Mothers of the Mind: The Remarkable Women Who Shaped Virginia Woolf, Agatha Christie, and Sylvia Plath

Journalist Trethewey (The Churchill Sisters) presents a revealing examination of the complicated relationships three famed authors shared with their mothers. According to Trethewey, Virginia Woolf craved the approval of her mother, Julia Stephen, who was often distant but recognized her daughter’s talents from a young age. Stephen loomed large in the novelist’s psyche after her death when Woolf was 13, inspiring the character Mrs. Ramsay in To the Lighthouse. By contrast, Trethewey notes that Agatha Christie received unconditional love from her mother, Clara Miller, after whom Christie modeled Jane Marple, an amateur detective and “unpretentious provincial lady who observes from the sidelines but understands more than anyone else exactly what is going on.” Sylvia Plath and her mother, Aurelia, had a more ambivalent relationship, sharing an ostensibly close bond that masked Plath’s resentment of what she perceived as Aurelia’s over protectiveness, a grudge that shaped the unflattering Aurelia stand-in Plath created for her roman à clef, The Bell Jar. The biographical background offers astute insight into how the writers’ mothers influenced their work and, in Aurelia’s case especially, show how the daughters’ writings are only half the story (Plath comes across as spoiled for treating her mother “more like a domestic help than an intellectual equal,” demanding Aurelia take care of her laundry when she would visit with husband Ted Hughes). It’s an original take on three literary legends. (Apr.)