Abstract:
This study explores, through detailed analysis, the many and varied depictions of mothering, in a broad sense, in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women series, published between 1868 and 1886, and in Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne series, published between 1908 and 1939. Definitions of the role of ‘mother’ and of ‘motherhood’ point to the active choice to mother and the exercise of motherly attributes as the primary requirements for identification as a mother, suggesting that the role is not limited to biological relationship or gender. Many attributes that are still identified, in many circles, even in the twenty-first century as characteristic of the ideal mother are embodied in Little Women’s idealised mother figure, Marmee, who is established as a benchmark of traditional, successful motherhood, born out of Alcott’s progressive dialogue with dominant nineteenth-century sentimentalist discourses. The study shows that there is power in mothering, and the success of a mother can be measured by the harvest reaped through the mother’s exercise of traditional mothering attributes, as seen in the futures of those who are mothered. While Alcott does begin to explore successful alternative mother figures in her Little Women series (such as Beth, Jo and Aunt March), Montgomery focuses almost exclusively in her Anne series (1908-1939) on the orphaned Anne’s bountiful harvest of alternative mother figures, particularly of spinsters such as Anne’s primary mother figure, Marilla. The analysis of the chosen works shows that the shape of motherhood is both simple and complex and that its manifestation in a vast variety of mother figures forms a great sisterhood of mothers in whom the ideals of traditional mothering are preserved for the betterment of society.
