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Shadow M'Other: Reimagining the Wicked Stepmother Through Stepmatrifocal Narrative
Dissertation   Open access

Shadow M'Other: Reimagining the Wicked Stepmother Through Stepmatrifocal Narrative

Kylie Ryan
University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland
Doctor of Philosophy, University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland
2026
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25907/01112
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Exegesis1.30 MBDownloadView
Thesis Open Access CC BY-NC V4.0
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Creative Artefact1.47 MB
Embargoed Access, Embargo ends: 29-Sep-2027

Abstract

Creative writing (incl. scriptwriting) Literary studies not elsewhere classified creative writing practice-led research fictocriticism stepmotherhood wicked stepmother trope stepmatrifocal narrative stepfamilies maternal death hauntology narrative empathy
This practice-led PhD research investigates how a fictocritical ‘stepmatrifocal narrative’ can reimagine stepmotherhood after maternal death, challenging the enduring trope of the ‘wicked stepmother’. Shadow M’Other: Reimagining the Wicked Stepmother Through Stepmatrifocal Narrative comprises a creative artefact and accompanying exegesis. The primary aim is to examine the cultural representations and lived realities of stepmotherhood, with particular attention to the compounded challenges of full-time stepmothering following the death of a biological mother. Despite the important role stepmothers play in nurturing and raising children, prevailing cultural archetypes and resulting stereotypes perpetuated through mythology, fairy tales and folklore, literature and contemporary media have contributed to persistent misrepresentations. Stepmothers occupy the culturally fraught position of the ‘Other Mother’, a liminal maternal role situated between caregiver and outsider, often entering a family space shaped by prior maternal attachment and loss. Although a limited body of creative work is sympathetic to the stepmother’s reality, very little is written from her perspective, and such work remains overshadowed by the overwhelming number of narratives in which she is cast as the objectified antagonist, frequently depicted through the perspective of her child victims. This thesis identifies the ‘stepmother gap’ as operating on several levels at once: narrative, cultural, institutional and emotional. Narratively, stepmothers are rarely centred as complex subjects of their own stories. Culturally, entrenched myths continue to frame them as antagonistic figures. Institutionally, support structures and social expectations often fail to recognise the ambiguity and labour of the role. Emotionally, many stepmothers must negotiate attachment, exclusion, grief, loyalty tensions and caregiving from a position of limited legitimacy. Together, these conditions reveal a disparity between dominant representations of stepmothers and the more complex relational realities experienced within contemporary family systems. Such misalignments frame public perceptions of stepmotherhood, influence self-perception and affect stepfamily relationships. Accordingly, the research addresses this representational absence by foregrounding stepmother subjectivity. Added to this broader stigmatisation is the complication of grief following the death of a biological mother. For stepmothers entering bereaved family systems, caregiving often occurs alongside ongoing mourning, loyalty tensions and the continuing presence of the deceased mother within family memory. This conjunction of grief and stepmotherhood remains comparatively underrepresented in both fiction and scholarship. The stepmatrifocal narrative, Shadow M’Other, is informed by experiential insight and illuminates the realities of what has been identified by scholars as one of the most difficult familial roles. The creative artefact foregrounds the stepmother’s voice, but also that of the mourned mother, whose presence emerges as physically absent yet affectively present, complicating inherited oppositions between mother and stepmother. The accompanying exegesis situates the inquiry within existing scholarship, offers a critical analysis of the stepmother as a narrative trope and examines how fictocritical narrative strategies can generate empathy for women in this liminal role. The research advances the concept of the stepmother gap and provides a stepmatrifocal counternarrative to enduring stepmother myths. It further demonstrates how fictocriticism can intervene in inherited maternal archetypes to reorient cultural representations and foster the social legitimisation of stepmotherhood, particularly within grief-shaped family systems.

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