Stolen by Jane Harrison

             Harrison's play 'Stolen' illustrates the disastrous consequences of severing the spiritual and biological links between a mother and child. The play explores the tragedies of the stolen children and the effects of what may happen to the child's psychological mind and physical appearance when separated between mother and child. The suffering and loss of identity also have a significant impact on a child. The inability to distinguish who you are and to be unable to feel a sense of place and belonging can be as heartbreaking as being told of your mother's death. All of the characters suffer in different ways and from different experiences, and although those experiences differ, they all share the painful loss of their mother.
             Many of the characters have had traumatic experiences of being separated from their biological family and community—the separation between mother and child led to tragedies, which could have easily been avoided. Identity and understanding where you fit in the family and community can only be found through a mother's care for her child. The children from the play had lost all knowledge of their family's history and culture because of institutes and the rules forbidding them from having any connection to their biological mothers. The play also conveys that what they lost included emotional and physical attachment, identity, sense of place, and sanity.
             Sandy is one of the characters that can still remember the importance of motherly love, the good times, and the laughs he enjoyed with his mother "My mother loved me...she was always laughing, my old mum...had a sense of humor". Harrison explores the consequences of separating a mother and child through the recollections of Sandy. Sandy is very severely affected because all he had left was his stories about his mother. He often retreated into memories and daydreams to try and deal with his life without a mother.
             Many children were told they were unwanted or rejec...

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Stolen by Jane Harrison. (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 23:56, June 21, 2025, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/2674.html