Standard Fairytale “Wicked Stepmother”.
Thnx.
Winifred, the mother of Hathi, Jr. in The Jungle Book.
Okay, how many of you missed the
specified in the OP?
So forgettable the Disney company doesn’t know who provided the voice.
Cinderella has a stepmother, although her mother is dead I believe. I see @What_Exit already mentioned stepmothers.
Many of the evil stepmothers in the early editions of the Grimm’s fairy tales or their sources, respectively, had been real, biological mothers. They bowdlerized them in later editions which are the ones we know today and which the Disney versions of Snow White and Cinderella were (loosely) based on.
I did some quick research. Of the 13 Official Disney Princesses + Elsa & Anna:
(5) Aurora, Mulan, Tiana, Rapunzel, Moana - Moms are alive in the film
(1) Merida - Mom is alive but turned into a bear
(8) Moms are either dead or are never specifically mentioned or show.
Arial and Anna & Elsa’s mom died in boating accidents
Belle’s mom by plague
The rest, never specified.
Dumbo
This scene still makes my wife choke up
Hell, that makes me choke up.
Tarzan’s human Mother is gone, but his Ape Mother is central to the whole storyline.
IMO it’s not just disney, a huge percentage of children’s stories have missing or dead parents, particularly mothers. I think it’s a product of the fact most of the original children story tropes originated in a time when maternal mortality was very high.
I wonder if part of it also has to do with children viewing the adult world as this completely separate reality. Like without parents around, children are the heroes of their own story.
Also, a child with both parents has fewer opportunities for conflicts and the other things that make fiction interesting.
You have to earn your “happily ever after”.
Elsa and Anna are not official Disney Princesses?
I had the pronunciation right (NSFW):
Andy has a mom in the Pixar Toy Story movies.
But do any of the toys have moms? There’s a reason it’s not called Andy’s Story.
When Mulan was released in 1998, some people said this was the first Disney movie to depict a female lead who had two parents live through the entire movie.
Mmm, good point. 