cut a couple which ran a page or so each. I still struggle womanfully, even though I know it is a losing battle. The maternity-juvenility dyad generates numberless progeny; it is as terrifyingly prolific as Mother Nature herself and sometimes as incomprehensible. Oddly, while every author claims originality, almost all concurrently depict mothering as the topic on which everything has "always already" been said. Even when the subject is something else, cultural critiques frequently invoke a discourse of mothering and familial analogy, perhaps because poststructuralist thinking stresses textuality as a space, the fecund generativity of words themselves, and the parasitic intertextuality of all literature. Of course, childbirth images have long been everywhere in literary history, shamelessly appropriated even by masculinist authors who claim they write with something besides a pen. Feminist literary criticism naturally takes to maternity as metaphor: witness Jane Gallop's final chapter, "History Is like Mother," in her recent overview, Around 1981: Academic Feminist Literary Theory, just one example among dozens. Yet despite the huge volume of extant work on psychoanalytical feminism, Janice Doane and Devon Hodges are still in search of the "good enough" mother. Film critic E. Anne Kaplan regales us with popular culture's representations of motherhood from maternal melodramas to "phallic" mother paradigms. The tear-jerker Stella Dallas, whose author was Sylvia Plath's real life patron as well as The Bell Jar's pulp novelist Philomena Guinea, is a good example of the intertextual links seemingly inherent in mother-daughter relationships, lived or fictional.1 Gilliganized coauthors Elizabeth Debold, Marie Wilson, and Idelisse Malave garner major reviews in adult periodicals by reassuring readers that feminists mother best, that a Mother Daughter Revolution is moving us "from betrayal to power." William Holtz gets hate mail from irate Laura Ingalls Wilder fans for his revelations in The Ghost in The Little House: A Life of Rose Wilder Lane, even though Holtz's biography of the daughter half of American juvenile literature's most successful collaboration offers a moving portrayal of the thwarted daughter's talent and conflicted maternal ties.2 Students of children's literary studies will hardly be shocked to find the child birthing the mother's work, since articles along these lines have been appearing for a long time; indeed, readers of this journal may well wish for more than the brief, if telling, appendix of comparative passages which concludes Holtz's study. Nor will literary scholars debunking the rather recent Romantic notion of the author as solitary original genius find Holtz's investigation of dialogic creative endeavor unsettling. Most canonical male writers, as a thriving critical industry is revealing, have ghosts of one sort or another, too (see, for example, Stillinger). But somehow it is different when the prairie icon and reputed mother of so many juvenile dreams is shown to have been mentored by childwork. Post-Enlightenment culture seems to need to hang on to mutually contradictory mythologies of the mother's relation to cultural reproduction. On the one hand, we want to believe in progress, as do the late-eighteenth-century women writers who people their tales with rational dames, moral mothers, and mentoria figures and who recurrently align writing with mothering. On the other, nostalgia makes a compelling case for what the Scottish folklorist Robert Chambers calls "the simplicities of the uninstructed intellect"—the "light gabble and jocund song," the "tales of drollery and wonder which used to be told by...

Declining fortunes: the withering of the American dream

The End of Entitlement Winners and Losers in the Eighties and Nineties The Making of the Boomers The Problem of the Moral Mother The Spoiled Generation Illegitimate Elites and the Parasitic Underclass The Fractured Generation The Politics of Generational Division

Impeccable Governesses, Rational Dames, and Moral Mothers: Mary Wollstonecraft and the Female Tradition in Georgian Children's Books

Impeccable Governesses, Rational Dames, and Moral Mothers: Mary Wollstonecraft and the Female Tradition in Georgian Children's Books