Wikipedia

Stepmother

"Stepmom" redirects here. For other uses, seeStepmom (disambiguation).

Astepmother,stepmumorstepmomis a female non-biological parent married to one's preexisting parent. Children from her spouse's previous unions are known as herstepchildren.A stepmother-in-law is a stepmother of one's spouse.

A man in uniform places a ring on the finger of a woman in an elaborate white dress. Four small children stand behind him.
A man in uniform places a ring on the finger of a woman in an elaborate white dress. Four small children stand behind him.
Amélie of LeuchtenbergmarriedPedro I of Braziland became stepmother to his children. Detail of a painting byJean-Baptiste Debret.

Culture

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Stepparents (mainly stepmothers) may also face some societal challenges due to the stigma surrounding the "evil stepmother" character. Morello notes that the introduction of the "evil stepmother" character in the past is problematic to stepparents today, as it has created a stigma towards stepmothers.[1]The presence of this stigma can have a negative impact on stepmothers' self-esteem.[2]

Fiction

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In fiction, stepmothers are often portrayed as being wicked andevil.[3]The character of the wicked stepmother features heavily infairy tales;the most famous examples areCinderella,Snow WhiteandHansel and Gretel.Stepdaughters are her most common victim, and then stepdaughter/stepson pairs, but stepsons also are victims as inThe Juniper Tree[4]—sometimes, as inEast of the Sun and West of the Moon,because he refused to marry his stepsister as she wished,[5]or, indeed, they may make their stepdaughters-in-law their victims, as inThe Boys with the Golden Stars.[6]In some fairy tales, such asGiambattista Basile'sLa Gatta Cennerentolaor the DanishGreen Knight,the stepmother wins the marriage by ingratiating herself with the stepdaughter, and once she obtains it, becomes cruel.[7]

In some fairy tales, the stepdaughter's escape by marrying does not free her from her stepmother. After the birth of the stepdaughter's first child, the stepmother may attempt to murder the new mother and replace her with her own daughter—thus making her the stepmother to the next generation. Such a replacement occurs inThe Wonderful Birch,Brother and Sister,andThe Three Little Men in the Wood;only by foiling the stepmother's plot (and usually executing her), is the story brought to a happy ending.[8]In the Korean FolktaleJanghwa Hongryeon jeon,the stepmother kills her own stepdaughters.

"Awake Groa Awake Mother" byJohn Bauer,a son at his mother's grave seeking aid against his stepmother

In many stories with evil stepmothers, the hostility between the stepmother and the stepchild is underscored by having the child succeed through aid from the dead mother.[9]This motif occurs fromNorse mythology,whereSvipdagrrouses his motherGróafrom the grave so as to learn from her how to accomplish a task his stepmother set, to fairy tales such as theBrothers Grimmversion ofCinderella,where Aschenputtel receives her clothing from a tree growing on her mother's grave, the RussianVasilissa the Beautiful,where Vasilissa is aided by a doll her mother gave, and her mother's blessing, and the MalayBawang Putih Bawang Merah,where the heroine's mother comes back as fish to protect her.

Illustration ofSchneewittchen (Snow White)byFranz Jüttner:theevil stepmotherrealizes her stepdaughter Snow White has escaped her magic.

The notion of the wordstepmotherbeing descriptive of an intrinsically unkind parent is suggested by peculiar wording in John Gamble's "An Irish Wake" (1826). He writes of a woman soon to die, who instructs her successor to "be kind to my children." Gamble writes that the injunction was forgotten and that she "proved a very step-mother."

Fairy tales can have variants where one tale has an evil mother and the other an evil stepmother: inThe Six Swansby theBrothers Grimmand also inThe Wild SwansbyHans Christian Andersen,the heroine is persecuted by her husband's mother and in another one by her stepmother, and inThe Twelve Wild Ducks,by his stepmother. Sometimes this appears to be a deliberate switch: TheBrothers Grimm,having put in their first editions versions ofSnow WhiteandHansel and Gretelwhere the villain was the biological mother, altered it to a stepmother in later editions, perhaps to mitigate the story's violence.[10]Another reason for the change from a villainous mother to a villainous stepmother may have been the belief that mothers were sacred, as well as the belief that people would not believe that a mother could harbor such ill-will and animosity toward their child.[11][12]The Icelandic fairy taleThe Horse Gullfaxi and the Sword Gunnfoderfeatures a good stepmother, who indeed aids the prince like afairy godmother,but this figure is very rare in fairy tales.

The stepmother may be identified with other evils the characters meet. For instance, both the stepmother and the witch inHansel and Gretelare deeply concerned with food, the stepmother to avoid hunger, the witch with her house built of food and her desire to eat the children, and when the children kill the witch and return home, their stepmother has mysteriously died.[13]

This hostility from the stepmother and tenderness from the true mother has been interpreted in varying ways. A psychological interpretation, byBruno Bettelheim,describes it as "splitting" the actual mother in an ideal mother and a false mother that contains what the child dislikes in the actual mother.[14]However, historically, many women died in childbirth, their husbands remarried, and the new stepmothers competed with the children of the first marriage for resources; the tales can be interpreted as factual conflicts from history.[15]In some fairy tales, such asThe Juniper Tree,the stepmother's hostility is overtly the desire to secure the inheritance of her children.[4]

Stepmothers also make many appearances in Chinese tales of family. Wicked stepmothers are common.[16]InClassic of Filial Piety,Guo Jujingtold the story ofMin Ziqian,who had lost his mother at a young age. His stepmother had two more sons and saw to it that they were warmly dressed in winter but neglected her stepson. When her husband discovered this, he decided to divorce her. His son interceded, on the ground that she neglected only him, but when they had no mother, all three sons would be neglected. His father relented, and the stepmother henceforth took care of all three children. For this, he was held up as a model offilial piety.

