May 28, 2018 The Nation. 41SERIOUS WORK
Jacqueline Rose and the politics of motherhood
by MERVE EMRE
I
started Jacqueline Rose’s book Mothers:
An Essay on Love and Cruelty on a winter
afternoon when my children were sick.
To keep misery at bay, I allowed my
older son to watch Peter Pan, and while
he was instantly absorbed in the adventures
of Peter and the Lost Boys, I found myself
distracted by the tragedy of Wendy Dar-ling. Here was a bright, imaginative girl
conscripted into playing mother to a vile
little boy, a boy who seems to take great
pleasure in pitting her against the sexier,
more adventurous women in his life. Wendy
is attacked by Tinker Bell, nearly drowned
by the mermaids, cast aside for Tiger Lily.
She is told that she talks too much, that she
is a “big, ugly girl.” Each time she is insulted
or hurt or almost dies, Peter laughs—a ma-
niacal, braying laugh; the laugh of an idiot
and sadist. But Wendy rarely complains
or lashes out. Instead, she sings one of the
sweetest, most pious songs about mother-hood ever written: “Ask your heart to tell
you her worth / Your heart will say, ‘Heaven
on earth’ / Another word for divine / Your
mother and mine.”
As I watched the movie, growing increas-
ingly horrified by the spectacle of Wendy’s
vulnerability and devotion, I began to feel
the great urgency of the two questions that
guide Rose’s Mothers: What is it about moth-Merve Emre is the author of Paraliterary and The
Personality Brokers, a history of Myers-Briggs and
the birth of personality testing that comes out in
September. Starting in the fall, she will be associate
professor of English at Oxford University.Mothers
An Essay on Love and Cruelty
By Jacqueline Rose
Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 256 pp. $26ILLUSTRATION BY TIM ROBINSON