Cultural Depictions of the Stepmother

Jo Parnell is Researcher and Honorary Lecturer in the School of Humanities, Creative Industries, and Social Sciences, University of Newcastle, Australia.

• ForewordCatharine Colebourne (University of Newcastle, Australia)AcknowledgementsList of ContributorsIntroduction Jo Parnell (University of Newcastle, Australia)1. Why So Wicked? Representations of Stepmothers in Popular German and Algerian Folktales Christa Jones and Claudia Schwabe (Utah State University, USA)2. Saviors and Intruders: American Stepmothers of the 1960s Era HollywoodAndrew Howe (La Sierra University, USA)3. It’s a Hard Knock Life: Truman Capote’s Holly Golightly, Cinderella and Evil Stepmother In One Depression-era, Orphaned Child BrideKathryn Keeble (Deakin University, Australia)4. Warring Women: The Biafran War and depictions of stepm(othering).Shalini Nadaswaran (University of Malaya, Malaysia)5. Beyond the Villain: The Stepmother Archetype in Soviet and Baltic LiteratureEva Eglaja-Kristone (University of Latvia, Latvia) and Johanna Ross (Independent Researcher) 6. Film Noir and Criminal Stepmothers of the Post-World War II EraAndrew Howe (La Sierra University, USA)7. From Folklore to Screen: Depicting the Stepmother in Korean CinemaKyoung-suk Sung (Max-Planck Institute for Human Development, Germany)8. From Euripides To the Present: Reinventing the Ancients’ Amorous StepmotherKathryn Keeble (Deakin University, Australia)AfterwordHugh Craig (University of Newcastle, Australia)Index

Dr. Parnell’s superbly curated volume offers a rich, multinational, and interdisciplinary examination of a figure long maligned in narratives spanning from ancient Greek tragedy to twenty-first-century cinema. Each chapter situates the enduring tropes of the cruel, lustful, and at times even nurturing stepmother within their broader cultural, legal, and social contexts, ultimately revealing the common force that sustains these stereotypes: patriarchy.