Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T15:12:58.985Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Failure to Thrive

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2019

Emma Smith
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
Get access

Summary

There are good breasts and bad ones, Melanie Klein proposes: mothers who nourish and mothers who thwart their offspring – those who hear a child’s cries and respond accordingly, and those who prompt cries, or punish them and walk away.2 Shakespeare takes pains to describe mothers of both stripes on his stage, setting the gentle but helpless figures of Lady Macduff and Hermione against Lady Macbeth and Volumnia, fierce women steeped in blood.3 Some mothers want to see their children grow and flourish, but alongside them the playwright places mothers who appear instead to wish their children ill.

Type
Chapter
Information
Shakespeare Survey 72 , pp. 183 - 199
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×