BBC Radio 4 - Archive on 4, Writing Our Mothers

BBC Radio 4’s Archive on 4 explores how daughters write mothers—whether idealized, feared, abandoned, or reinvented—across works by writers including Sylvia Plath, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison and Elena Ferrante. The program features feminist writer Jacqueline Rose, who says mothers carry “idealisation and expectation” that writers can dismantle by examining what lies underneath. It also draws on interviews: Virginia Woolf, who lost her mother at 13, argued writers must “kill” the “Angel in the House,” while Maya Angelou described writing about her mother as finding a “hurricane” in its power. The archive suggests motherhood—present or absent—can be as formative for a writer as life itself.