Re-Envisioning the Freudian Mother in Southern Literature

Through the lens of a feminist psychoanalytic framework, Re-Envisioning the Freudian Mother in Southern Literature re-evaluates the mother-child dynamic as one far more complicated than what is present in typical psychoanalytic readings. Under this framework, Jill Goad explores the figure of the mother through Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind, William Faulkner’s Light in August, Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, Eudora Welty’s The Golden Apples, Natasha Trethewey’s Native Guard and other poems, and Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing. The author argues that the Freudian concept of castration occurring at birth rather than a child’s early years, contrasting the Freudian-influenced theorists dominate the notion of psychoanalysis in literature. Goad's approach to analyzing mothers and the consequences of birth classifies mother figures as powerful and complex instead of weak, frightening, or two-dimensional. Re-Envisioning the Freudian Mother in Southern Literature encourages a complete re-evaluation of the mother as one who gives birth to selfhood and subjectivity as opposed to a lack of agency.