Source: The Conversation – UK – By Alison Taft, Course Director of Creative Writing, Leeds Beckett University
For Mother’s Day, we asked ten of our academic experts to tell us who they think is the worst mother in literature. From serious villains to children’s book baddies, these mothers subvert every maternal instinct.
1. Mummy, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman (2017)
Isolated, broken and wedded to routine, 30-year-old Eleanor avoids mirrors, not due to the physical scars she bears, but because she sees “too much of Mummy’s face there”.
Readers meet “Mummy” only through her weekly conversations with Eleanor, but as a critical voice she is unsurpassed: “You’re not smart, Eleanor. You’re someone who lets people down. Someone who can’t be trusted. Someone who failed.” We soon learn there are no depths to which this mother hasn’t sunk.
The novel serves as a stark reminder that a mother’s reach goes far beyond childhood. “The two of us are linked forever, you see – same blood in my veins that’s running through yours. You grew inside me, your teeth and your tongue and your cervix are all made from my cells, my genes.”
The novel’s message – that recovering from an experience so embodied is possible – offers hope to all those with less than ideal mothers.
Alison Taft is a senior lecturer in creative writing
2. Edith Stoner, Stoner by John Williams (1965)
Stoner was the first novel that gave me a book hangover with its devastating family dynamics and tragic ending. Edith is a chilling example of maternal dysfunction. I only realised in later readings that her emotionally repressed upbringing and potential abuse result in her perpetuating familial dysfunction.
Edith is initially indifferent and cold towards her daughter Grace, but her interest awakens when a bond develops between Grace and her husband. Grace then becomes a weapon: Edith systematically isolates the girl from her father by controlling her time and manipulating her affections. Over time, she manages to place a wedge between them.
Grace eventually grows into a struggling young woman. She’s an alcoholic and escapes her troubled home when she accidentally falls pregnant and marries. She becomes a distant, unavailable mother herself. The novel’s engagement with trauma cycles left me feeling heartbroken for days.
Christina Hennemann is a PhD candidate in English
3. Arabella Don, Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy (1895)
The conniving Arabella Donn from Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure illustrates the uncomfortable truth that being a bad mother can sometimes be essential for self preservation.
Hardy shows Arabella bathed in blood as she cheerfully slaughters a long-suffering pig, signalling her pragmatic refusal of feminine sentimentality. She approaches marriage, pregnancy and motherhood with similarly callous logic; as strategies for survival in a world offering women woefully little security. Arabella initially fakes pregnancy to trap Jude, and then blithely abandons her son when he proves inconvenient.
By conventional standards, Arabella’s maternity appears monstrous. Yet Hardy’s portrayal reflects a far more monstrous reality; selfless maternity is a dangerous liability in a society that neither protects women nor meaningfully supports motherhood. Arabella survives precisely because she is an appalling mother. Yet if we were to cast blame for her maternal failures, it lies less with Arabella than with the social conditions that make motherhood such a profoundly vulnerable predicament.
Angela Dunstan is a reader in English literature and visual culture
4. Samira, The Beginning and the End by Naguib Mahfouz (1949)
Egyptian Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz’s novel The Beginning and the End presents widowed mother Samira as a figure often praised for her strength and virtue. After losing her husband, she takes on the challenge of holding together a family reduced to poverty. She is strict and disciplined and expects her four children to sacrifice for one another.
For me, however, she is a deeply flawed mother. Like other neglectful maternal figures in Mahfouz’s work, she cloaks her selfishness and emotional blindness in the language of duty and sacrifice.
Nefisa, the plain member of the family, is pushed into making sacrifices for her brothers. Samira directs all her concern and ambition toward her sons, while remaining blind to her daughter’s needs.
Nefisa becomes a seamstress, starved of love and deprived of any prospect of marriage. Left unprotected, she encounters unsavoury characters on her way to and from work, and eventually becomes a sex worker.
Samira may seem a paragon of virtue, but her rigid morality and refusal to see her daughter’s suffering make her complicit in Nefisa’s tragic end.
Wen-chin Ouyang is a professor of Arabic and comparative literature
5. Mrs Wormwood, Matilda by Roald Dahl (1988)
Before “phubbing” – snubbing your child in favour of interacting with your phone – there was Mrs Wormwood, the mother of Roald Dahl’s Matilda.
Wormwood is in thrall to TV shows and TV dinners, looks not books. She is uninterested in her preschooler’s safety, let alone pastimes. While she plays bingo on weekday afternoons, four-year-old Matilda walks across town to the public library.
Mrs Phelps, a kindly librarian, is the first of two substitute mothers. She watches over Matilda while she reads, with concern but without interference, guiding her reading only when asked. Miss Honey – a mild, quiet and exceptionally empathetic teacher – stretches her clever little charge, while teaching the rest of the juniors to read.
