Suffocating Mothers: Fantasies of Maternal Origin in Shakespeare's Plays, Hamlet to The Tempest.

ONLY for those who are committed to the supreme validity of a feminist/psychoanalytical approach to literature will this book be wholly satisfying. Adelman writes enthusiastically, shows an impressive acquaintance with Shakespeare, and deploys skilfully a formidable body of quotations in support of her thesis.

She leads into this via Shakespeare's deliberate |occlusion' of mothers before Hamlet. After Richard III, |mothers virtually disappear . . . masculine identity [being] constructed in and through the absence of the maternal'. With the mother's return in Hamlet |the thesis of this book [is that] all follow from her return . . . the masculine selfhood, grounded in …