Disney movies - mothers missing?

[John G]

Narnia started off with the kids getting sent away and there was an evil White Witch.

 

[EmeraldHope]

Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz had no mother either- lived with Auntie EM

 

[Thomas Alan]

This discussion reminded me of an old song:

Sometimes I feel like a motherless child
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child
A long ways from home
A long ways from home
True believer
A long ways from home
Along ways from home

Living in a male dominated world, the Mother images are missing and longed for without our knowing. I, too, hadn't noticed the missing or departed mothers in movies and fairy-tales. Even God is mostly depicted or referred to as male.

The male hero as a motherless child. Hmmm....

Mac

 

[loreta]

The mother is not there, we are orphans in a fairy tale but the work of the character is to find himself in a world without mother. But there are Queens and princess. Queens maybe are a sort of mother, I don't know. We live under a big patriarch civilization and mothers are not important, nor now nor in the past. Mothers have no word at all, is this because they are old? Young girls yes, they are heroines but they are young. They are attractive. Where are the mothers? Who wrote fairy tales? Men. Is there some fairy tales that were written by women? I don't think so. But maybe I am wrong.

So maybe fairy tales are the vision of men, that were able to write what the tradition and legends were told. Mothers are not there because they were not perceived anymore like divines, important. In Occident. I am sure that in other cultures is different.

 

[whitecoast]

Maybe one reason mothers or protective figures are absent in some instances, is that the absence of the mother indicates that the hero has passed a certain threshold and must fight on his or her own in the world from that point on.

Since often fairy tales are instructive on how to deal with strangers, wolves, psychopaths, etc, the concept of the mother being there doesn't gel with the hero solving the problems on his or her own. Solving on one's own with the mother there by association kind of implies that the protective motherly figure was deficient in some fashion, or couldn't do it all entirely by herself. It is more reasonable, OSIT, that the mother accomplished Her role in the hero's life, and it was now up to the hero to step into the trials and tribulations, to unify the Goddess, atone with the Father, attain the holy grail or magical elixer, etc. If my recollection of Joseph Campbell serves me correctly. ^__^

I heard that the Brother's Grimm stories often replaced evil mother figures with stepmothers because the notion of an evil mother was something too horrible to comprehend- even though they do certainly exist out there. Perhaps this dichotomy of the absent mother or evil stand-in stepmother represents polar opposites of the hero being sent on his or her journey, and the entrapping evil mother that strangles and smothers or otherwise monopolizes the creative energy the hero could himself or herself represent.

I somewhat see a parallel between that theme and Adventures With Cassiopeia. The C's helped to give Laura answers she could not find anywhere else at the time. This was a great boon and aid, but eventually when new conflicts began arising the C's increasingly insisted that Laura start solving problems and issues on her own without assistance. That doesn't reflect poorly on the C's of course- that's simply not their role in the universe or Laura's life. If they did lead by the hand, they would have just been another STS channel that satisfied whims and prevented the channeler from solving their own problems or discovering their own potential. That, I think, would be the evil mother figure that prevents the hero from being able to venture out on his or her own.

 

[Zadius Sky]

Parzival also (after the Eschenbach version) where he grows up without his father and alone with his mother until he likes to become a knight, well it is the other way around then, also when the mother dies then, because he left for his journey.

Reading that bit reminds me of Telemachus and an absence of his father that prompts him to begin a "journey" in the Odyssey (although it was a "push" from Athena).

I read sometime ago a very interesting book about fairy tales by Bruno Bettelheim. I don't remember if he talks about the feminine side, or the absence of mothers but surely. You should read his book, me too, I have it and I gave it to a friend and the book never return at home! Bruno was an interesting man.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Bettelheim

But I read his book longtime ago, so I don't know if his philosophy is correct regarding what we are learning here.

I was about to post the below this morning about just that when the "moving house" popped up and I will re-paste it here:

I have recently started reading Bruno Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment (2010 edition) where "no-mother" theme is mentioned briefly. (Keep in mind that Bettelheim was influenced greatly by Freud's works but there are some interesting clues there).

In order to master the psychological problems of growing up - overcoming narcissistic disappointments, oedipal dilemmas, sibling rivalries; becoming able to relinquish childhood dependencies; gaining a feeling of selfhood and of self-worth, and a sense of moral obligation - a child needs to understand what is going on within his conscious self so that he can also cope with that which goes on in his unconscious. He can achieve this understanding, and with it the ability to cope, not through rational comprehension of the nature and content of his unconscious, but by becoming familiar with it through spinning out daydreams - ruminating, rearranging, and fantasizing about suitable story elements in response to unconscious pressures. By doing this, the child fits unconscious content into conscious fantasies, which then enable him to deal with that content. It is here that fairy tales have unequaled value, because they offer new dimensions to the child's imagination which would be impossible for him to discover as truly on his own. Even more important, the form and structure of fairy tales suggest images to the child by which he can structure his daydreams and with them give better direction to his life.

