Maternal Resilience and Preservative Love in Joanna Murray-Smith’s \"Pennsylvania Avenue\"

My paper offers an analysis of the representation of the “mother without child” (Hansen 1997) in Joanna Murray-Smith’s jukebox musical (Fitzpatrick 2008) Pennsylvania Avenue. It suggests that the genre of the jukebox musical, as it is manifest within Pennsylvania Avenue, operates to emphasise a persisting link between mother and child, irrespective of the duration of the separation. Elaine Tuttle Hansen writes of the new stories of the mother without child which she considers, “these fictional woman who are mothers (actual or, in some cases, potential) and their conventional maternal capacities, including their relational, nurturant, and protective abilities, are not utterly devalued or destroyed by the loss of a child, although they may be more or less damaged and are always changed in some way” (Hansen 1997, 26). Loss is a persistent theme within Murray-Smith’s writing, and Murray-Smith’s interest in representing women who experience loss might be suggested to indicate an interest in representing the diverse experiences of women. Harper, Murray-Smith’s central character in Pennsylvania Avenue, mourns for the child that she gave up at birth. However, whilst she experiences her separation from her child as an experience of loss and unrealised potential, her life apart from her child is not all loss. She experiences love and lust, and she has positive interactions with the people that she meets at her place of work, The White House. Hansen considers the story of the mother without child to “[embrace] the loss of children as both tragic and liberating” (Hansen 1997, 236), and within Pennsylvania Avenue Murray-Smith permits that there may be both tragic and joyful elements to her narrative. Harper has an impact upon significant political events and important political choices. Murray-Smith’s play Pennsylvania Avenue depicts a mother without child whose story includes elements of both pathos and joy, and it will be proposed here that Pennsylvania Avenue might be considered to offer an “alternative [story]” (Hansen 1997, 238) of potential and possibility for the mother without child. Bibliography: Fitzpatrick, Peter 2008, “Life or a Cabaret? Nick Enright and The Boy from Oz”, in Pender, Anne and Susan Lever (eds.), Nick Enright: An Actor’s Playwright. Rodopi: New York. Hansen, Elaine Tuttle 1997, Mother without Child: Contemporary Fiction and the Crisis of Motherhood. University of California Press: Berkeley and Los Angeles. Murray-Smith, Joanna 2014, “Pennsylvania Avenue” – unpublished script. Rehearsal: 29 October 2014, Pennsylvania Avenue, Melbourne Theatre Company Headquarters. Company Run: 31 October 2014, Pennsylvania Avenue, Melbourne Theatre Company Headquarters. First Preview: 8 November 2014, Pennsylvania Avenue, Sumner Theatre, Southbank Theatre, Melbourne Theatre Company. Opening Night: 13 November 2014, Pennsylvania Avenue, Sumner Theatre, Southbank Theatre, Melbourne Theatre Company. Final Performance: 23 December 2014, Pennsylvania Avenue, Sumner Theatre, Southbank Theatre, Melbourne Theatre Company.