A man’s relationship with his mother is the blueprint for his capacity for tenderness, his fear of engulfment, and his ability to see women as humans rather than saints or monsters.
Here, the son views the mother as a fortress. She is the repository of unconditional love. In The Pursuit of Happyness , the mother is the catalyst for the father’s heroism; her absence (or departure) forces the son into a survival pact with the father. In these stories, the son’s ultimate virtue is gratitude . He must succeed to validate her sacrifice. The tragedy of this archetype is that the son often succeeds for her, but rarely with her. Then came Freud, Tennessee Williams, and the auteurs of the 20th century who decided to take a scalpel to the apron strings. The "devouring mother" trope is the shadow side of the sacred bond. She loves her son so completely that she prevents him from becoming a man. Real Mom Son Sex
Beyond the Apron Strings: The Sacred, the Smothering, and the Sublime in Mother-Son Stories A man’s relationship with his mother is the