(snipped)

There is a widespread refusal to let children know that the source of much that goes wrong in life is due to our very own natures - the propensity of all men for acting aggressively, asocially, selfishly, out of anger and anxiety. Instead, we want our children to believe that, inherently, all men are good. But children know that they are not always good; and often, even when they are, they would prefer not to be. This contradicts what they are told by their parents, and therefore makes the child a monster in his own eyes.

The dominant culture wishes to pretend, particularly where children are concerned, that the dark side of man does not exist, and professes a brief in an optimistic meliorism. Psychoanalysis itself is viewed as having the purpose of making life easy - but this is not what its founder intended. Psychoanalysis was created to enable man to accept the problematic nature of life without being defeated by it, or giving in to escapism. Freud's prescription is that only by struggling courageously against what seem life overwhelming odds can man succeed in wringing meaning out of his existence.

This is exactly the message that fairy tales get across to the child in manifold form: that a struggle against severe difficulties in life is unavoidable, is an intrinsic part of human existence - but that if one does not shy away, but steadfastly meets unexpected and often unjust hardships, one masters all obstacles and at the end emerges victorious.

Modern stories written for young children mainly avoid these existential problems, although they are crucial issues for all of us. The child needs most particularly to be given suggestions in symbolic form about how he may deal with these issues and grow safely into maturity. "Safe" stories mention neither death nor aging, the limits to our existence, nor the wish for eternal life. The fairy tale, by contrast, confronts the child squarely with the basic human predicaments.

For example, many fairy stories begin with the death of a mother or father; in these tales the death of the parent creates the most agonizing problems, as it (or the fear of it) does in real life. Other stories tell about an aging parent who decides that the time has come to let the new generation take over. But before this can happen, the successor has to prove himself capable and worthy. The Brothers Grimm's story "The Three Feathers" begins: "There was once upon a time a king who had three sons...When the king had become old and weak, and was thinking of his end, he did not know which of his sons should inherit the kingdom after him." In order to decide, the king sets all his sons a difficult task; the son who meets it best "shall be king after my death."

It is characteristic of fairy tales to state an existential dilemma briefly and pointedly. This permits the child to come to grips with the problem in its most essential form, where a more complex plot would confuse matters for him. The fairy tale simplifies all situations. Its figures are clearly drawn; and details, unless very important, are eliminated. All characters are typical rather than unique.

(snipped)

Today children no longer grow up within the security of an extended family, or of a well-integrated community. Therefore, even more than at the times fairy tales were invented, it is important to provide the modern child with images of heroes who have to go out into the world all by themselves and who, although originally ignorant of the ultimate things, find secure places in the world by following their right way with deep inner confidence.

The fairy-tale hero proceeds for a time in isolation, as the modern child often feels isolated. The hero is helped by being in touch with primitive things - a tree, an animal, nature - as the child feels more in touch with those things than most adults do. The fate of these heroes convinces the child that, like them, he may feel outcast and abandoned in the world, groping in the dark, but, like them, in the course of his life he will be guided step by step, and given help when it is needed. Today, even more than in past times, the child needs the reassurance offered by the image of the isolated man who nevertheless is capable of achieving meaningful and rewarding relations with the world around him.

I am still reading this book and I might post some more interesting bits here.

 

[echo]

Fairy tales are really full of orphans! I thought of H.C. Andersen, a lot of his stories seem to be missing a mother (ugly duckling, thumbelina, little mermaid, the little match girl, the princess and the pea)
He did write one story about a mother, called "the story of a mother". I find it hard to interpret, but here is a synopsis:

_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_a_Mother

A mother has not slept for three days and nights watching over her sick child. When she closes her eyes for just a moment, Death comes and takes her child. The mother rushes into the street and asks a woman, who is Night, which way Death went.

"Death walks faster than the wind and never returns what he has taken."
"Tell me which way he went and I will find him!"

