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other characters‟ opinion and attitude toward the character, and its own dialogue and behavior.
In Drama and Performance: an Anthology, it is stated that as for the audiences and for them who read the script, there are some challenges to get
complete understanding about the characterizations of the characters. The characters do not always reveal their thoughts with dialogues, but sometimes
their gestures impl icate more than their words.”We must see and understand
what is explicitly said and done, as well as be alerted to what is implied and left un
spoken.”Vena and Nouryeh, 1996: vii
2. Mother – Daughter Bond
Psychoanalytic theorists have analyzed the maternal roles, examined the mothers‟ unconscious action and explored the attachment of the children
to the mothers. The theorists also have proved the particular values of mother
– daughter bond and how the roles of the mothers and the bond affect the characterizations of the daughter.
Melanie Klein, as cited in From Klein to Kristeva: Psychoanalytic Feminism and the Search for the ‘Good Enough’ Mother written by Janice
Doane and Devon Hodges, explains the mother as the child‟s primary love
object, the source of its nourishment and life and how it affects the future of the infant itself. The infant usually fantasized the mother as the „good‟ and
„bad‟ breast. As the infant‟s need for nourishment was its prime concern,
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nervous and depressive anxieties in later life could be related to the way child had coped with the nursing experience in Doane and Hodges, 1992:
p.8, p.12. In The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender, Chodorow says that women mother not only bear
children but also take primary responsibility, spend more of their time with the children than men, and sustain primary emotional ties with the children
1978: 3. Both Klein and Chodorow agree that mothers have vital role and responsibility in the development of the infants and children.
As it is mentioned before, there are particular values in mother –
daughter bond that cannot be found in mother – son or father – daughter
relationship. Chodorow says Women, as mothers, produce daughters with mothering capacities
and the desire to mother. These capacities and needs are built into and grow out of the mother-daughter relationship itself. By contrast,
women as mothers and men as non-mothers produce son whose nurturant capacities and needs have been systematically curtailed
and repressed. in Humm, 1992:278
She also adds that mothers tend to experience their daughters like themselves. Thus, girls are likely to remain part of the dyadic primary
mother – daughter relationship itself. This means that a girl experience
herself get involved in issues of merging and separation continuously, and in an attachment characterized by primary identification and the fusion of
identification and object choice in Humm, 1992: 281. Chodorow is saying that mother usually treats the son differently and unconsciously expects the
daughter to be like her because both mother and daughter share the same
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„female identity‟. Thus, the mother – daughter bond is considered to be more special than the other bond in the family.
The bond itself effects the characterizations of the daughter. In Journal of Marriage and the Family, Baruch and Barnett
state that “when daughters‟ relationship with mothers is positive, the well-being of daughters
improves regardless of the number of family roles they have ” which show
the positive effect of the mother – daughter bond. However, there is also a
negative effect that could happen when the bond between them is fragile and unestablished. It is
“when the daughters‟ relationship with mothers is negative, daughters who have more family roles are less delicate than
daughters who have fewer roles ” 1983: 601-606. Adrienne Rich explains
how mother – daughter relationship sometimes are wrongly interpreted by
the daughter and sometimes the daughters blame their mothers. She states Women, mothers or not, who feel committed to other women, are
Increasingly giving each other a quality of character filled with the diffuse kinds of identification that exist between actual mothers and
daughters. Into the mere notion of „mothering‟ we may carry, as daughters, negative echoes of our mothers‟ martyrdom, the burden of
their valiant, necessarily limited efforts on our behalf, the confusion of their double message in Humm, 1992: 275
In her book, For Mothers of Difficult Daughters, Dr. Charney Herst states It‟s no surprise mothers blame themselves: for the past thirty years,
most psychologists have held Mom responsible for her child‟s personality. Our daughters, often at the urging of their therapist,
reason that their unhappiness has been caused by a bad childhood –
which basically translates to bad mothering. 1998: xiv
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She also states that the bond between mother and daughter can be “intensely rewarding or brutally painfu
l” 1998: xv.
C. Theoretical Framework
This thesis examines the mother – daughter bond in Rodrigo
Garcia‟s Mother and Child. The bond between the mother and the daughter is special because there are some particular values of womanhood that
cannot be found in other family bond, thus, the topic of this thesis is the mother
– daughter bond. The researcher specifically analyzes the mother – daughter bond itself and its effects toward the characterizations of the
daughters. Accordingly, the title chosen is “Mother – Daughter Bond as
Seen in Rodrigo Garcia‟s Mother and Child”.
