Mothers and Daughters

Throughout his career, Shakespeare invented a plethora of maternal characters. In his plays one can find compliant patriarchal wives next to rebellious and misandrous widows, motherly friends and confidantes alongside evil stepmothers, and there are pregnant mothers who are separated from their child immediately after birth. Because of this great interest in different aspects of motherhood, it is striking that Shakespeare’s plays so rarely depict the family relationship between a mother and her biological daughter. Mother-daughter relationships are not only marginalized within Shakespeare’s dramatic oeuvre in general, but also within the plots of the six plays where they actually do appear. This analysis brings together close readings ranging from Shakespeare’s earlier plays Romeo and Juliet, Henry V, and The Merry Wives of Windsor to the late tragicomedies Pericles and The Winter’s Tale in order to show that the highly different and contrasting types of motherhood have strong repercussions on the (im)possibilities of imagining and staging mother-daughter relationships within the different genres of Shakespearean drama. The study is informed by an interdisciplinary approach that links Shakespeare and feminist criticism with psycho-analysis and gender and genre studies. CONTENTS Chapter 1: Introduction 1 1.1 Mothers and Daughters 3 1.2 Gender 10 1.3 Genre 19 Chapter 2: Patriarchal wives and future brides: the rare mother-daughter bond in Shakespeare’s early plays 24 2.1 “I have done with thee.” – Lady Capulet and Juliet’s destructive relationship in Romeo and Juliet 27 2.1.1 Tragedy of love and family tragedy 28 2.1.2 Collective identity vs. individual identity 31 2.1.3 Lady Capulet and Juliet 35 2.1.4 The Nurse as a comic ersatz mother 39 2.1.5 Lady Capulet and the Nurse as grieving mothers 42 2.2 “No woman shall succeed in Salic land” – Female genealogy and male history-making in Henry V 44 2.2.1 War, politics, and patriotism: history as a ‘male genre’? 45 2.2.2 The female characters in Henry V 47 2.2.3 England’s ‘indirect’ Salic law and the female blood-line 48 2.2.4 Intimacy and inwardness: Alice as Catherine’s private confidante 50 2.2.5 Marriage policy and raison d’état: Queen Isabel as a public figure 52 2.2.6 Catherine of Valois and the refusal to accept maternal ancestry 57 2.3 “Good mother, do not marry me to yon fool.” – Mistress and Anne Page’s far-cical disagreement in The Merry Wives of Windsor 60 2.3.1 Anne Page and her three unequal marriage candidates 63 2.3.2 Parental union in farcical disagreement: Master and Mistress Page 65 2.3.3 Anne’s marriage with Fenton 68 2.3.4 The transformative powers of the middle class 71 2.4 “I am a mother to you” – Adoption and the problem of incest in All’s Well That Ends Well 72 2.4.1 Helen as an unorthodox heroine 74 2.4.2 Bertram’s Oedipal complex 76 2.4.3 Helen and the Countess 79 2.4.4 The Widow of Florence and Diana 82 2.4.5 Bertram and Helen’s return to Roussillon 83 Chapter 3: The ‘absent presence’ of the great tragedies: daughterless mothers and motherless daughters 87 3.1 “Bring forth men-children only” – Lady Macbeth as an ambivalent anti-mother 89 3.1.1 The confusion of gender roles in Macbeth 89 3.1.2 Witchcraft and maternity: the weird sisters as satanic anti-mothers 91 3.1.3 Hysteric, witch, and female psychopath: Lady Macbeth’s fatal alliance 94 3.1.4 Lady Macduff as the quintessential patriarchal victim 99 3.1.5 Dissolution of maternal power and restoration of male order 100 3.2 “O my mother, mother, O!” Volumnia as a dominant super-mother in Coriolanus 104 3.2.1 Volumnia’s successful private education 106 3.2.2 The failure of Volumnia’s public education 108 3.2.3 Coriolanus’s banishment 113 3.2.4 Volumnia as a triumphant mater dolorosa 115 3.3 “O, how this mother swells up toward my heart!” – The maternal subtext(s) of King Lear 118 3.3.1 Senility and boyhood: Lear’s longing for a mothering daughter 119 3.3.2 Reversal of gender and family roles: female alliance against kingly rule 123 3.3.3 The symbolic relevance of the storm 126 3.3.4 Goneril and Regan’s matriarchal tyranny 128 3.3.5 Cordelia’s return and Lear’s redemption 131 3.4 “This island’s mine by Sycorax my mother”: Matriarchal phantasies in The Tempest 134 3.4.1 Maternal metaphors: the storm and the enchanted island 135 3.4.2 Absent mothers: Prospero’s wife and Sycorax 139 3.4.3 Prospero’s transformations 143 3.4.4 Miranda and Claribel. 147 3.4.5 Renunciation and return 152 Chapter 4: Tragicomic presentations of pregnancy and childbirth: mothers who lose their daughters 155 4.1 “A terrible childbed hast thou had” – Contaminated pregnancy and family dis-solution in Pericles, Prince of Tyre 159 4.1.1 King Antiochus and his daughter 160 4.1.2 Thaisa’s indirect maculation 163 4.1.3 Dumb show pregnancy and difficult childbirth 164 4.1.4 Thaisa and Marina as idealized virgins 167 4.1.5 A male-centred family reunion 170 4.1.6 The fairytale structures of Shakespeare’s late plays 171 4.2 “No barricado for a belly” – Imag(in)ing motherhood in The Winter’s Tale 173 4.2.1 Morbid jealousy: truth vs. knowledge 174 4.2.2 Leontes’ impotence and Mamillius’s winter’s tale 178 4.2.3 Perdita’s birth and Hermione’s death 181 4.2.4 Hermione’s ghost and the bear 184 4.2.5 Shakespeare’s motherless Arcadia 186 4.2.6 The adoration of Hermione’s statue 187 Chapter 5: Tragedy and tragicomedy reconsidered: Shakespeare’s evil stepmothers 192 5.1 “A father cruel and a stepdame false” – Cymbeline as a fairytale ro-mance 195 5.1.1 The Queen and her son Cloten as antagonistic figures 198 5.1.2 Innogen between virtue and misogyny 202 5.1.3 Cross-dressing as a form of female resistance 205 5.1.4 The Queen’s death and Innogen’s fake funeral 207 5.1.5 Innogen’s mother and Cymbeline’s hermaphroditism 208 5.2 “Thou shouldst have been my Hamlet’s wife” – Hamlet between mur-der and matricide 211 5.2.1 Gertrude as an evil Queen 211 5.2.2 Ophelia’s isolation 215 5.2.3 Female madness as a threat to the patriarchal system 218 5.2.4 Ophelia’s death and Gertrude’s elegy 221 5.2.5 Climax, revenge, and matricide . 225 Chapter 6: Conclusion 229 Works Cited 234 Primary Literature. 234 Secondary Literature. 235