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Exploring Mother Archetypes in Literature - 4 Archetypes and their Characteristics
We have come to cherish mother characters in our favorite books for multiple reasons; their valor, courage, and selflessness. They have been pivotal in stories, whether they belong to the antagonist or protagonist side. Here's a look at mother archetypes that lie on either side of the spectrum.
"Mother" personas are arguably one of the most invariably recognized and common Literature archetypes. Readers and writers would have come across a mother persona that could have struck a chord or left a lasting impression at least once from the material they have read or written. Outside of Literature and stories, we are all privy to the universal characteristics, traits, and socially and culturally constructed responsibilities that are attached to a maternal figure as well.
Idealized and culturally recognized notions of a mother require her to be self-sacrificial, nurturing, responsive, and empathetic. But mother personas exist on the opposite end of the spectrum as well, where they reflect diverging characteristics such as being neglectful, insensitive, and selfish. This characterization is also prevalent in literary texts and multiple mediums of art.
What are some of the common characterizations we see of mother characters in stories? This Mother's Day, we delve into a few ways that mother characters have been thought about and constructed. Read on to explore!
What are Archetypes?
An archetype is a character profile, a combination of emotions, or events that reflect specific, identifiable and recurring traits across time in writing, stories, films, relationships, and multiple other spaces of our lived experiences. How we construct and understand archetypes play an important and shaping role in how we understand and relate to each other.
The term "archetype" was first coined and developed by psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung. Simply, he explains archetypes to be characters or even sy…