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@article{207328,
        author = {Ms Anuja and Prof. Dr. B.M. Yadav},
        title = {Motherhood, Grief, and Melancholia in Jayne Anne Phillips’s MotherKind: Maternal Identity as Wound and Continuity},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {2026},
        volume = {13},
        number = {3},
        pages = {385-390},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=207328},
        abstract = {Jayne Anne Phillips’s MotherKind places Kate Tateman between the birth of her son and the approaching death of her mother. This paper argues that maternal identity in the novel is neither a fixed role nor a sentimental ideal. It is formed through bodily injury, interrupted sleep, caregiving, anticipatory grief, memory, and the transfer of care between generations. Freud’s distinction between mourning and melancholia explains how loss can enter the structure of the self; Kristeva clarifies the crisis of language produced by grief; Winnicott illuminates the mother’s heightened responsiveness to the infant; and Chodorow explains why becoming a mother renews the daughter’s identification with her own mother. Close reading of Phillips’s exact diction shows that motherhood is experienced as a wound because attachment exposes Kate to exhaustion, anxiety, and helplessness. Yet maternal identity also becomes continuity because Katherine survives through Kate’s memory, language, and practice of care. The novel therefore revises recovery as detachment and presents grief as a transformed relationship that continues within the maternal self.},
        keywords = {motherhood, grief, melancholia, maternal identity, psychoanalysis, memory, caregiving, Jayne Anne Phillips},
        month = {August},
        }