Renegotiating Motherhood:A Study Of Unconventional Mothers In Marina Carr’s Midlands Trilogy

Marina Carr(1964-)is the first female playwright since Lady Augusta Gregory to have a major presence at the Irish theatrical venues.Marina Carr draws attention by representing the different experiences of women in her plays,and her Midlands Trilogy is the most important accomplishment in her writing career.The Midlands Trilogy,including The Mai(1994),Portia Coughlan(1996),By the Bog of Cats...(1998)can be regarded organically as a continuous and interrelated exploration of the complex changing position and role of women in Ireland at the end of the 20th century.To examine Marina Carr’s renegotiation of motherhood in the Midlands Trilogy,this thesis analyses Carr’s reconstruction of maternal images in the light of ideas of motherhood raised by Adrienne Rich in Of Woman Born and related feminist perspectives on motherhood.The context of Irish history and culture in the 20th century also provides a useful contribution to the textual analysis.The main body of this thesis consists of three parts.Chapter One describes Carr’s representation of the unconventional maternal images in the Trilogy and divides the mother figures into three categories:unnatural mothers,self-absorbed mothers and violent mothers.Carr’s female characters in the Trilogy defy the tradition that "ideal"motherhood should be natural,self-sacrificing and nurturing.The mothers in Carr’s plays are unnatural mothers who lack maternal instinct;they are self-absorbed and often physically or emotionally unavailable to children;and they harbour violent tendencies that result in abuse and filicide.Chapter Two contextualizes the Trilogy in terms of the socio-historical position of women in Ireland in the 20th century to explore the social roots of deviation from "ideal",motherhood.In the first place,the Irish "ideal" maternal image is patriarchal and restrictive.Although the role of the mother is not inherently damaging,the patriarchal society transforms the role into limiting,powerless,and destructive positions.Another important factor is the denigration of motherhood out of wedlock in Ireland.Carr’s Trilogy shows how the religious and moral ideals help to construct motherhood and explores the social stigma attached to single mothers.In addition,the exclusion of Irish travellers results in the tragedy of the mother figure who is a traveller in By the Bog of Cats....The third chapter of this thesis attempts to theorize the maternal experiences in Carr’s Trilogy to bring Carr into conversation with scholars of motherhood studies and further reflect on Carr’s renegotiation of motherhood.Based on motherhood studies of Adrienne Rich,Barbara Almond,and Sara Ruddick,this chapter explores the commonalities of the maternal experiences reflected in the Trilogy and provides an overview of alternative practices of mothering.Carr offers actual experiences of mothering in her Trilogy and renegotiates motherhood from the following three aspects:maternal ambivalence,powerless responsibility,mother as practice rather than identity.Firstly,Carr depicts the coexistence of love and hate in mothering to openly discuss the taboo subject of the negative side of motherhood and show maternal ambivalence is a normal phenomenon.Besides,Carr exposes that motherhood is an experience of powerless responsibility.While child-rearing is the sole responsibility of the biological mother,the practice gives them no power to determine the conditions under which they mother children.Additionally,Carr’s plays reveal the enduring gender inequality of parental responsibility.Carr critiques the ideology of essential motherhood,which asserts that women,rather than men,are predisposed to the nurturing behaviour associated with mothering.In conclusion,the non-traditional mother characters in Carr’s Midlands Trilogy demonstrate Carr’s interrogation of Irish maternal stereotypes and renegotiation of motherhood.Carr’s plays contest traditional Irish norms of women and provoke consideration of the possibility that alternative versions of the maternal image might be acceptable to encourage people to imagine restrictive conventions anew.