Hot on the heels of Apple Tree Yard come The Replacement and Big Little Lies, featuring murderous school gate mothers and sinister maternity covers ‘Fear, that’s what makes animals of us all. Before I met you, I was civilised.” So said Dr Yvonne Carmichael in the BBC’s Sunday night drama _Apple Tree Yard_, contemplating her vertiginous descent from ordinary middle-aged working mother to adulterer, then rape victim, and finally murder suspect. But what the series, adapted from a 2013 novel by Louise Doughty, was asking us to consider is whether civilisation is only ever a thin veneer; whether the animal inside could be unleashed more easily than we might imagine, given the right circumstances. The idea of something primal, violent even, bubbling beneath maternal surfaces is hardly new, being a staple of everything from Greek tragedy to Shakespeare. Goading her husband into regicide, Lady Macbeth reaches for one of the few transgressions even more shocking to an Elizabethan audience, the idea of a mother murdering her own children: Continue reading...
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