Mother And Murder: A Study Of Motherhood In Late Medieval English Literature

Motherhood has been a central issue in feminist scholarship since 1970s.Motherhood is a potential relationship of any woman to child, an institution andideology, and an experience of any woman who mothers. Motherhood oppresseswomen and simultaneously represents a source of female power. Despite the sporadicresearch on motherhood in medieval English literature from the 1980s downward, itremains open to a further and systematic study. This dissertation aims to exploresystematically the representation of mothers and motherhood in late medieval Englishliterature and the social, religious, historical and cultural implications interwoven intoit. Furthermore, it intends to shed light on how motherhood and mothering are shapedand patterned in medieval English socio-cultural contexts and are embodied in literaland literary narration, so as to obtain a better understanding of the institution ofmotherhood in medieval England as it stands on the edge of modernity.The study lays particular emphasis on motherhood in The Showings of Julian ofNorwich by Julian of Norwich, The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, PiersPlowman by William Langland and The Book of Margery Kempe by Margery Kempe.The feminist theories on mother and motherhood, advocated by Adrienne Rich, NancyChodorow, Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray, give a solid theoretical footing to theanalytical development of the textual narratives and construct of motherhood, with thecomprehensive and interdisciplinary supporting social, historical and literary sourcesrelated to medieval motherhood in late medieval England. The study discusses theconception of God, Jesus as mother, Marian cult, mother-child relationship andrepresentational politics of mothers in the selected literary texts. My purpose is toexamine the roles mothers in these works have played, the interactive mother-childrelationship and the underlying factors that have marginalized, silenced, exiled andmurdered mother as the Other.As my study has indicated, the identity of mother in medieval England isgreatly influenced by Christianity, which places an emphasis on maternal nurturing.Christianity defines its motherhood as a threshold to transmit the Word or Logos.Meanwhile, the sacredness of motherhood is confined by the institution of marriage. Mothers in these works either have to trace the tension-charged distance between theextremities of chastity and martyrdom, or are romanticized, when not demonized, inthe works by male writers, which explains their ambivalence in role-playing asmothers. The maternal absence in the power structure originates from their failure tofind their voices when these mothers negotiate with the patriarchy. They are abject inreligious prohibitions on account of the medieval logic of enclosure and exclusion.Furthermore, what they have extracted from negotiations with the patriarchy aremanifold versions of the institution of motherhood and visible and invisible violencethat contributes to its operation in medieval cultural logic and textual politics.Therefore, I think that their marginalization as the Other results from the textualviolence, real and metaphorical mother-phobia and matricide, as well as the enclosurediscourse which is embodied in the segregation of gendered spaces, textual structureand theme, and Marian cult. In essence, what murders mother in medieval Englishliterature are the purity/impurity mechanism, gender construct and genderednarratives.The study further shows that the definition of"mother"is problematic. Iteduces the medieval phenomenon of"gender-bending."The archetype Motherepitomizes the principle of love and femininity. Mothering is socially and culturallyinscribed with involvement with gendered roles. In medieval laywomen's ImitatioMariae and the praise of Virgin Mary in the selected texts can be traced the exclusionof maternal body and a sublimation of motherhood. Virgin Mary is glorified becausethe maternal bond succumbs to the power of Logos. She is sublimated because she isa maiden-and-mother, which shows a rejection of maternal jouissance, a formidablereturn to an intact maternal body to achieve the wholeness and purity of social orderin a closed society, and a resistance to social chaos. These writings about mother andmotherhood simultaneously suggest the intense patriarchal repression of the motherand the feminine, an aspiration for maternal love, a return to chora and a projection ofthe Mother. The return to one's origin is encouraged by people's nostalgia for theirmother, or rather, their origin. This process is inevitably replete with obstacles andordeals, no matter how it occurs in the theological, metaphorical or actual process ofreturn to one's mother and search for one's mother. Furthermore, the study suggests that the institution of motherhood in medievalEngland, as a carrier, not just interacts with the dynamic discourses of religion, gender,politics, race and culture, but demonstrates that these writers are situated on the edgeof modernity: they are hovering in the afterglow of God-ordained cosmos and themorning glow of the spontaneous flow of individual freedom while late medievalEngland experiences an irresistible"schizophrenia."The dissertation consists of six chapters. The Introduction makes a review ofthe motherhood study concerning late medieval English literature and proposes toconduct a further research on it. These relevant but sporadic studies have omitted the"maternal absence"and"occlusion of motherhood"in medieval English literature. Anaccount of the feminist theory in the research gives full expression of the feministissues about motherhood and its applicability in the dissertation. This dissertation,starting with Julian of Norwich and ending with Margery Kemp, aims to re-establish alineage of literature as a matrilineal enterprise. This can be viewed as a search for themuted mother and identification with the feminine to show mother's dilemma in thepatriarchy.Chapter One embarks on a search of mother in God and Jesus Christ, asexemplified by The Showings of Julian of Norwich. The Showings has freed Julianfrom the patriarchal discourse and religious prohibitions. She, wittily, meditates onGod as father and mother. To Julian, the punitive father-God is replaced by andrepresented as a mother with tender love, epitomizing love and the origin of thehuman beings. Simultaneously, Julian displays physiological motherhood by focusingon Jesus's breastfeeding from the wound in his side and on his pain in childbearing,and succeeds in strategically associating the female experience with a male body andmaking female/maternal body publicly acceptable in disguise. Metaphorically, Julianhas established a female genealogy in her meditation. Furthermore, she hastransformed the image of enclosure into a maternal womb, revalidated