MOTHERLESS ADVENTURES AND NANNY POPPINS

http://press.emerson.edu/ploughshares/2012/02/17/knocking-off-mom-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-g-rated-murder/

I enjoyed this article, but the author misses a fairly obvious point (in addition to the one that I make in my comment on the article-- that all children dream of the adventure and freedom of being an orphan, and that is why so many kids books feature orphans as the hero/ines): mother dying is also a metaphor for leaving behind both the completeness of the womb and coming into this world, and also that the death of childhood is the murder of mother and the safety she represents.  Mother herself may not need to die literally, but the idea-- the comfort, the safety-- of her must die in order for the child to find his/her own strength and become his or her own person.

Reading this, I was also reminded of that in encountering the supernatural and out-of-the-ordinary does not require the death of mother.  Harry Potter's parents death is not just necessary so that he can defeat Voldemort-- in fact it is his mother's love that creates the power over Voldemort that Harry has-- it is necessary because otherwise he would have grown up in a magickal household.  He would have been more like Ron.  Or if he had grown up in a muggle household, Hermione.  And then there is a whole other post that could be done on the fantasy of the black sheep child, the child that is, in fact, Harry Dursley, and how he wishes to learn that one day he is an orphan, born of supernatural parentage, etc.

Take for instance Mary Poppins (both of these are from my old Conjurings blog).

http://conjurings.blogspot.com/2007/10/mary-poppins-spoonful-of-sugar.html

http://conjurings.blogspot.com/2008/06/pl-travers-magickal-mary-poppins.html