‘Sorry, I Don’t Speak Bear’ Voice, Agency, and the Mother-Daughter Relationship in Disney-Pixar’s Brave

This paper draws on Kristeva’s theories on abjection, studies on motherhood, and children’s literature scholarship to better understand the relationship between Merida, the adolescent protagonist, and her mother, Elinor, in the Disney-Pixar film Brave. At first glance, it seems as though Merida has a strong voice, and by standing up to her parents and refusing to go through with the betrothal they have arranged, it does seem as if she has agency and an established subject position as a headstrong tomboy. During the course of the film, however, Merida feels the need to silence her mother (by turning the latter into a bear) in order to be heard. Although Elinor is a bear for almost half the film, I argue that the maturity and subjectivity of the adolescent protagonist as daughter and princess come not just from a sense of agency, but also as a result of the bond she shares with her mother, a feature often missing from Disney princess films. I begin by examining the queen’s transformation into a bear (which is at once masculine, sexual, monstrous, and abject), and what that entails for both Merida and Elinor. Given that teen transformations traditionally reflect anxieties about becoming “the wrong kind of adult,” I am interested in examining the underlying reasons behind the adult mother’s transformation (Waller 2009, p. 44). Finally, I analyze the process of female community building, both with regard to speech (and consequently, silencing), and the rituals of feeding and eating.