A few weeks ago I read a blog post about the roles of parents in fiction, particularly that of the mother figure, and how they often seemed to get written out of fiction novels, or if they are present, they tend to be demonised in some way. The kicker is that I can't remember where I saw the original blog post - I was sure that it was on the Waterstone's Blog but can I find it now?! If anyone knows of the blog post I'm referring to, please let me know and I will add a link.
Anyway, the reason for my post today, was because I have spent the day editing two different work in progresses, and realised that I do exactly what this other blog post was accusing writers of... the mother figures in my stories are not usually good people - Take my current novel as an example. The main character, a teenage girl with a troubled background, struggles with the relationship with both of her parents, but with her mother in particular, because they struggle to understand her. This causes many conflicts through out the story, which doesn't end well for any of the characters. involved.
Another example, is that of Anna-Marie and Lily's mother in The Love that Binds Us. Where as she may have been a good mum to Anna-Marie whilst she was alive, after losing her, she neglects the three children she has left with on a scale that would be unacceptable, including letting one of those children be admitted to hospital for a psychiatric evaluation, rather than believe in her. In my other two novels, A Handful of Secrets and Part of the Pack, the mother figures are removed, one having died during childbirth and the other having left when the child was only young.
I have never really thought about this before now, but having considered the plausible reasons behind why I do this to mothers on a seemingly regular basis, I have come up with not one, but two possible reasons.
1) That because I am not a mother yet, I don't feel comfortable, or educated enough to write a convincing mother figure, and have them be believable and likeable, as well as add to the story in a positive way. The problem with this theory is that it hasn't applied to any of the other things I have written about. I write first person perspective novels about people who are supernatural creatures - I am clearly not a mermaid or a vampire, but that hasn't stopped me writing convincing characters. 'But they aren't real,' I hear you say; maybe not, but the sexual content that I wrote into one of my first drafts was written long before I had any experience of my own! I got my information from the novels I read (all praise the likes of Fifty Shades) and those scenes all turned out okay. So what is stopping me from writing about a mother?
That leads me on to number...
2) My mom! Now I know that I am biased because she is mine, but my mom is pretty god damned incredible. In more ways that I could list on here, and I wonder if I shy away from writing about mother figures because I know that I cannot do justice to the one that I have. I could not write a character that reflected my mom, because it would be too difficult to show that many characteristics of one person in a novel where they are not normally a main character... So, by writing them out, or by making them bad parents, I don't have to worry about what a reader will think, because I am ensuring that they are a disliked character.
That's my outlook on this whole situation, although I do plan to give it some more thought, and very possibly to try harder with the next books and try and get a decent mother figure into one of them.
Any thoughts and opinions??
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