
Madres infanticidas, madres espectrales, madres autoritarias que traumatizan a su progenie de por vida. Madres frías y calculadoras, madres sádicas, madres crueles que aborrecen su condición. Los diez relatos que componen esta antología nos presentan a mujeres particularmente oscuras, alejadas del mito de la maternidad y del arquetipo de la madre afable, solícita y laboriosa que sacrifica su vida entera por el cuidado de su familia. Se recogen aquí las voces de autoras de la talla de George Sand, Emilia Pardo Bazán, Mary E. W. Freeman, Willa Cather y Ellen Glasgow, que nos presentan en sus relatos figuras maternales que, por una u otra razón, han sido consideradas subversivas, peligrosas, o, en cierto modo, siniestras y malvadas para la época. En la segunda y última parte del libro, Nieves Mories, Eva Cid, Layla Martínez, Dara Cuervo y Sarai Herrera se proponen también subvertir desde la literatura el mito de la maternidad, no atacando ya exclusivamente a la figura de la madre ideal, que todavía hoy goza, tristemente, de gran popularidad, sino explorando también el lado oscuro de las relaciones entre madres e hijas, así como otros aspectos polémicos como la explotación de las mujeres por otras mujeres o la relación de las madres con la crueldad.
Authors

Emilia Pardo Bazán was a Galician author and scholar from Galicia. She is known for bringing naturalism to Spanish literature, for her detailed descriptions of reality, and for her role in feminist literature of her era. Her first novel, Pascual López (1879), is a simple exercise in fantasy of no remarkable promise, though it contains good descriptive passages of romance. It was followed by a more striking story, Un viaje de novios (1881), in which a discreet attempt was made to introduce into Spain the methods of French realism. The book caused a sensation among the literary cliques, and this sensation was increased by the appearance of another naturalistic tale, La tribuna (1885), wherein the influence of Émile Zola is unmistakable. Meanwhile, the writer's reply to her critics was issued under the title of La cuestion palpitante (1883), a clever piece of rhetoric, but of no special value as regards criticism or dialectics. The best of Emilia Pardo Bazán's work is embodied in Los pazos de Ulloa (1886), the painfully exact history of a decadent aristocratic family. A sequel, with the significant title of La madre naturaleza (1887), marks a further advance in the path of naturalism. She was also a journalist, essayist and critic. She died in Madrid.

Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman was born in Randolph, Massachusetts, and attended Mount Holyoke College (then, Mount Holyoke Female Seminary) in South Hadley, Massachusetts, for one year, from 1870–71. Freeman's parents were orthodox Congregationalists, causing her to have a very strict childhood. Religious constraints play a key role in some of her works. She later finished her education at West Brattleboro Seminary. She passed the greater part of her life in Massachusetts and Vermont. Freeman began writing stories and verse for children while still a teenager to help support her family and was quickly successful. Her best known work was written in the 1880s and 1890s while she lived in Randolph. She produced more than two dozen volumes of published short stories and novels. She is best known for two collections of stories, A Humble Romance and Other Stories (1887) and A New England Nun and Other Stories (1891). Her stories deal mostly with New England life and are among the best of their kind. Freeman is also remembered for her novel Pembroke (1894), and she contributed a notable chapter to the collaborative novel The Whole Family (1908). In 1902 she married Doctor Charles M. Freeman of Metuchen, New Jersey. In April 1926, Freeman became the first recipient of the William Dean Howells Medal for Distinction in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She died in Metuchen and was interred in Hillside Cemetery in Scotch Plains, New Jersey.

aka Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow American writer Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow won a Pulitzer Prize for In This Our Life (1941), her realistic historical novel of Virginia. Born into an upper-class Virginian family, Glasgow at an early age rebelled against traditional expectations of women and authored 20 bestselling novels. Southern settings of the majority of her novels reflect her awareness of the enormous social and economic changes, occurring in the South in the decades before her birth and throughout her own life. Beginning in 1897, she wrote her novels and many short stories, mainly about life in Virginia. Glasgow read widely to compensate for her own rudimentary education. She maintained a close lifelong friendship with James Branch Cabell, another notable writer of Richmond. She spent many summers at the historic Jerdone Castle plantation estate of her family in Bumpass, Virginia; this venue reappears in her writings. Her works include: The Descendant (1897), Phases of an Inferior Planet (1898), The Voice of the People (1900), The Battle- Ground (1902), The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields (1904), The Romance of a Plain Man (1909), Virginia (1913), The Builders (1919), The Past (1920), Barren Ground (1925), The Romantic Comedians (1926), They Stooped to Folly (1929), The Sheltered Life (1932), Vein of Iron (1935), In This Our Life (1941).

The novels Lélia (1833) and Consuelo (1842) among works, plays, and essays of French writer George Sand, pen name of Amandine Aurore Lucie Dupin, baroness Dudevant, concern the freedom and independence of women. People recognize this best known, most popular memoirist and journalist, more renowned in Europe in her lifetime than Victor Hugo and Honoré de Balzac in England in the 1830s and 1840s, People recognize Sand of the most notable writers of the Romantic era of Europe. People celebrated this controversial life, which oftentimes overshadowed her creative production. Known for its blend of romance and realism, her effortless spontaneity proliferated without sacrificing style and form. Sand stated the primary happiness in life in love and so focused on relationships in most of her novels as she tackled the complexities of politics, society, and gender. People best know Sand for bold statements about the rights in 19th-century society, her exploration of contemporary social and philosophical issues, and her depiction of the lives and language of provincials. Set of influences of each period of her literary career focused on specific themes. Her rustic perhaps truly represented her form as an author. Her first period reflected her rebellion against the bonds of marriage and deal largely with the relationships between men and women. English poet Lord Byron and French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau clearly influenced Sand with romantic novels, full of passionate personal revolt and ardent feminism, attitudes that went against societal conventions and outraged her early British and American critics. These extremely successful early Indiana , Lelia, and Jacques (1834) established Sand as an important literary voice for her generation. Pastorals, which depict rural scenes and peasant characters, form the last phase of her career. Her love of the French countryside and her sympathy with the peasants inspired La Mare au Diable (1846) and Francis the Waif (1847–1848), set in Berry. Gentle idealism distinguished these realistic pastorals in background detail; many critics finest considered them her finest. After her pastoral period, she continued until her death, but people remember few today. Unconventional life of George Sand in numerous ways: she fondly dressed in clothing of men to gain access to those parts of Paris, not decorous for ladies to go. She smoked in public to scandalize Parisian society. Lust affairs of Sand included high-profile relationships with the composer Frédéric François Chopin, the novelist Prosper Mérimée, and the poet and playwright Louis Charles Alfred de Musset.