William Styron and the Literature of Early Maternal Loss

The specific connection between early maternal loss, depression, and creativity has not been previously drawn. Rather it has been included within the more generalized role of parental or sibling loss in early childhood.1 To be sure, paternal and sibling loss are also persuasive sources for reparative inspiration in artists. When I initially wrote about the works of author William Styron (b. 1925), I, too, tended to view such losses in that light, although the presence of his mother as muse and haunting fictional figure was overwhelmingly pervasive.

After further reading and thought I am convinced that early maternal loss itself can create a strong predilection in the surviving child not only to become depressed, but also, if sufficiently talented, to become an artist. By “artist” I mean someone who “masters” his experience in such a way that it is defensively recast and projected onto some external form, whether novel or poem, painting or music.2

In its widest interpretation, “artist” could even be extended to include creativity in political life (e.g., Abraham Lincoln, who lost his mother when he was nine),3 and, indeed, to the discoveries of Freud himself, who lost his nurse (surely a mother figure), at a tender age when she was dismissed for theft. The list of authors, in addition to Styron, who have suffered from early maternal loss is formidable, including among them the Brontë sisters (three of whom became famous novelists), William Wordsworth, John Masefield,4 and Virginia Woolf.

Woolf realized that her mother's death was the creative source of her writing:5