EXTENDED ESSAY (34/34) ON FILM STUDIES FOR THE IB DIPLOMA: PORTRAYAL OF MOTHER-DAUGHTER RELATIONSHIPS IN CONTEMPORARY CINEMA

Portrayal of mother-daughter relationships in contemporary cinema

What role does social and economic status play in the depiction of relationships
between young women and their mothers in Pride and Prejudice (2005) and Lady
Bird (2017)?

Film

Word Count: 3564

,Table of Contents




INTRODUCTION.................................................................................................................... 1

PRE-EPIPHANY ..................................................................................................................... 3

A shared circumstance ........................................................................................................... 3
Individuality of the characters ................................................................................................ 7
POST-EPIPHANY ................................................................................................................. 11

A mother’s shoes .................................................................................................................. 11
Women as complex human beings ....................................................................................... 15
CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................................... 18

BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................................. 20

FILMOGRAPHY ................................................................................................................. 22

, INTRODUCTION

The depiction of relationships between mothers and daughters in film is a subject

that was left understudied for a long time.1 It wasn’t until “the rise of the women’s

movement […] in the early 1970’s”2 that the topic, which after all encloses an

experience exclusive to the female gender, started to be seriously discussed by scholars.

The immense richness and consequent potential of it was also soon understood by

different filmmakers, such as Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, who believed that the

bond was “the most mysterious, complicated and charged with emotion [of all human

relationships].” 3

Consequently, it should come as no surprise that the theme continues to be vastly

explored to this day and that it has been subject to many different interpretations. In that

sense, there are two modern works that come as especially relevant to me: namely, Pride

and Prejudice (Wright, 2005) and Lady Bird (Gerwig, 2017). Both films avoid a

“simplistic” depiction of the relationship, understanding by this that they don’t regard

the mother figure either as a plainly “good” or “bad” object, 4 but as a complete human

being. By following the story of two young women’s (Elizabeth “Lizzie” Bennet, and

Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson) shift in perception towards their female progenitors,

they offer the viewers an opportunity to re-discover the bond along with them.



1
Lucy Rose Fisher, Cinematernity: Film, Motherhood, Genre (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1996), 10, https://archive.org/details/cinematernityfil00fisc.
2
Fisher, Cinematernity, 10.
3
Frederic Brussat and Mary Ann Brussat, “The Joy Luck Club. Directed by Wayne Wang,”
Spirituality Practice, accessed September 23, 2021,
https://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/films/reviews/view/4428/the-joy-luck-club.
4
E. Ann Kaplan, Women & Film: Both Sides of the Camera (New York: Methuen, 1983), page
number, https://archive.org/details/womenfilmbothsid0000kapl/page/n3/mode/2up.

1