Non-Traditional Motherhood in Contemporary Irish Film: Carmel Winters᾽ Feature Film Snap (2010) and Her Short Film Limbo (2008)

Abstract

This article will further develop E. Ann Kaplan᾽s originally American categorisation of motherhood in media in order to outline two important maternal categories in contemporary Irish film: the woman who wants to be a mother and the regretting mother. In the last chapter of her book Motherhood and Representation Kaplan defines six maternal categories. According to her, these serve as a "basis for later researchers to argue from." To further develop this foundation in an Irish context, a textual analysis of Carmel Winters᾽ films Limbo, and Snap will serve as a starting point in this article. Winters᾽ complex female characters offer an especially valuable example of maternal representations in Irish film. The analysis will show how the woman who wants to be a mother in Limbo and the regretting mother of Snap need a more defined description of motherhood in film than Kaplan᾽s categorisation offers. The woman who wants to be a mother in Limbo is positioned in a liminal space between old and new values, negotiating her maternal identity during a time of economic change in Ireland. A victim of sexual abuse, the regretting mother in Snap is unable to tolerate emotional or physical closeness, which is represented on screen through close-ups of hands. Society, however, blames the mother for the ills of her son who must also deal with the sexual abuse by his grandfather. The newly developed categories of the regretting mother and the woman who wants to be a mother show the necessity to adapt Kaplan᾽s American categorisation to an Irish film context.