Parenthood as a Theme in English Literature

Résumé du document

"Parenthood" has been defined as a process of bearing or adoption, and rearing of children. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines the concept as "the state of one that begets or brings forth children". According to contemporary standards, "parenthood" involves a number of daily responsibilities, and financial and affective obligations such as the education and instruction of one's children. The notion of "parenthood" also presupposes an active concern for a child's welfare, physical and intellectual development. Initially, parenthood was concerned with teaching the taboo, or what was forbidden, and with inculcating the basic rules and restrictions to the young. As time passed, parenthood began to be seen as a longer process of nurturing. It was increasingly centered on the concept of caring. Such was the case of certain Utopian societies founded in America, such as the Owenite societies of the 19th century, which developed some of the first kindergartens. Here, children were raised and educated together and society itself was engaged in a collective effort of parenting. The same concept was developed in Europe almost at the same time in Germany. In fact, defining "parenthood" is a recent preoccupation but the concerns and worries of parenthood are as old as the world.

Extraits

[...] It also introduces a new literary theme that is to be explored throughout the 19th and 20th centuries the creator is also a parent to be held responsible for his creation. The period also saw some pre-Freudian, post-gothic musings by E. A. Poe. In his Ligeia (1838), Poe reflects on the obsessive behaviour of a single father, linking eroticism and parenthood into a narrative of morbid incest. The 18th and 19th centuries were concerned with establishing models for the roles of parents of both sexes, consigning the women to the domestic sphere and the men to the public. [...]

[...] The Gothic Family Romance. Heterosexuality, Child Sacrifice and the Anglo-Irish Colonial Order, Durham and London: Duke University Press Erickson, Robert A. Mother Midnight. Birth, Sex, and Fate in Eighteenth- Century Fiction (Defoe, Richardson, and Sterne), New York AMS Press Inc Flint, Christopher. Family Fictions. Narrative and Domestic Relations in Britain 1798, Stanford (California, USA): Stanford University Press Hilton, Mary. Women and the Shaping of the Nation's Young. Education and Public Doctrine in Britain 1750 1850, Ashgate Publishing Ltd McKeon, Michael. [...]

[...] Parenthood became at once a duty and an obligation. Some of the paintings and drawings of J. E. Millais depict the ideal family and present the image of successful parenthood (e.g. The Young Mother, 1856; The Crawley Family, 1860; The Ruling Passion, 1885). Much in the same fashion, the beginning of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women (1868) announces the typical family structure with Beth's famous We've got Father and Mother, and each other Alcott's book is said to represent the female revolt against 19th century assumptions that a “female genius” cannot be a parent but it also explores the cult of femininity, of childbearing and parenting, roles to be contested by some feminists but advocated by others. [...]

[...] Parenthood as a Theme in English Literature “Parenthood” has been defined as a process of bearing or adoption, and rearing of children. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines the concept as state of one that begets or brings forth children”. According to contemporary standards, “parenthood” involves a number of daily responsibilities, and financial and affective obligations such as the education and instruction of one's children. The notion of “parenthood” also presupposes an active concern for a child's welfare, physical and intellectual development. [...]

[...] Both plays introduce us to a host of strict, forbidding parents whose word is law. Every opposition to their wishes on the domestic or public level has diverse implications on the scale of the great chain of being. Hamlet's revolt brings political change and Romeo and Juliet's deaths launch a breach of succession. The authority of parenthood in both plays is the highest authority conceivable. In Macbeth, on the other hand, the fear of disobedience to the king is essentially a fear of causing disbalance on a natural and divine level. [...]