An exploration of the mother characters' search for identity based on the playwrights' use of the five mother types found in the 20th century psychoanalytic theory, with specific reference to Sue Glover's plays The Seal Wife (1980) and Bondagers (1991) and Sharman Macdonald's When I Was a Girl, I Used to Scream and Shout (1985) and The Winter Guest (1995).

Abstract

This study focuses on the construction of mother characters in the work of two Scottish female playwrights, with specific reference to the characters' search for identity. Two plays each by Sue Glover and Sharman Macdonald have been analysed in detail; The Seal Wife and Bondagers by Glover and When I Was a Girl, I Used to Scream and Shout and The Winter Guest by Macdonald. The study aims to show how Glover and Macdonald develop complex mother characters in accordance to the five mother types that have been identified through study of psychoanalytic theory of the 20th century - both feminist and otherwise - of Harper and Richards, Jessica Benjamin and others. The study has found that mother characters' perception of identity correlates with the characters' place within patriarchal society, although mother types cross over sporadically into each other. The key overarching mother types have been identified as nurturing, self-sacrificial, overbearing, reluctant and barren and these said types found in psychoanalytic theory are also prevalent in the chosen plays.