ABSTRACT

Written by adults for children, children’s literature plays a significant role in shaping readers’ identities and worldviews, including those relating to gender and death. In two Australian children’s novels, The Shape (2000) by Diane Bates and The Naming of Tishkin Silk (2003) by Glenda Millard, the generic depiction of motherhood meets new representational agendas relating to sudden unexplained death in infancy and grieving at a politically charged price. Primarily drawing on an Irigarayian theory relating to motherhood, and patriarchal language and discourse, this paper argues that the depressed mothers in these two novels function as spectral figures, whose absent presence and present absence haunt both the child protagonists and the texts. Moreover, the fictional mothers’ healing is dependent on their relationship to their surviving children, which ensures that ideologies of motherhood are contained within patriarchal discourses in these texts for children.

摘要

儿童文学由成人为儿童撰写，在塑造读者的身份和世界观方面发挥着重要作用，包括与性别和死亡有关的身份和世界观。在两部澳大利亚儿童小说中，黛安·贝茨 (Diane Bates) 的《形状》 (2000) 和蒂什金丝绸的命名（2003 年）格伦达·米勒德（Glenda Millard）对母性的一般描述符合新的代表性议程，这些议程与婴儿期突然无法解释的死亡和以政治代价的悲痛有关。本文主要借鉴与母性、父权语言和话语有关的伊里加拉伊人理论，认为这两部小说中抑郁的母亲扮演着幽灵般的角色，她们的缺席和缺席都困扰着儿童主人公和文本。此外，虚构母亲的治愈取决于她们与幸存子女的关系，这确保了母亲的意识形态包含在这些儿童文本的父权话语中。