What's up with moms?

In “Gingerbread” and The Turn of the Screw, the Western concept maternal instinct is perverted (not the adjective, but rather the verb). Many early societies worshiped women and their fertility because women were able to bring forth new life, which is amazing when actually thought about. In Western society, mothers are supposed to be warm and caring. They have an obligation to their children, while fathers do not have the same kind of social contract. When mothers kill or abuse their children, the media goes into a frenzy (see the Casey Anthony Trial and Mommie Dearest) but the same attention is not given when fathers kill their children. In The Turn of the Screw, the governess becomes a bizarre mother figure for Flora and Miles. She acts like a mother in that she wants to protect the two children, but she develops an unhealthy fascination with Miles. She always mentions his beauty and as the end draws nearer, she begins to repeat the words “perverse” and “unhealthy” more and more when talking about not only the ghosts’ relations to the children, but also her own. As a mother-figure, the governess can only fulfill very certain roles as laid down by society (i.e. protector, caregiver, etc.), but the increasing sexual tension and Miles’s death are certainly not part of society’s expectations. In “Gingerbread”, an older idea of maternity is shown: the mother as not only a life-giver, but also as a taker of life. In many non-Western societies, the original mother (Earth), both nourishes life and destroys it. Buffy’s and Willow’s mothers refute all Western expectations of motherhood: they betray their daughters, hurt them, and attempt to brutally kill them. When Buffy and Willow are being burned at the stake, Buffy’s mother says something along the lines that as Buffy’s mother, she knows what is best for her daughter. The underlying message seems to be that as the person who brought Buffy into the world, she can take Buffy from it. To us, as Americans, the idea of mothers acting in these ways is terrifying. Because of that, Joss Whedon takes pity on his audience and lets life return to normal after the wicked demon is vanquished. Henry James, however, refuses to change the governess and leaves us with the uncomfortable image of Miles dead in the governess’s arms.