Moderskapet i Till Julia
en hermeneutisk tolkning av Margareta Garpes drama Till Julia
The purpose with this essay is to illustrate the problematical mother-daughterrelation in Mar-gareta Garpes drama/play ?To Julia? through a psychoanalytic and philosophical perspective. To get a deeper understanding for the relations between mother and daughter, and the kind of motherhood that Gloria is practising in the play I have used a hermeneutic method in search for answers to the questions: Why does Gloria take a position as a so called friend or sister in the interaction with her daughter Julia? Why is not mother Gloria capable to be mature, caring and nursing in the interaction with Julia? Through Gloria Margareta Garpe is giving me possible answers: Gloria is still seeing herself as a rejected and lonely child. The role of the daughter Julia in her mother?s life is to fill an empty space that was created in Gloria?s adolescence when she experienced the same feelings as Julia in present time in the play. The same confused mix of Julia?s and her mother?s feel-ings and needs, Gloria felt in her own childhood. How a woman turns out as a mother depends on a variety of factors. Mature, caring mother-hood is an act of awareness, responsibility, moral, reflection and adaptation. This can lead to the kind of freedom that de Beauvoir refers to as the ambiguous ?reality? meaning the ?exis-tence?. The mother who sees her child as a friend or sibling has not emancipated herself from a symbiosis with her own mother. Margareta Garpe illustrates in practise in the play ?To Julia? both de Beauvoir´s and Stern?s theories. According to my own interpretation Julia has not yet emancipated herself from her mother Gloria in the end of the play. But her understand-ing for Gloria?s motherhood has increased through their confrontations in the play.