Title: Mothers of Future Kings: The Madonna Redux Phenomenon
Abstract: This article investigates how images of Diana, Princess of Wales partake in Victorian constructions of femininity that uphold sacred cult of motherhood. Such images are staged affairs, constructed and performed as part of a princess' main responsibilities as a dutiful and loving mother. A comparison of Diana and Alexandra, Princess of Wales will demonstrate how Diana's mothering function is constructed. Her sexual being is denied because it is a sexuality that is out of sync with essentially Victorian construction of woman as devoted wife and mother. This article addresses this cult of motherhood as an embodiment of third wave feminist empowerment through investigating how a princess wields power through her maternality. Such representations participate in a debate about power within postmodern discourses. Myra Macdonald argues that [w]hat attitude we take in this debate hinges on whether we see experimentation with image and style, encouraged by postmodernism, as meaningless playful fun or, alternatively, as meaningful parody, challenging and resisting male-dominated conventions(35). In this regard, this article will account for a third wave feminism that allows such representations of women to be read in terms of gender and power, not conformity and repression. What is telling are ways in which Victorian constructions of princess as mother are maintained as Diana--an icon of late twentieth-century femininity--is entangled in patriarchal structures of monarchy in sacred cult of motherhood and, by extension, family. Adrienne Munich, claims that [t]o imagine unproblematic motherhood, one needs never to have borne children (192). In Victorian period, for a princess to have a womanly influence meant that she had to deny her body and its natural functions. In fact she became disembodied once she was idealized as Victorian Angel in House. The Angel in House, itself a construction, promised a woman manly protection and economic support in exchange for her saintly, moral guidance over her husband and children, and her dedication to home and hearth. John Ruskin promoted this ideal: woman's power is for rule, not for battle,--and her intellect is not for invention or creation, but for sweet ordering, arrangement, and decision.... By her office, and place, she is protected from all danger and temptation.... [home] is place of Peace; shelter, not only from all injury, but from all terror, doubt, and division. (121; 122) The Angel is safely ensconced in home, bosom of her family, emblematic of comfort and nurturance of her own womb. Ruskin echoes Sarah Stickney Ellis who, in her Women of England of 1839, characterizes this angel as the humble monitress who sat alone, guarding fireside comforts of this distant home ... her character, clothed in moral beauty, has ... sent him [her husband] back to that beloved home, a wiser and a better man(31). Her role as angel monitress was widely understood by mid-Victorian period when her status as a leisured lady became symbolic of her husband's economic success. Her role as moral guide contained and controlled her sexuality, emphasizing instead her duties to reproduction. On 6 January 1866, an engraving of The Princess of Wales with Infant Prince Albert Victor appeared in Illustrated London News (figure 1). Here, as mother of a future king, Alexandra embodies Angel of House, her protective wings encircling her infant child. The article that accompanied picture placed it firmly within Victorian tradition of sacred cult of motherhood: [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] A young mother, holding a baby of two years, is one of loveliest and holiest objects.... [W]e must look upon this attitude of womanhood grouped with childhood as an embodiment of most sacred affections and capabilities of human nature; and ideal of maternity, which mystic piety of Middle Ages was inclined to worship . …
Publication Year: 2003
Publication Date: 2003-04-01
Language: en
Type: article
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