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Transgressing motherhood: Contesting...

Schmitz, Gabriele.

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Transgressing motherhood: Contesting patriarchal constructions of infanticide (Euripides, Greece, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Christa Wolf, Toni Morrison, Sandra Cisneros).

Record Type:	Electronic resources : Monograph/item
Title/Author:	Transgressing motherhood: Contesting patriarchal constructions of infanticide (Euripides, Greece, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Christa Wolf, Toni Morrison, Sandra Cisneros)./
Author:	Schmitz, Gabriele.
Description:	185 p.
Notes:	Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 64-07, Section: A, page: 2480.
Contained By:	Dissertation Abstracts International64-07A.
Subject:	Literature, Comparative. -
Online resource:	http://pqdd.sinica.edu.tw/twdaoapp/servlet/advanced?query=3097993

Transgressing motherhood: Contesting patriarchal constructions of infanticide (Euripides, Greece, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Christa Wolf, Toni Morrison, Sandra Cisneros).
Schmitz, Gabriele.

Transgressing motherhood: Contesting patriarchal constructions of infanticide (Euripides, Greece, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Christa Wolf, Toni Morrison, Sandra Cisneros). - 185 p.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 64-07, Section: A, page: 2480.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of California, Davis, 2003.

This study explores the political function of infanticide in late twentieth century women's literature. For centuries infanticide and politics have been intertwined in Western literature. Euripides' Medea, the evil, violent and foreign sorceress of ancient Greek myth, and Goethe's Gretchen, the naive victim of seduction in eighteenth-century German literature, exemplify the two prototypes of the infanticidal mother that have dominated the literary representation of child murder. The first chapter examines the cultural politics of infanticide in Euripides' "Medea" and Goethe's Faust . My reading suggests that Medea is a contradictory figure, a symbol for the self-destruction inherent in dualistic patriarchal societies rather than a barbarian Other that marks the boundaries of civilization. Goethe's representation of the infanticidal mother as a victim of her own sexuality exposes his concern with the male subject and his possibilities for self-realization in enlightened society, not the social conditions that caused historical women to kill their children. The next chapter analyses Christa Wolf's novel Medea. Wolf reinvents Euripides' Medea to analyze power mechanisms in authoritarian patriarchal states. She uses the East/West conflict inherent in the Medea myth to comment on recent German history, specifically the demise of socialism and the Reunification. Toni Morrison's novel Beloved presents another culturally specific allegory by translating the Medea story into the context of American slavery. Maternal infanticide serves as a graphic measure for the brutality of the slave system and it expresses Morrison s concern with the continuing racial and sexual oppression in black women's lives. The next chapter discusses Sandra Cisneros' revision of the mythical La Llorona figure that combines aspects of both Medea and Gretchen to comment on the pain and violence of the colonial experience and the legacy of gender and racial oppression that continues in Chicano culture. All three of the women writers engage in creative revisions of the past in order to change the present and the infanticidal mother serves as their vehicle. The conclusion briefly considers how the literary representation of infanticide influences our understanding of the social phenomenon of child murder.Subjects--Topical Terms:

530051
Literature, Comparative.

Transgressing motherhood: Contesting patriarchal constructions of infanticide (Euripides, Greece, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Christa Wolf, Toni Morrison, Sandra Cisneros).
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245 1 0 $a Transgressing motherhood: Contesting patriarchal constructions of infanticide (Euripides, Greece, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Christa Wolf, Toni Morrison, Sandra Cisneros).
300 $a 185 p.
500 $a Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 64-07, Section: A, page: 2480.
500 $a Adviser: Harriet Murav.
502 $a Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of California, Davis, 2003.
520 $a This study explores the political function of infanticide in late twentieth century women's literature. For centuries infanticide and politics have been intertwined in Western literature. Euripides' Medea, the evil, violent and foreign sorceress of ancient Greek myth, and Goethe's Gretchen, the naive victim of seduction in eighteenth-century German literature, exemplify the two prototypes of the infanticidal mother that have dominated the literary representation of child murder. The first chapter examines the cultural politics of infanticide in Euripides' "Medea" and Goethe's Faust . My reading suggests that Medea is a contradictory figure, a symbol for the self-destruction inherent in dualistic patriarchal societies rather than a barbarian Other that marks the boundaries of civilization. Goethe's representation of the infanticidal mother as a victim of her own sexuality exposes his concern with the male subject and his possibilities for self-realization in enlightened society, not the social conditions that caused historical women to kill their children. The next chapter analyses Christa Wolf's novel Medea. Wolf reinvents Euripides' Medea to analyze power mechanisms in authoritarian patriarchal states. She uses the East/West conflict inherent in the Medea myth to comment on recent German history, specifically the demise of socialism and the Reunification. Toni Morrison's novel Beloved presents another culturally specific allegory by translating the Medea story into the context of American slavery. Maternal infanticide serves as a graphic measure for the brutality of the slave system and it expresses Morrison s concern with the continuing racial and sexual oppression in black women's lives. The next chapter discusses Sandra Cisneros' revision of the mythical La Llorona figure that combines aspects of both Medea and Gretchen to comment on the pain and violence of the colonial experience and the legacy of gender and racial oppression that continues in Chicano culture. All three of the women writers engage in creative revisions of the past in order to change the present and the infanticidal mother serves as their vehicle. The conclusion briefly considers how the literary representation of infanticide influences our understanding of the social phenomenon of child murder.
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