“我收回我说过的一切”:米尔德里德·皮尔斯的矛盾心理和母性

IF 0.1 4区 社会学 0 HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY
T. Sommer
{"title":"“我收回我说过的一切”:米尔德里德·皮尔斯的矛盾心理和母性","authors":"T. Sommer","doi":"10.22439/asca.v51i2.5977","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This article discusses motherhood in James M. Cain’s Mildred Pierce (1941). It argues that academic criticism so far has neglected the important contribution Cain’s text makes to debates concerning motherhood norms in the post-Depression years. The article takes as its central concern the fraught relationship between Mildred and her daughter, Veda. Building on Sianne Ngai’s theory of “ugly feelings,” the article claims that Mildred’s ambivalent emotional responses to her daughter reveal how social norms obstruct mothers’ agency. Rather than categorically rejecting Veda’s bad behavior, Mildred’s anger, pain, fear, and jealousy are retracted immediately after they surface. As such, Mildred’s maternal emotions are ambivalent and should be perceived as ugly feelings that have the potential to diagnose situations of obstructed agency. This article thus argues for the complexity of Cain’s representation of motherhood and shows how mothers’ ambivalent emotions reveal limited agency in their navigation of social norms.","PeriodicalId":40729,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN STUDIES IN SCANDINAVIA","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1000,"publicationDate":"2019-09-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":"{\"title\":\"“I Take Everything Back That I Said”: Ambivalence and Motherhood in Mildred Pierce\",\"authors\":\"T. Sommer\",\"doi\":\"10.22439/asca.v51i2.5977\",\"DOIUrl\":null,\"url\":null,\"abstract\":\"This article discusses motherhood in James M. Cain’s Mildred Pierce (1941). It argues that academic criticism so far has neglected the important contribution Cain’s text makes to debates concerning motherhood norms in the post-Depression years. The article takes as its central concern the fraught relationship between Mildred and her daughter, Veda. Building on Sianne Ngai’s theory of “ugly feelings,” the article claims that Mildred’s ambivalent emotional responses to her daughter reveal how social norms obstruct mothers’ agency. Rather than categorically rejecting Veda’s bad behavior, Mildred’s anger, pain, fear, and jealousy are retracted immediately after they surface. As such, Mildred’s maternal emotions are ambivalent and should be perceived as ugly feelings that have the potential to diagnose situations of obstructed agency. This article thus argues for the complexity of Cain’s representation of motherhood and shows how mothers’ ambivalent emotions reveal limited agency in their navigation of social norms.\",\"PeriodicalId\":40729,\"journal\":{\"name\":\"AMERICAN STUDIES IN SCANDINAVIA\",\"volume\":null,\"pages\":null},\"PeriodicalIF\":0.1000,\"publicationDate\":\"2019-09-26\",\"publicationTypes\":\"Journal Article\",\"fieldsOfStudy\":null,\"isOpenAccess\":false,\"openAccessPdf\":\"\",\"citationCount\":\"1\",\"resultStr\":null,\"platform\":\"Semanticscholar\",\"paperid\":null,\"PeriodicalName\":\"AMERICAN STUDIES IN SCANDINAVIA\",\"FirstCategoryId\":\"1085\",\"ListUrlMain\":\"https://doi.org/10.22439/asca.v51i2.5977\",\"RegionNum\":4,\"RegionCategory\":\"社会学\",\"ArticlePicture\":[],\"TitleCN\":null,\"AbstractTextCN\":null,\"PMCID\":null,\"EPubDate\":\"\",\"PubModel\":\"\",\"JCR\":\"0\",\"JCRName\":\"HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY\",\"Score\":null,\"Total\":0}","platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"AMERICAN STUDIES IN SCANDINAVIA","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.22439/asca.v51i2.5977","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1

摘要

本文在詹姆斯·M·凯恩的《米尔德丽德·皮尔斯》(1941)中讨论了母性。它认为,到目前为止,学术批评忽视了凯恩的文本对后大萧条时期关于母性规范的辩论所做出的重要贡献。这篇文章以米尔德里德和她的女儿吠陀之间令人担忧的关系为中心。这篇文章以Sianne Ngai的“丑陋的感觉”理论为基础,声称米尔德里德对女儿矛盾的情感反应揭示了社会规范如何阻碍母亲的能动性。米尔德丽德没有断然拒绝吠陀的不良行为,而是在愤怒、痛苦、恐惧和嫉妒浮出水面后立即收回。因此,米尔德里德的母性情绪是矛盾的,应该被视为丑陋的感觉,有可能诊断出代理障碍的情况。因此,本文论证了凯恩对母亲形象的复杂性,并展示了母亲的矛盾情绪如何揭示出她们在社会规范导航中的有限能动性。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
“I Take Everything Back That I Said”: Ambivalence and Motherhood in Mildred Pierce
This article discusses motherhood in James M. Cain’s Mildred Pierce (1941). It argues that academic criticism so far has neglected the important contribution Cain’s text makes to debates concerning motherhood norms in the post-Depression years. The article takes as its central concern the fraught relationship between Mildred and her daughter, Veda. Building on Sianne Ngai’s theory of “ugly feelings,” the article claims that Mildred’s ambivalent emotional responses to her daughter reveal how social norms obstruct mothers’ agency. Rather than categorically rejecting Veda’s bad behavior, Mildred’s anger, pain, fear, and jealousy are retracted immediately after they surface. As such, Mildred’s maternal emotions are ambivalent and should be perceived as ugly feelings that have the potential to diagnose situations of obstructed agency. This article thus argues for the complexity of Cain’s representation of motherhood and shows how mothers’ ambivalent emotions reveal limited agency in their navigation of social norms.
求助全文
通过发布文献求助,成功后即可免费获取论文全文。 去求助
来源期刊
AMERICAN STUDIES IN SCANDINAVIA
AMERICAN STUDIES IN SCANDINAVIA HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY-
CiteScore
0.20
自引率
0.00%
发文量
8
期刊介绍: American Studies in Scandinavia, the journal of the Nordic Association for American Studies, is published twice each year, and carries scholarly articles and reviews on a wide range of American Studies topics and disciplines, including history, literature, politics, geography, media, language, diplomacy, race, ethnicity, economics, law, culture and society. American Studies in Scandinavia is sponsored by the National Councils for Research in Science and the Humanities in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, the journal is published by Odense University Press with the financial support of the Nordic Publications Committee for Humanist Periodicals.
×
引用
GB/T 7714-2015
复制
MLA
复制
APA
复制
导出至
BibTeX EndNote RefMan NoteFirst NoteExpress
×
提示
您的信息不完整,为了账户安全,请先补充。
现在去补充
×
提示
您因"违规操作"
具体请查看互助需知
我知道了
×
提示
确定
请完成安全验证×
copy
已复制链接
快去分享给好友吧!
我知道了
右上角分享
点击右上角分享
0
联系我们:info@booksci.cn Book学术提供免费学术资源搜索服务,方便国内外学者检索中英文文献。致力于提供最便捷和优质的服务体验。 Copyright © 2023 布克学术 All rights reserved.
京ICP备2023020795号-1
ghs 京公网安备 11010802042870号
Book学术文献互助
Book学术文献互助群
群 号:481959085
Book学术官方微信