When Matilda’s equally awful father gives her half-an-hour to pack for a permanent move to Spain, she arranges to be adopted by Miss Honey – with her mother’s blessing: “It’ll be one less to look after.”
Sarah Olive is a senior lecturer in English literature
6. Adora Crellin, Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn (2006)
The struggle for maternal perfection turns monstrous in Gillian Flynn’s novel Sharp Objects.
Adora, matriarch of the Crellin family, has Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome, a psychological disorder where, as the book explains: “The caregiver, usually the mother, almost always the mother, makes her child ill to get attention for herself.”
Adora is monstrous because she takes the cultural ideal of the devoted mother too far. She harms her children so that they must blindly accept her medicines and perverse care, telling them it is only then that she will love them forever. For rejecting Adora’s toxic remedies, her daughter Camille is emotionally neglected.
Both girls act out against this suffocating mothering through risky sexual behaviour, self-harm and crime. Flynn’s portrayal of Adora as the “perfect mother” undercuts the ideal that motherhood is a natural role for all women.
Ailish Brassil is a PhD candidate in English literature
7. The ‘new’ Bobbie, The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin (1972)
In the suburb of Stepford, Connecticut, local women’s husbands conspire to murder their wives and replace them with compliant robot duplicates. Bobbie Markowe becomes one such replaced woman.
The “new” Bobbie’s children appear happy with their changed mother who “doesn’t shout any more” and “makes hot breakfasts”. But the Stepford wives are not built for the complex demands of motherhood. These wife replacement robots are designed by their husbands to please and appease them, and this treatment is extended by Bobbie to her sons.
Although not as obviously harmful as physical or verbal abuse, this dynamic of constant indulgence warps the children’s understanding of mothers and of women in general. And despite her supposed gentleness, in “new” Bobbie’s garden the family dogs have been chained up – an ominous warning to any dependants who become too messy or inconvenient.
Faye Lynch is a PhD candidate in English literature
8. Rose, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong (2019)
As Ocean Vuong opens his semi-autobiographical novel, readers are introduced to a mother who appears volatile and abusive. Yet as the story develops, Vuong decodes the layered identity of this seemingly monstrous mother, revealing a woman whose life has been profoundly shaped by forces beyond her control.
As a Vietnamese refugee in America, Rose’s experiences of violence and poverty – as well as the way her limited English marks her as an outsider – showcase how trauma and displacement can distort expressions of love.
Through his letters, fragmented memories and poetic reflections, Vuong illustrates how his mother’s violence is embroiled with sacrifice, fearsome resilience and an unspoken wish to protect her son in a world that has caused her so much pain. The result is a maternal figure who represents a nuanced portrayal of motherhood under duress.
Vuong frames Rose as a cubist figure, presenting her from several angles at once, revealing complex and contradictory sides of her personality. Her maternal identity is inseparable from her experience of displacement, and its enduring psychological toll.
Clodagh Guerin is a PhD candidate in refugee world literature
9. Tamora, Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare (circa 1558)
There are few mothers in Shakespeare’s dramas, but Tamora in Titus Andronicus is one of the most memorable – for all the wrong reasons.
Tamora seeks revenge for the death of her eldest son at the hands of Titus. She is cunning and ruthless, scheming to wreak bloody havoc on Titus and his family. But this is Shakespeare’s take on ancient Rome, where might and masculinity rule, so violence breeds violence and the war hero Titus gets the last word.
In retaliation for Tamora’s crimes, Titus kills her wicked sons and, in the tragedy’s spectacular finale, serves them up to her baked in a pie. After this, Rome’s new emperor symbolically marks the regime change by expelling Tamora’s corpse from the city. Though Tamora has some maternal virtues – she is fiercely loyal at least – her vindictiveness, power and lust mean that she is destined for an unforgettable Shakespearean death.
Edel Semple is a senior lecturer in Shakespeare studies
10. Undine Spragg, The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton (1913)
Undine Spragg is a strong candidate for the worst mother in literature. Ruthless, ignorant and narcissistic, this anti-heroine marries four times in a self-absorbed project of social climbing and celebrity seeking.
When her son Paul is born, Undine’s reaction is so unimportant that it is missing from the novel. When he’s a toddler, she forgets about his birthday because she is at a party (although Paul’s father also fails to turn up on time).
The final chapter of the novel opens on a description of the timid and tender nine-year-old Paul wandering alone through her latest residence. Undine’s lack of maternal feeling stands as an example of ultra-rich folly that has long thrilled and horrified Wharton’s largely middle-class readership.
Stephanie Palmer is a senior lecturer in English literature
Who do you think is the worst mother in literature? Let us know in the comments below.
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The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
– ref. The ten worst mothers in literature – according to our experts – https://theconversation.com/the-ten-worst-mothers-in-literature-according-to-our-experts-275252
