You Were Home: Women's Work and Creation in Darren Aronofsky's mother!

Author

Sydney RiceFollow

Date on Honors Thesis

Spring 5-2019

Department

**College of Humanities and Fine Arts**

Examining Committee Member

Dr. Andrew Black, Advisor

Examining Committee Member

Dr. Carrie Jerrell, Committee Member

Examining Committee Member

Dr. Jeff Osborne, Committee Member

Abstract/Description

In my senior honors thesis, I analyze Darren Aronofsky’s film, mother!,as an allegory centered around man’s effect on the earth’s environment and, inherently, the female experience. mother!is an allegory about the shriveling earth that uses the Christian creation narrative to drive its plot, but because the film is centered in Mother's limited perspective, it is a film about the experience of woman's devalued creation and the struggle to move from the object into the subject. I argue that because the story is grounded in a female character, the mother, it describes the struggles that female creators of art, literature, or scientific theory have faced for centuries. This idea of the earth and woman being connected is backed by budding ecofeminist theory and is easily applicable to Aronofsky’s film. Through the centuries, women who have tried to create have been stifled and repressed; the only creation they were allowed was motherhood, but what happens when even this is taken away?

Recommended Citation

Rice, Sydney, "You Were Home: Women's Work and Creation in Darren Aronofsky's mother!" (2019). Honors College Theses. 25.
https://digitalcommons.murraystate.edu/honorstheses/25