AustLit

Beere analyses the ways in which the 'absent mother' is represented in the novel Galax-Arena and the short story 'Andrew', from the collection, Love Me, Love Me Not. (These monograph titles were shortlisted for the Children's Book Council Book of the Year Awards in 1992 and 1993 respectively). Beer's argument is that in recent fictions for children and adolescents, representations of the 'absent mother' continue to maintain and support dominant patrirachal constructions of motherhood which fundamentally categorize women within a rigid dualistic system of signification. Beere's reading of Galax-Arena looks at how literal and metaphorical representations of the absent mother - ie. contemporary society as 'bad parent' (19), are closely associated with biological femininity. By contrast, she argues that the short story 'Andrew' offers a more positive representation which challenges prevailing ideologies of motherhood that construct 'absent mothers' as only a negative force in the lives of children (22). Despite signs of resistance in some narratives, Beere concludes that the either/or subject positioning of women as good mothers or bad mothers is part of the post-feminist 'backlash' (22), which continues 'to limit the range of legitimate identities available to women and girls and hence to undermine the achievements of contemporary feminist movements' (17). She ends her critique by questioning the implications of 'conventional normative versions of motherhood' in relation to the judging of children's literature and the awards merited by the Children's Book Council of Australia.