Unruly Care: Maternal Ambivalence and the Politics of Stigma in Semple’s Where'd You Go, Bernadette

Abstract

Grounded in Andrea O’Reilly’s matricentric feminism, this study examines how maternal ambivalence, mother-blame, and agency are constructed in Maria Semple’s Where’d You Go, Bernadette? (2012). Using descriptive qualitative analysis, this study unravels the politics of the stigma mechanism and the negotiation of maternal ambivalence. The analysis finds that Bernadette’s ambivalence is cast as deviance because it conflicts with the norm of “intensive mothering” and total availability believed by the society. Gossip, school rituals, and digital documentation convert rumour into quasi-official facts, institutionalising mother-blame. The novel also advances “unruly care” (delegation, strategic withdrawal, and the recovery of creative work) as legitimate maternal agency that sustains caregiving capacity. Conceptually, the article refines O’Reilly’s framework by specifying 'unruly care' as an analytic for tracing movement from ambivalence, through stigmatisation, to agency in contemporary maternal fiction.

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