Night tells her to go into the forest, but first the mother must sing every lullaby that she has ever sung for her child. In the forest, a thorn bush tells her which way to continue, but only after she has warmed the bush by pressing it to her chest, causing her to bleed. The mother then reaches a lake that carries her across in exchange for her eyes, which she cries out.
The now blind mother reaches the greenhouse where Death cares for the flowers and trees, each one a human life. Here the mother finds the little sick plant that is her child, recognizing it by the sound of its heartbeat. The old woman who helps care for the greenhouse tells her, in exchange for her hair, that when Death comes, she must threaten to rip up the other flowers. Death will then be afraid for he must answer to God; only God decides when the plants are pulled up and planted in the garden of Paradise, where we do not know what happens.
Death comes carrying the child and when he asks the mother how she could have gotten there before him, she answers,
"I am a mother."
She threatens to rip out two of the flowers, but when Death asks her if she would make two other mothers as unhappy as she is, she immediately lets go. Death gives her back her eyes and asks her to look into a well. Here she sees the futures of two children, one full of happiness and love, the other full of misery and despair. He says that one of these futures would be the future of her child, were it to live.
Then the mother screams in fear, "Which is my child! Rather carry my child into God's kingdom than allow it to suffer such a life."
Death says, "I do not understand. Do you want your child back or should I carry it away into the unknown?"
And the mother wrings her hands, gets down on her knees, and prays to God:
"Do not listen to me when I ask against your will! Do not listen to me, do not listen to me, do not listen to me!"
And Death leaves, carrying her child into the unknown land.

While writing I thought of goldilocks, who doesn´t have a mother either.

 

[The rabbit]

Jack in jack and the beanstalk has a mother. just to throw it in.

 

[EmeraldHope]

Jack in jack and the beanstalk has a mother. just to throw it in.

Yeah- I mentioned him on page 1- but he has no access to her or his father while in the giant's "otherworld"

 

[The rabbit]

Jack in jack and the beanstalk has a mother. just to throw it in.

Yeah- I mentioned him on page 1- but he has no access to her or his father while in the giant's "otherworld"

Still he has a mother , and he does what he does for his mother even though its all wonderfully unorthodox :)

 

[John G]

Jack in jack and the beanstalk has a mother. just to throw it in.

Yeah- I mentioned him on page 1- but he has no access to her or his father while in the giant's "otherworld"

Still he has a mother , and he does what he does for his mother even though its all wonderfully unorthodox :)

The "motherless" stories being mentioned have included being sent away, taken away, and trapped away from Mom as well as actually being motherless (and some but not all add a replacement evil mother-like figure).

 

[EmeraldHope]

I'll go ahead and add Bastian from The Never Ending Story- his mother died. There is a thread that is cross referenced to this one:

http://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php/topic,27722.0.html






ADDED- I just thought also of Lyra from The Golden Compass too

 

[Iron]

The young discovering the world, and at the same time the nurturing energy departs all of a sudden, leaving the "will be" hero in a barren, desolated, imbalanced world focused on male energy.

Now, thinking of it, some of those fairy tales are full with references to the dark aspects of the masculine energy - villains starved for power, hierarchies (often the young here is of nobility and was dethroned).

After the journey the hero reclaims the feminine?

 

[Zadius Sky]

I have recently started reading Bruno Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment (2010 edition) where "no-mother" theme is mentioned briefly. (Keep in mind that Bettelheim was influenced greatly by Freud's works but there are some interesting clues there).

I'm going to add a first few quotes from the above book that referenced to a "mother" in fairy tales that can be added to a data here (all quotes are pulled from the book's index):

In this dark forest the fairy-tale hero often encounters the creation of our wishes and anxieties - the witch - as does one of the brothers in the Brothers Grimm's tale "The Two Brothers." Who would not like to have the power of the witch - or a fairy, or a sorcerer - and use it to satisfy all his desires, to give him all the good things he wishes for himself, and to punish his enemies? And who does not fear such powers if some other possesses them and might use them against him? The witch - more than the other creations of our imagination which we have invested with magic powers, the fairy and the sorcerer - in her opposite aspects is a reincarnation of the all-good mother of infancy and the all-bad mother of the oedipal crisis. But she is no longer seen halfway realistically, as a mother who is lovingly all giving and an opposite stepmother who is rejectingly demanding, but entirely unrealistically, as either superhumanly rewarding or inhumanly destructive.

These two aspects of the witch are clearly delineated in fairy tales where the hero, lost in the forest, encounters an irresistibly attractive witch who, at first, satisfies all his desires during their relation. This is the all-giving mother of our infancy, whom we all hope to encounter again in our life. Preconsciously or unconsciously, it is this hope of finding her somewhere which gives us the strength to leave home. Thus, in fairy-story manner, we are given to understand that false hopes often lures us on, when we fool ourselves that all we are seeking is an independent existence.

