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REPRESENTATIONS OF MOTHERHOOD

Motherhood and its representations in art and literature have evoked much scholarly interest in the field of classics in the past few decades. As a phenomenon that is common to all human cultures and that carries a great deal of emotional and ideological weight, it is a particularly difficult topic of study. On the one hand, it is of greatest importance to avoid a universalising approach to the subject; on the other, this can be difficult when the topic is something seemingly so familiar. Motherhood is something that we like to think we know, and that is exactly why we are so easily puzzled (and even threatened) by its strange and inexplicable aspects in different historical and cultural contexts. As it is a subject of which most people have some first-hand experience and predefined ideas, studying it requires a heightened awareness of the researcher’s subject position. McA.’s monograph succeeds laudably in avoiding these pitfalls and makes a valuable contribution to the study of gender and family in the ancient world, while also being an important contribution to the field of classical literary criticism. McA. looks at representations of motherhood in select ‘paradigmatic texts’ from the Roman imperial period: Virgil, Ovid, Seneca and Statius. While the representations of motherhood in many of these sources have been touched upon in several studies in the past few decades, McA.’s book is the first comprehensive analysis of the similarities and differences in Virgil’s, Ovid’s, Statius’ and Seneca’s ways of dealing with the theme. It looks at change or continuity in these authors’ representations of motherhood, and offers a beautifully balanced account of the most significant poetic works of the first century of the Principate. The book is structured around three independent ‘case studies’ dealing with Augustan epic, Seneca and Statius respectively. This means that the end of the first century C.E. is more emphasised; Seneca and Statius are evidently the areas where McA.’s enthusiasm and expertise can be most clearly observed. Cramming Virgil and Ovid into one introductory chapter might not do justice to the versatility of their poetry. Be that as it may, the Augustan poets and their influence on the later literary tradition are carried along throughout the book – at the end,McA. beautifully ties together the argument by analysing the ways in which Ovidian overtones are utilised and developed further in Seneca’s tragedies and how Statius’ epic comments on the neglected and left-behind (yet constantly returning) mother-figures of the Aeneid. Thus, at the end, McA. succeeds laudably in her attempt to study ‘maternal representation in and between literary texts’ (p. 7), and to examine ‘how maternal representation plays out across a range of texts, authors and generic traditions and against shifting historical and political backgrounds’ (p. 8). On several occasions, I felt that including Lucan’sPharsalia in the analysis would havemade the book even stronger and filled the gap between the Augustan and the Flavian epic poets. However, the reasons why McA. decided to leave this work out and only refers to it briefly here and there are understandable, as the study is broad and extensive as it is. McA. examines Roman motherhood as a cultural and a literary construct, and her approach is distinctly theoretical. She combines the traditions of psychology with feminist-influenced literary criticism, and utilises them within the frame of a more traditional classical scholarship. Especially Kristeva’s and Irigaray’s theories concerning the female subjectivity, the maternal abject and the semiotic female chôra, as well as the psychological experience of motherhood, are particularly influential to her analysis throughout the book. Marrying many complicated and sometimes conflicting critical premises is not easy or unproblematic; however, thanks THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 423