Conversely, the exemplary stepmother prefers the stepson to her own child, in recognition that his seniority makes him superior.[17]The "righteous stepmother of Qi", faced with her son and stepson having been found by a murdered man, and both having confessed to shield the other, argues for her son's execution because her husband had ordered her to look after her stepson, and her son is the junior brother; the king pardoned them both for her devotion to duty.[17]

The ubiquity of the wicked stepmother has made it a frequent theme ofrevisionistfairy tale fantasy.This can range fromTanith Lee'sRed as Blood,where the stepmother queen is desperately trying to protect the land from her evil stepdaughter's magic, toDiana Wynne Jones'sHowl's Moving Castle,where, although it is known that stepmothers are evil, the actual stepmother is guilty of nothing more than some carelessness, toErma Bombeck's retelling whereCinderellais lazy and a liar. More subtly,Piers Anthonydepicted the Princess Threnody as being cursed by her stepmother inCrewel Lye: A Caustic Yarn:if she ever entered Castle Roogna, it would fall down. But Threnody explains that her presence at the castle caused her father to dote on her and neglect his duties to the destruction of the kingdom; her stepmother had merely made her destructive potential literal, and forced her to confront what she was doing.[citation needed]

The character of the evil stepmother can also be found in the genre ofyoung adult fictionor young adult social problem novels. In Lisa Heathfield'sPaper Butterflies.the protagonist June suffers horrific abuse at the hands of her stepmother, a fact that she conceals from her father.

Despite many examples of evil or cruel stepmothers, loving stepmothers also exist in fiction. InKevin and Kell,Kell is portrayed as loving her stepdaughter Lindesfarne, whom her husband Kevin had adopted during his previous marriage. Likewise, Lindesfarne considers Kell her mother, and has a considerably more favorable view of her than Angelique, Kevin's ex-wife and her adoptive mother, due to feeling neglected by Angelique during her childhood. The Disney filmEnchantedalso makes references to the "evil stepmother" belief, as the villainess is a stepmother, but her wickedness comes from her selfishness and power hungriness rather than the simple fact she is a stepmother. When a little girl tells the heroine Giselle that all stepmothers are evil, Giselle reminds her that she personally knows some wonderful women who were good stepmothers, and the fact a woman is a stepmother does not suddenly change her personality. This is shown later on when Giselle marries that girl's father, who had her from a previous marriage, thus becoming a stepmother herself. As Giselle is a sweet and caring woman, she makes a good wife and stepmother. However, it is notable that during much of that film, Giselle was more of an older sister figure than a maternal figure to that little girl.

In the movieNanny McPheea group of children worry that their father will remarry, believing from their fairy tales that all stepmothers are an "evil breed." Although they help their father marry again to help keep the family together, their soon-to-be stepmother is very cruel, as they suspected. When the wedding to her is called off, the father decides to marry the much kinder scullery maid, causing one child to comment that the evil stepmother personification does not apply to her.

Stepmother relationships are often examined insoap operas.An example of this is the long-running rivalry betweenVictoria Lord Banksand stepmotherDorian Lordon the American soap operaOne Life to Live.

In contrast to many otherDisney-related media, the animated seriesPhineas and Ferbfeatures a stepfamily in which both parents get along well with their three children (avoiding the normal tropes of evil stepparents).[18]

Classical literature

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Greek

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Alcestis (play)

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438 BCE: The dying biological mother requests that her husband not remarry, for fear of her children being mistreated by a stepmother.

Hippolytus

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428 BCE: The stepmother commits suicide to prevent herself from following through on her lust for her stepson and leaves a note falsely claiming that the stepson had raped her.

Fairy tales

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Stepmothers fulfill the role ofantagonistin the following fairy tales:

References

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  1. ^Morello, C. (January 19, 2011)."Blended families more common, but the 'step' in 'stepmom' still carries a stigma".The Washington Post.
  2. ^Christian, A. (2005). "Contesting the myth of the 'wicked stepmother': Narrative analysis of an online family support group".Western Journal of Communication.69(1):27–47.doi:10.1080/10570310500034030.S2CID143785307.
  3. ^The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales,p. 141
  4. ^abThe Annotated Classic Fairy Tales,p. 161
  5. ^The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales,p. 193
  6. ^Warner, p. 221
  7. ^Warner, pp. 205–6
  8. ^The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales,pp. 147–8
  9. ^The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales,p. 151
  10. ^The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales,p. 36
  11. ^Flood, A. (2014)."Grimm brothers' fairytales have blood and horror restored in new translation".The Guardian.
  12. ^Claxton-Oldfield, S. (2000). "Deconstructing the myth of the wicked stepparent".Marriage & Family Review.30(1–2):51–58.doi:10.1300/j002v30n01_04.S2CID145632182.
  13. ^The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales,p. 57
  14. ^Warner, p. 212
  15. ^Warner, p. 213
  16. ^Mark Edward LewisThe Early Chinese Empires: Qin and Hanp 157ISBN978-0-674-02477-9
  17. ^abMark Edward LewisThe Early Chinese Empires: Qin and Hanp. 158ISBN978-0-674-02477-9
  18. ^"Disney's Phineas and Ferb - Children's TV".
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