the maternaland recreated a new way to know the world. The feminized body of Jesus Christ at thecenter of her meditation has subverted the binary that debases the woman's body andthe feminine and deconstructed the binary opposition of masculinity and femininity.Moreover, her meditation arouses her expectation of co-mothering by father and mother in the child-rearing family structure. People may change their consciousness ofsocial production of roles in family and adopt new childrearing patterns. And thepowerful tension due to sexual divisions of labor and unbalanced power relationshipbetween father and mother in family must melt away, which helps to achieve theequality between man and woman.Chapter Two examines mother-child relationship and the representationalpolitics of mothers in The Canterbury Tales. The Sultaness and Donegild in The Taleof the Man of Law are the spokeswomen of anti-motherhood. In the conflict with theirsons, the power relationship is highlighted between mother and son. They are in sharpcontrast with the Christian mother Constance Chaucer supports. In The Prioress 's Tale,the mother-child bond is broken. The Prioress views her lapdog as the object of hermotherly affection. The son of the widowed mother is murdered by the Jews; her"swooning"undoubtedly can be viewed not only as an externalization of the maternalgrief for loss of her son, but as a reproduction of the image of Virgin Mary's Swoonexpected by the people in the Middle Ages. Zenobia and Agrippina in The Monk'sTale are transgender mothers. Motherhood, certainly, empowers these two mothersand opens the door for them to find their voice in politics. Linking sovereignty to thefeminine, they are inevitably exiled to be unbecoming mothers. In The Clerk' Tale,Walter, out of maternal deprivation, tests Griselda to release his anxiety and jealousyand to know whether Griselda is an integral self. In the situation of child sacrifice,Griselda's proper reaction is what he has expected. Through masquerade, Griseldawins the trials. These mothers are depicted as craving for maternal love and maternalauthority, suffering from maternal grief and anger and wandering between absenceand rebelliousness. They are unbecoming mothers for the reason that they are movingfrom an authentic state of mother to a category of bad mother or non-mother. Themother is either demonized, denied and demystified or fantasized and romanticized inChaucer. Chaucer speaks for gender construct and Marian cult in textual selection,adaptation and recreation and becomes the accomplice of Christianity with his ownidiosyncratic narratives and strategies. The institution of motherhood in his textualnarratives actively interplays with the institutions of religion, politics, race and culture.His exploration classifies Chaucer into the medieval Continental literature tradition. These mothers travel as members of Chaucer's special pilgrims and build up a"mother community"to bargain with the patriarchy in medieval England.Chapter Three concentrates on the production of maternal absence in PiersPlowman. As is noticed, the mother is absent and silent from children's identificationwith their fathers, i.e., Lady Holy Church's obedience to her father God, Lady Meed'sunion with her father False, Christ's return to God the Father, Lady Do-better'sidentification with her father Do-wel, and God's four daughters' encounter with theold man Book. Their identification with father gains them access to the symbolicorder and rejects maternal repression and inferiority. Langland seems to beparticularly pungent in pointing out a quite pervasive and blameful phenomenonagainst the institution of motherhood and institution of marriage in the Middle Ages:bastards and the unmarried mothers. The repulsion and exclusion of unmarriedmothers derive from the social construct of disgrace and its fear for their violationagainst the religious prohibitions and social order. The sacredness of motherhoodgrounds on the mother-child relationship in the legitimate marriage. Mothers'subordination to sexual divisions of labor in the Middle Ages has intensified thematernal absence in Langland.Chapter Four explores the maternal role shift and performance of MargeryKempe in The Book of Margery Kempe. Margery starts her chaste life at forty withoutretreating from her role as an earthly mother. As a maternal martyr, she repeatedlyparticipates in the holy family as the mother of Jesus Christ via masquerade, andwages a direct encounter with her own perverse son to wield maternal power.Following her advice, her son is eventually converted into a faithful Christian. Thespiritual motherhood and earthly motherhood intersect in her life. She turns out to bean abject mother, wandering on the border of the maternal roles. As a powerfulmother in the earthly world, she imitates Virgin Mary and sublimates her motherhoodas such. Her physical performance and spiritual transformation, to an extent, is aparadox of motherhood under the influence of Christianity: a pursuit for thepsychological gratification as a mother in reinfantilization of Jesus Christ, but at thesame time an exclusion of the real maternal body in white which is usually viewed asa symbol of virginity, a denial of maternal role, and a resistance to the patriarchal institution of motherhood. In this process of transgressing the border formulated formothers, Margery, an unusually bold mother, is inescapably imprisoned and ruined inher continuous negotiations with the hegemony of patriarchy.The Conclusion implies that the institution of motherhood in medieval Englandsuccumbs to the discourse of Christianity and dominant patriarchal discourse. TheChristian motherhood champions the image of Virgin Mary, demeans and eveneliminates non-Christian mothers and mothers who violate the patriarchal institutionof motherhood and institution of marriage. This maternal mythology, romanticizedand fantasized by the patriarchy and its intertextual writings, is used to restrict andsuppress the earthly mothers with a model of Virgin Mary, who, a speechlessintercessor, helps to further the interests of the dominant ideology of patriarchy and tore-create the wholeness and purity of the social order. Moreover, mothers in theseselected works are absent in power structures, which results from the medievalcultural logic of exclusion and textual politics. In the process of playing maternalroles and achieving their identity, these mothers are murdered as the Other bypure/impure opposition advocated by the patriarchal religion, gender construct andgendered literary narratives in the pursuit of holiness, goodness and perfection. Thestudy recommends for future tentative researches such issues as the establishment offemale genealogy in medieval English literature,"ecriture feminine"and medievalfeminist poetics, motherhood and geography, and motherhood and spirituality from aperspective of transpersonal psychology.