After the witch has fulfilled all the desires of the hero who went out into the world, at some point - usually when he refuses to do her bidding - she turns against him and changes him into an animal, or into stone. That is, she deprives him of all humanity. In these stories the witch resembles the way in which the pre-oedipal mother appears to the child: all-giving, all-satisfying, as long as he does not insist on doing things his way and remains symbiotically tied to her. But as the child begins to assert himself more and do more on his own, the "No's" naturally increase. The child who has put all his trust in this woman, has tied his fate to her - or felt that it is tied to her - now experiences deepest disenchantment; what has given him bread has turned to stone, or so it seems.

The relation to the mother is the most important in every person's life; more than any other it conditions our early personality development, affecting to a large degree what our outlook on life and ourselves will be - whether optimistic or pessimistic, for example. But as far as the infant is concerned, no choice is involved: the mother and her attitude to him are a great "given." So, of course, are the father and one's siblings. (And so are the economic and social conditions of the family; but these influence the young child only through the impact on his parents and their behavior toward him.)

The child begins to feel himself as a person, as a significant and meaningful partner in a human relation, when he begins to relate to the father. One becomes a person only as one defines oneself against another person. Since the mother is the first and for a time the only person in one's life, some very rudimentary self-definition begins with defining oneself in regards to her. But because of his deep dependency on the mother, the child cannot move out into self-definition unless he can learn on some third person. It is a necessary step toward independence to learn "I can also learn, rely, on some person other than Mother" before one can believe that one can manage without learning on somebody. After the child has established a close relationship to one other person, it is his decision - no longer something about which he feels he has no freedom.

Erikson speaks of "a sense of basic trust, which," he says, "is an attitude toward oneself and the world derived from the experience of the first year of life." Basic trust is instilled in the child by the good mothering he experiences during the earliest period of his life. If all goes well then, the child will have confidence in himself and in the world. The helpful animal of the magic tree is an image, embodiment, external representation of this basic trust. It is the heritage which a good mother confers on her child which will stay with him, and preserve and sustain him in direct distress.

The stories where the stepmother kills the helpful animal but does not succeed in depriving Cinderella of what gives her inner strength indicate that for our managing or coping with life, what exists in reality is less important than what goes on in our mind. What makes life bearable even in the worst circumstances is the image of the good mother which we have internalized, so that the disappearance of the external symbol does not matter.

One of the main overt messages of the various "Cinderella" stories is that we are mistaken if we think we must hold on to something in the external world to succeed in life. All efforts of the stepfathers to gain their goal through externals are in vain - their carefully selected and prepared clothes, the frauds through which they try to make their feet fit the shoe. Only being true to oneself, as Cinderella, is, succeeds in the end. The same idea is conveyed by the mother's or the helpful animal's presence not being required. This is psychologically correct, because for one's inner security and feeling of self-worth, no externals are necessary once one has developed basic trust - nor can externals compensate for not having attained basic trust in infancy. Those so unfortunate as to have lost out on basic trust at the beginning of life can achieve it, if at all, only through changes in the inner structure of their mind and personality, never through things that look good.

The image conveyed by the tree growing from a twig or the calf's bones or ashes is that of something different developing out of the original mother, or the experience of her. The image of the tree is particularly pertinent because growth is involved, whether it is Cat Cinderella's date tree or Cinderella's hazel branch. This indicates that simply to retain the internalized image of the mother of a past period is not enough. As the child grows up, this internalized mother must undergo changes, too, as he does. This is a process of dematerialization, similar to that in which the child sublimates the real good mother into an inner experience of basic trust.

In the Brothers Grimm's "Cinderella," all of this is refined even more. Cinderella's inner processes begin with her desperate mourning for her mother, as symbolized by her existence among the ashes. If she remained stuck there, no internal development would occur. Mourning as a temporary transition to continuing life without the loved person is necessary; but for survival it must eventually be turned into something positive: the erection of an internal representation of what has been lost in reality. Such an inner object will always remain inviolate within us, whatever happens in reality. Cinderella's weeping over the planted twig shows that the memory of her dead mother is kept alive; but as the tree grows, so does the internalized mother grow inside Cinderella.

 

[mkrnhr]

As a note, in these stories, there is also the idea of usurpation. The real mother is replaced by an evil step-mother/witch, and somehow a supernatural motherly figure (a fairy, a goddess, etc.) appears to guide the hero/heroine to reclame his/her status for the sake of balance. The real father is almost absent as if his effect is also concealed by the presence of the evil witch. These aspects of the "feminine" could also be seen in older mythologies imho.
On another level, the idea of a child not having his mother in cartoons is to provoque compassion. After all, a child with no mother is defenseless even in real life.