The Motherhood of the Childless

One of the main themes in British literature of the Nineteenth Century is that of motherhood (Igel 82; Čemáková and Mahlberg 2021, 120; Welter 1966, 151, 171), even when the trope involves absent motherhood (Thaden 1997, 4, 6). The nature of motherhood and its attitudes and tasks were closely connected with religion and virtue (Bowers 1996, 16, 19; Francus 2012, 1; Theriot 1996; 20-21; Flanders 2003, 50). As a writer in this period, George MacDonald constantly engaged with the theme of motherhood. For instance, the topic appears in the theology of his sermons, when he speaks of the tenderness of God in maternal terms (“The Child in the Midst”), in his literary criticism, when he deems his mother’s treachery to be the “sole cause” of Hamlet’s misery (The Tragedie of Hamlet), in his fantasy tales, when the maternal beech tree protects Anodos (Phantastes), in his stories for children, when the wise great-great-grandmother guides Irene (The Princess and the Goblin) and the motherly North Wind carries the boy Diamond in her bosom (At the Back of the North Wind), and in his novels for adults, when he depicts female mothers who are strong, outspoken, and exert leadership over their husbands (John 1991, 28; Stelle 2005, 52-53). MacDonald even depicts God as feminine and maternal, a unique perspective in Victorian England (Gaarden 2011, 15; Wolff 1961, 374; Patterson 1971, 17; Styler 2024). However, for MacDonald, motherhood is not inherently connected with pregnancy or giving birth. This paper argues that even as he develops an ideal of feminine motherhood, MacDonald affirms a primarily non-normative maternal role when he claims that a childless woman can be more truly a mother than a woman who has borne children.

When he was eight years old, MacDonald’s mother died of tuberculosis (Greville MacDonald 1924, 31). This early experience of losing his mother impacted his portrayals of women throughout his novels (Holbrook 2000, 242; Gaarden 2011, 13, 16). In particular, MacDonald exalts motherhood. The well-known wise woman of his books embodies the love and nurturing qualities of God. At the same time, not only his own mother, but also other women mothered MacDonald when he was a child. After his mother’s death, an aunt who remained single throughout her life, Christina MacKay, took care of him and his brothers. MacDonald had cause to remember “her love and devotion” (Greville MacDonald 1924, 46, 52). When his father married again to Margaret McColl, she fully took the place of a new mother to him (Greville MacDonald 1924, 53, 160). MacDonald never referred to her as a stepmother; he made her slippers by hand, praised her to his father as a woman without equal, and wrote to her constantly throughout her life, calling her “dearest mother” (Greville MacDonald 1924, 93-94, 129, 295; Sadler 1994, 129). An early biographer mentions MacDonald’s comment that when he arrived in heaven and saw his own mother and Margaret, he would not know “which he should kiss first” (Johnson 1906, 6). Although scholars have recognized the impact of losing his own mother, they have failed to notice the profound effect that these other women also had in fashioning MacDonald’s notions of motherhood. 

As MacDonald understands it, motherhood is not an essential aspect of bearing children but rather is a characteristic that belongs to being a woman. When the character Mrs. Elton acts as a mother for Lady Emily, MacDonald comments in his authorial voice that she acted out of “the motherhood of her nature, which was her most prominent characteristic, notwithstanding—or perhaps in virtue of—her childlessness” (David Elginbrod). Even female children possess the quality of motherhood. When the girl Agnes has tenderness toward the boy Cosmo, she is feeling the “mother that every woman feels” (Castle Warlock). Similarly, when the child Annie guides a blind woman, she delights in being a “kind of mother” and fulfilling “a woman’s highest calling—that of ministering unto” (Alec Forbes). Later, when Annie defends Alec, MacDonald again describes her as exhibiting “motherhood” (Alec Forbes). In MacDonald’s phantasy tale, Lilith, the girl Lona, full of wisdom and love, cares for the little ones, who regard her as their mother. Lona’s mother, Lilith, is a woman of dazzling beauty who rejects her child. In contrast, Lona has a “sense of motherhood” (Lilith; cf. Kumabe 2021, 21, 23, 38; McGillis 1992, 48). The primary characteristic of motherhood is that of love: “the mother’s heart more than any other God has made is like him in power of loving” (Weighed and Wanting). All women, regardless of bearing children, can display this selfless love, which imitates the love of God and Christ, and which understands that the bond between mother and child is only a shadow of the bond between God and his children (Adela Cathcart). For instance, the spinster Martha Moon sometimes has “a look that was the incarnation of essential motherhood—as if her eyes were swallowing up sorrow; as if her soul was ready to be the sacrifice for sin” (The Flight of the Shadow). MacDonald makes a clear distinction between the mothers who demonstrate this love and those who do not, between women who are mothers because they have born children and those who are mothers because they love like God, with hearts “big enough to mother all the children of humanity” (Sir Gibbie). A love that restrains itself only to one’s own children is a selfishness that hides itself in imitation of love, but true mother love reaches to the children of all (David Elginbrod; A Rough Shaking; Alec Forbes). This is why when Harry Walton sees his wife care for a deserted child she has found, he calls her “a true mother” (The Seaboard Parish). The more a woman increases in love and in the quality of her motherhood, the less she will care whether the children she mothers are her own or another’s (Home Again). In thus setting up a non-normative criterion for motherhood, MacDonald honors the motherhood of the childless.