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Angela Foster's collection Mothers Accused and Abused marks an invaluable update to Estella Welldon's seminal book Mother, Madonna, Whore published more than thirty years ago. The theme of working with mothers who are perverse or who have harmed or killed their children presents profound challenges to all healthcare and legal professionals who are responsible for their care and management. One is inescapably presented with irreconcilable dichotomies in being able to think about them. Society depicts such women in polar terms—fallen angels or incorrigible prostitutes—both attitudes of psychological distancing in one way or the other. Generally the societal wish is to “get rid” of such women, in prisons and secure psychiatric units, in order to avoid having to think about them.
As I was reading this remarkable collection of essays on Mothers, I happened to rewatch the famous Hollywood classic Mary Poppins (1964). This time around, I was struck most, not any more by the wonderful Ms Poppins, or indeed by any of the memorable songs, but by the puzzling, strangely muted, even flat character of Winifred Banks. She is the mother of the two children and the wife of the brooding father. In the film, her character appears strong, devoted to the suffragette movement ostensibly, but it happens to play no significant role in the emotional drama that unfolds in the Banks household. I asked myself: why doesn't she figure in the grievances of the children? She is the mother after all! Why isn't she more involved in their care? And neither does she seem to manifest any guilt, either, in relation to any perceived neglect of them. And most of all, she appears to manifest no envy or jealousy towards Ms Poppins, who waltzes into the lives of the children and restores their father to them, and indeed flies away afterwards.
I believe the character of Winifred Banks reflects the flat, two-dimensional version of motherhood and womanhood we found in societal thinking before Estella Welldon's w