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| Rachel Trethewey; photo by Poppy Jakes |
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Published this week by The History Press UK,
Mothers of the Mind is a triple biography of Virginia Woolf, Agatha Christie, and Sylvia Plath and their mothers, researched and written
Dr. Rachel Trethewey, a fellow of Britain's Royal Historical Society and the author of five nonfiction books: Mistress of the Arts,
Pearls Before Poppies, Before Wallis, The Churchill Sisters and now, Mothers
of the Mind.
Dr. Trethewey read History at Oxford
University, then did an M.A. in Victorian Studies followed by a Ph.D. in
English from Exeter University, where she will speak about the book in November. I had questions I wanted answered right now, and Dr. Trethewey kindly replied.
1. Why
did you choose Woolf, Christie, and Plath?
I first had the
idea for this book at an exhibition at the Tate of St Ives
in Cornwall. Alongside a quotation from Virginia Woolf, “We think back through our
mothers if we are women,” was a bewitching photograph of her mother, Julia Stephen.
It made me want to know more about Julia and her relationship with her famous
daughter. I then wondered if the
quotation was equally true for other female writers.
As an avid reader
of literary biographies, I recalled that Agatha Christie and Sylvia Plath also
had intense relationships with their mothers. Fascinated by Plath
since I was a teenager, I had always wondered how her mother coped with
discovering Sylvia had such a different view of their bond. Agatha
Christie had also always been on my radar because I was born and brought up in
the same town as she was, Torquay, in Devon. Perhaps because I am so close to my own
mother, when I read a biography of Christie, I was struck by her great affinity
with her mother.
When planning this book, I did consider other
writers, but the mother-daughter bond was not so central to their lives. For
instance, I am very interested in Daphne du Maurier, but her father was the
focus of her early life.
2. Why
write about these writers’ mothers? What were you thinking?
Inevitably every woman is
influenced by her mother, but I wanted to write about exceptional mother-daughter bonds. My criteria was that the relationship must have profoundly
influenced the famous author’s life, literature, and attitude to feminism. Like Virginia Woolf, I believe not
enough has been written about women’s relationships with each other. Too often Virginia, Agatha, and Sylvia have been defined by their
relationships with their lovers. I wanted to redress the balance by focusing
on their formative affinity with their mothers. As I began researching, I discovered that the mothers were just as interesting as their offspring, formidable women who had shaped the outstanding writers their daughters
became.
3. Woolf
and Plath had older, tyrannical, intellectual fathers and self-sacrificing
mothers with Victorian values. It seems like a kind of formula that encourages
creative daughters. Your opinion?
I was struck by how many similarities there were between two of the fathers, Leslie Stephen and Otto Plath. Intellectuals who wanted
to be seen as geniuses, they were disappointed when they did not live up to their
own exacting expectations. This had serious repercussions for
their families. They were demanding men to be married to, who drained their
equally talented wives.
I agree that this
complicated family dynamic played its part in the development of creative
daughters. In each case, both parents were exceptional and had varying degrees
of literary talent, which Woolf and Plath inherited. Their parents noticed and
nurtured their children’s creativity. Family tensions also later provided
plenty of subject matter for the daughters to write about. Certainly, the way
the daughters viewed their mothers’ treatment influenced their feminism. They
rebelled against a sexist society in which vibrant, independent young women
were transformed into exhausted, self-sacrificing wives.
However, although their
daughters viewed them as martyrs, Julia and
Aurelia perceived themselves as having more agency
than that. As my book shows, they lived very full lives and would not have
wanted to be viewed as passive victims. As Aurelia once wrote, Sylvia could only
imagine what she thought her mother thought. Her mother's true feelings were very
different.
4. None
of the mothers was abusive. Or were they?
None was, but Virginia’s and Sylvia’s relationships with their mothers proved to be
detrimental to their mental health. When Virginia was a child, Julia was so involved in
philanthropy and nursing that she was rarely alone with her daughter. When present, Julia was often sharp-tongued and impatient. Her death, when
Virginia was thirteen, was devastating for her daughter. The Bloomsbury author
felt haunted by her mother for the rest of her life. She tried to recapture her
in her literature, but Julia always remained elusive.
