{"id":32707,"date":"2013-08-04T03:05:48","date_gmt":"2013-08-04T03:05:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=32707"},"modified":"2016-11-01T00:54:13","modified_gmt":"2016-11-01T00:54:13","slug":"her-mammy%e2%80%99s-daughter-symbolic-matricide-and-racial-constructions-of-motherhood-in-charles-w-chesnutt%e2%80%99s-%e2%80%9cher-virginia-mammy%e2%80%9d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=32707","title":{"rendered":"Her Mammy\u2019s Daughter: Symbolic Matricide and Racial Constructions of Motherhood in Charles W. Chesnutt\u2019s \u201cHer Virginia Mammy\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Her Mammy\u2019s Daughter: Symbolic Matricide and Racial Constructions of Motherhood in Charles W. Chesnutt\u2019s \u201cHer Virginia Mammy\u201d <\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

49th Parallel: An Interdisciplinary Journal of North American Studies<\/a>
\nIssue 16: Autumn 2005<\/a>
\nISSN: 1753-5794<\/p>\n

Laura Dawkins<\/a><\/strong>, Professor of English
\nMurray State University, Murray, Kentucky<\/em><\/p>\n

The black mother in slavery and beyond has inspired a growing body of contemporary literature by African-American women.\u00a0 Following Margaret Walker\u2019s<\/a> lead in her 1942 poem \u201cLineage,\u201d and\u2014more famously\u2014Alice Walker\u2019s<\/a> example in her landmark essay, \u201cIn Search of Our Mothers\u2019 Gardens<\/a>\u201d (1983), a significant number of black women writers have honored their foremothers in poetry, fiction, and memoir. Indeed, the celebratory strain in African-American women\u2019s writings about maternal influence upon their lives and work has been so pronounced that Marianne Hirsch<\/a>, discussing the pervasiveness of daughterly \u201cmatrophobia\u201d in twentieth-century literature, admits that she cannot comfortably include works by black women in her parade of examples, since so many of these writers\u2014in contrast to their white contemporaries\u2014seem determined to avoid any hint of \u201cmother-blame\u201d in both fictional and non-fictional works.\u00a0 Pointing out the \u201ctremendously powerful need [for black women writers] to present to the public a positive image of black womanhood,\u201d Hirsch quotes E. Frances White\u2019s<\/a> declaration of the African-American woman\u2019s singular obligation to suppress less-than-ideal portrayals of black maternal figures: \u201cHow dare we admit the psychological battles that need to be fought with the very women who taught us to survive in this racist and sexist world?\u00a0 We would feel like ungrateful traitors\u201d (177).<\/p>\n

Yet according to Mary Helen Washington<\/a>, the absence of \u201cmatrophobia\u201d in works by contemporary black women writers reflects not a suppression of the issue of mother-daughter conflict (as Hirsch and White suggest), and an impossible idealization of maternal influence (such as critic Dianne Sadoff<\/a> finds in Walker\u2019s essay), but the actual healthy state of affairs between black mothers and daughters.\u00a0 Washington affirms the \u201cgenerational continuity between [black daughters] and their mothers,\u201d an enduring bond that inspires many African-American women writers to \u201cname their mothers as models,\u201d and to \u201cchallenge the fiction of mother-daughter hostility\u201d (160).\u00a0 In Washington\u2019s view, black mothers and daughters, both because of and in spite of the painful historical legacy they share, do not succumb to the anger and upheaval associated with the traditional mother-daughter relationship…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Her Mammy\u2019s Daughter: Symbolic Matricide and Racial Constructions of Motherhood in Charles W. Chesnutt\u2019s \u201cHer Virginia Mammy\u201d 49th Parallel: An Interdisciplinary Journal of North American Studies Issue 16: Autumn 2005 ISSN: 1753-5794 Laura Dawkins, Professor of English Murray State University, Murray, Kentucky The black mother in slavery and beyond has inspired a growing body of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1196,8,20,25],"tags":[10444,333,898,897,15340],"class_list":["post-32707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-usa","category-women","tag-49th-parallel-an-interdisciplinary-journal-of-north-american-studies","tag-charles-chesnutt","tag-charles-w-chesnutt","tag-charles-waddell-chesnutt","tag-laura-dawkins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32707"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32707\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49708,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32707\/revisions\/49708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}