Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
14th IDEA Conference, Studies in English, Trabzon, Türkiye, 6 - 08 Ekim 2021
Motherhood
has been one of the most controversial issues for women in the course of history.
Whether motherhood is constructed as a role or it is an instinct for women is always
open to a discussion. The relationship between mothers and their children is of
great importance to interpret motherhood in this discussion. By the Bog of Cats is a striking play which
subverts the norms and the holiness of motherhood in the middle of enigmatic affairs
from one generation to another in a wild atmosphere. I will refer to Luce
Irigaray’s conceptualization of motherhood, mother and daughter relationship,
madness, the silence of women and the suppression of womanhood in order to
depict these affairs from a psychoanalytic perspective. I will also refer to
Carl Jung’s archetypes on the establishment of motherhood. Hester, the
protagonist of the play thrusts the discourse of the holiness of motherhood violently
and refutes the biological and social construction of motherhood in order to exist
only as a woman. Her madness causes her to be a labelled as a deviant in the
town where she lives, and motherhood does not make her sensible. On the contrary
she is a woman who is psychologically imprisoned “by the bog of cats” and she carries
the burden of both the past and the future.