“Sometimes being a bitch is all a woman’s got to hold on to”: Rethinking Maternal Archetypes in Dolores Claiborne

This chapter explores the dissolution of the Good/Bad mother binary in DoloresClaiborne, focusing on how Stephen King complicates maternal archetypes through thenovel’s first-person narrative voice. Drawing on Sarah Arnold’s framework of maternalhorror, which situates mothers as either selfless nurturers or monstrous threats, thechapter argues that Dolores Claiborne refuses such simplification. While Doloresperforms the role of the Bad mother - harsh, emotionally distant, and even violent -her internal monologue reveals a deeply self-sacrificial figure motivated by maternallove and fear. King’s use of first-person narration privileges Dolores’s subjectivity,allowing for an intimate portrayal of her emotional and psychological landscape. Thisnarrative voice foregrounds her maternal complexity, revealing how she deliberatelyadopts the appearance of cruelty to protect her daughter from trauma, therebysubverting horror’s traditional maternal binaries.The 1995 film adaptation, while retaining the core narrative, shifts focus by dilutingDolores’s subjectivity and centring the daughter, Selena, as the site of emotionalresolution. In doing so, the adaptation leans toward a more conventional arc ofredemption and reconciliation, softening the novel’s more unsettling portrayal ofmaternal rage and repression. By comparing the two versions, the chapter highlightshow King’s novel resists archetypal containment, offering a rare portrait of a motherwho embodies both love and violence without collapsing into stereotype.