"The Case of the Missing Mother: Maternal Issues in Vidor's Stella Dallas" E. Ann Kaplan

Kaplan's article posits that the Mother has been marginalized by both patriarchy and the feminist movement- her position has been limited to that of the spectator, both on and off screen. Hollywood has restricted the Mother to the periphery and when she is represented, it is within the confines of dominant Western mythology, which forces the Mother to occupy one of the following paradigms:

1. The Good Mother
2. The Bad Mother of Witch
3. The Heroic Mother
4. The Silly, Weak, or Vain Mother

Kaplan claims "Narratives that do focus on the Mother usually take that focus because she resists her proper place. The work of the film is to reinscribe the Mother in the position patriarchy desires for her and, in doing so, teach the female audience the dangers of stepping out of the given position" (469). In accordance, a Mother's love must be both "destructive and self-defeating"(475), and any interest expressed in self- development is selfish and neglectful- the Good Mother does not have a sexual appetite, nor is she single. Such a double standard can be witnessed in both Stella Dallas and the film noir, Mildred Pierce. It is my experience that Kaplan's troubling position retains its veracity within the context of contemporary film- particularly within the genre of melodrama, which ironically, is labeled as a "women's genre". How can a genuine feminine space be dominated by a myth ("Mother-as-spectator" 476) that remains central to the phallocentric order, one that deprives the Mother of her autonomy and refuses her literal perspective? Kaplan notes that the "solution" to this problem, as presented by more recent representations of Motherhood, is not in fact a solution at all- while fathers have been allowed to adapt characteristics coded as feminine, i.e. nurturing, the independent Mother who refuses one of the aforementioned roles is labeled "career obsessed" and thus, evil. In exposing this injustice, Kaplan reveals another group discarded by the phallocentric hierarchy as well as its opposition- a group that is in desperate need of reexamination/ repositioning as it seems an inevitable discourse within the universal and individual female trajectory.

Kaplan, E. Ann. "The Case of the Missing Mother." Feminism and Film. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Print.