Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Theatre and Performance Studies
City University of New York (CUNY)
Articles 1 - 1 of 1
Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Reframing The Family Portrait: The Surrogate Mother In U.S. Theatre And Film 1939–1963, Alison Walls
Reframing The Family Portrait: The Surrogate Mother In U.S. Theatre And Film 1939–1963, Alison Walls
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Reframing the Family Portrait: The Surrogate Mother in U.S. Theatre and Film, 1939–1963 investigates the U.S. plays, films, and musicals of this period that abound with heroines who mother children to whom they are not genetically tied. This dissertation asks why such a figure was so resonant in this era between the beginning of World War II and the emergence of more radical 1960s politics. Newly in the spotlight as a romantic protagonist, the “surrogate mother,” as I have chosen to call her, re-envisions the archetypal mother through a contemporizing lens, distinctive in her mother/not-mother status. Critical analysis of Penny …