Agatha’s relationship
with her mother Clara was certainly not abusive. Clara’s unconditional love
provided the firm foundation on which Agatha built the rest of her life.
Sylvia’s bond with
Aurelia was arguably the most complex of the three. Plath’s psychiatrist encouraged the poet to
believe that the mother-daughter relationship was at the root of many of her
mental health problems. However, I think Aurelia always did her best by Sylvia, often at great emotional, physical, and financial cost to herself.
It seems to me that both mother and daughter loved each other deeply, but the
way their personalities reacted to each other could be toxic; perhaps they were
just too similar. As perfectionists, they both wanted a perfect mother and
daughter relationship, but that was just not possible in the real world.
5. Why
did you include among your three writers an American younger by 50 years than
the British writers? Are you one of those who consider Plath as British as she
was American?
My criteria was the strength and complexity of the mother and daughter
relationship rather than when they were born. However, as I wrote the book I
was pleased that it covered a wide time span because it ended up charting how far attitudes to women’s roles had changed over
a crucial century for feminism. I was also interested to see how Plath was able
to take both her literature and feminism a stage further than Woolf had.
For instance, Virginia broke new ground in the way she wrote about women’s
bodily experiences, and Sylvia went further by writing about the visceral
experiences of motherhood.
I don’t consider Plath as
being as British as she was American. Tracing both Sylvia’s and Aurelia’s
story, I think it is tied up with the American dream. The fact Aurelia was the
daughter of immigrants played an important role in Aurelia’s attitude to life
and influenced Sylvia imaginatively, as can be seen in some of her short
stories which drew on her mother’s experiences. My research also showed that
rather than Aurelia being an atypical pushy mother, her parenting
was influenced by the culture of her era in America. Her didactic approach was
very similar to that of Rose Kennedy, who also acted as a teacher as well as a mother
to her embryonic political dynasty.
6. Woolf
and Christie came from families with money and status. Plath did not. What
difference did this make, in your opinion?
A great
difference. As I wrote about Aurelia Plath, I felt her life was the embodiment
of Woolf’s feminist theories. Virginia’s tract suggesting that a woman needed
an independent income and "a room of her own" to write came out at about the
time Aurelia was choosing her career. Like Sylvia, Aurelia was exceptionally
clever and ambitious; she wrote a brilliant thesis about Paracelsus, and could have pursued a career in academia. She also had aspirations to write,
and would have liked the chance to explore a literary career. However, because
her family lacked money and status, she had to take the safer option and become
a teacher.
Finances also affected her relationship with her daughter. Aurelia wanted Sylvia to have all
the opportunities she had missed out on. She worked exceptionally hard to make
that possible. At times Sylvia resented her mother’s self-sacrifice.
When Plath went to Smith College, she was very aware that she had to work hard
for the same lifestyle her wealthier contemporaries took for granted.
7. Can
you speak briefly of your own mother’s influence on you?
My mother Bridget has
been my rock throughout my life. She has always supported me without smothering
me and our relationship has been one of the most complete and uncomplicated in
my life. I consider myself very lucky to have experienced that unconditional
love. She has been very involved in this project from start to finish. She was
with me when I first had the idea at the art exhibition and, while I was writing the
book, she encouraged me every step of the way. I have dedicated it to her
because our relationship is what really made me so interested in other
mother-daughter bonds.
8. Anything
else you find interesting or want your readership to know?
Writing this book has
been an emotional voyage of discovery for me. I found myself comparing my relationships to the bonds I
was writing about. I didn’t find one formula which makes for a good relationship. But it did make me question how well we can ever know another person, even
those we love best. I realized that rather than want our loved ones to be
happy, we should want them to be fulfilled, and only the person themselves can
know what will give them that fulfillment. At times I found writing the book
harrowing, particularly the parts about Aurelia and Sylvia: I could feel how
powerful the love between them was, and it was so sad that it went wrong.
Mothers of the Mind: History Press.com UK ISBN: 9781803991894
Mothers of the Mind Amazon Pre-Order USA (April 2, 2024)