To elaborately study this topic, the researcher uses a screenplay by Rodrigo Garcia, Mother and Child, as the object of this study. The
screenplay explores the story of the relation between three women and their mothers. The first woman is Karen, a therapist. She has difficult relationship
with her mother. When she was fourteen she had a baby daughter outside the wedlock and had to give up her daughter for adoption, thus she always
thinks that she is the disappointment of her mother. Karen becomes a bitter and uneasy woman. The second woman is Elizabeth, who grew up as an
adoptive child and she did not really get along with her adoptive mother. She knew that she was given up by her biological mother thus she becomes
an independent and self-domination woman. She also does not believe in the
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concept of family. The third woman is Lucy. Lucy is the only character who does not have a difficult relationship with her mother, and she desperately
wants to have a daughter on her own. The roles of the mother characters and their bond with the daughters in the screenplay affect the characterization of
these main characters. The researcher has formulated three questions in the problem
formulation in order to guide and to limit this thesis. The first question examines how the characteristics of the main characters are described in
Rodrigo Garcia‟s Mother and Child. The second question analyzes how the bond between the main characters and their mothers are depicted in the
screenplay. The last question reveals how the bond affects the characterizations of the daughter characters in the screenplay.
There are theories that help to answer the questions given in the problem formulation. The researcher uses theories that have been discussed
to answer the questions in the problem formulation. To answer the first question, the character and characterization theories are used. By using these
theories, how the main characters are depicted in Rod rigo Garcia‟s Mother
and Child and their characterizations can be understood. The researcher can identify the characters by their dialogues, thoughts, and reactions. The
theories are also used to help understand what the main characters undergo and how their attitudes toward their mothers are changed after knowing the
real situation of their mothers. The theories on mother – daughter bond are
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used to help in answering the second question, to help defining the importance of the existence of the mother to the characters, the mother
– daughter bond between the main characters and their mother. This is
concluded to help in answering the third question, to understand how the bond itself affects them as the daughters.
This thesis uses a feminism psychoanalytical approach. Since the developments of characterizations and the lives of women, which are being
discussed in this thesis, are connected to psychoanalytical problems and specifically discuss the values of womanhood.
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CHAPTER III METHODOLOGY
A. Object of the Study
The object of this thesis is a screenplay written by Rodrigo Garcia entitled Mother and Child. The screenplay was made into a movie in 2010, and was
directed by Rodrigo Garcia himself. The movie was well played by brilliant actresses such as Annette Bening, Naomi Watts, and Kerry Washington. The
screenplay that is used for this thesis is the original version because it is taken from www.sonyclassics.com, the internet site of the production house who
published the movie. Rodrigo Garcia is a Colombian director. He has directed many winning-
awards films and television serials. Garcia‟s first debut was Things You Can Tell
Just by Looking at Her 2000 which he wrote in 1999. This film won an award in Cannes Film Festival and nominated for an Emmy Award in 2001. Mother and
Child 2010 won Grand Prix du jury at Deauville American Film Festival 2010 in France. His latest film, Albert Nobbs 2011 was nominated for an Oscar award.
The screenplay covers mainly the life of three women who live separately. They do not have any relationship in between each other. The first woman is
Karen, a fifty years old woman who works as a therapist. She lives with her elderly mother. She has a cold relationship with her mother especially after she
had a baby outside the wedlock when she was a fourteen years old. She had to
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give up the baby daughter for adoption. She thought that what has happened to her is the disappointment to her mother. The second woman is Elizabeth, a full-skilled
lawyer. She is independent and full of ambitions. Elizabeth does not believe in the concept of family. The third woman is Lucy. Lucy is the only character who does
not have a difficult relationship with her mother. She is also the only character who has a husband. Lucy desperately wants a baby daughter but she cannot
conceive it. As the story goes, it is told that Elizabeth was the baby that Karen had given up, and Lucy is about to adopt the baby daughter of Elizabeth‟s.
B. Approach of the Study
To analyze the literary work, the writer needs to understand deeper what happened in the screenplay. To figure out the situation happened in the
screenplay, the writer needs a literary approach. Therefore, the researcher uses the feminism psychoanalytical approach.
It is stated in Guerin‟s A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature
, “In the 1980s, French feminism developed as one of the most exciting of new feminist practices in the use of psychoanalytic
tools for literary analysis” 2005: 227. In A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Feminist Literary Criticism, Maggie Humm says
The dialogue between feminist criticism and psychoanalysis is invaluable for several reasons. While not all feminist criticism shares similar concerns
with psychoanalysis, both address common themes: the psychic relation of mothers, fathers and children; the relation between sexuality and its
expression; the instability of identity shared by authors and readers. Second, both share similar methods: they treat their text, whether the
unconscious or novels, as kinds of codes and as re
presenting the „unsaid‟ in everyday life. 1994: 114
