Institutionalizing Maternity: The Treatment of Mothers with Mental Illness in Contemporary Novels for Children

Abstract

Children's literature has a generic narrative structure in which child protagonists develop their subjectivity and maturity. When this generic tradition meets new representational agendas for social justice and inclusivity in stories that respond to real-world issues like mental disability and mental illness, however, such child agency comes at a politically charged price. Sarah Weeks's So B. It (2005), Martine Leavitt's Heck Superhero (2004), and Gwyneth Rees's My Mum's from Planet Pluto (2004) all narrativize situations in which children are required to cope with the intellectual and rational absenteeism of mothers with either a mental disability or mental illness. In each case, disadvanta..