Line #71 Main/EarthMother


1	%% Image selected per Image Pickin' thread: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1643823841041941000
2	%% Please do not replace or remove without starting a new thread.
3	%%
4	[[quoteright:300:[[Creator/PeterPaulRubens https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/earth_mother.png]]]]
5	[[caption-width-right:300:''Abundance'', 1630]]
6	%%
7	Like the Empress in the {{Tarot\|Motifs}} pack, a hearty, smiling lady who is invariably portrayed as heavily pregnant and holding a brimming cornucopia, or nursing a baby, while children play at her feet. She is almost always of [[BigBeautifulWoman ample and attractive proportions]] with the occasional [[BuxomBeautyStandard huge tracts of land]], and will be generous and bountiful in her affections; [[GreenThumb she can make green things grow and flourish]], and who want to share that love and bounty in one way or another--[[ThroughHisStomach food being a particularly popular one]]. They want to love and support and nurture others and generally be motherly. She is both fertile and fecund, but she can get a little cranky if she is not appreciated the way she wants to be. Scorned, [[NatureIsNotNice she can be lethal]] -- God help you if you get between her and [[MamaBear one of her babies.]]
8
9	A [[MotherGoddess goddess of the earth/nature/fertility/motherhood]] is more often than not an example of this trope. If an Earth Mother is afflicted, she can shade into the JewishMother or the MyBelovedSmother. And bear in mind the flipside of BrawnHilda is a vengeful Valkyrie with a very big spear. Compare and contrast ApronMatron.
10
11	See also MotherNature and WaterIsWomanly.
12
13	----
14	!!Examples:
15	[[foldercontrol]]
16
17	[[folder:Anime & Manga]]
18	* ''Franchise/SailorMoon'': [[GreenThumb Makoto]] in her manga/''Crystal'' incarnation best fits with her plant powers, domesticity, wanting a family and to be more girly, and being the TeamMom of the Inners. She also acts like a surrogate mom to Chibiusa in one chapter in the Dream arc. Her dream to own either a bakery or a flower shop is mentioned extensively.
19	[[/folder]]
20
21	[[folder:Art]]
22	* ''Art/CharityBouguereau'': More emphasis on the "mother" than the "earth," but here we see a very fertile mother caring for a gaggle of children right above a spilled cornucopia lying in shadow, forgotten by the children in favor of their substitute mother's milk. Similar allegories of Charity, whether in {{sculpture\|s}} or {{painting\|s}}, are not uncommon, with Creator/{{Bouguereau}}'s being sort of a TropeCodifier.
23	* During UsefulNotes/TheFrenchRevolution, before the iconography of Marianne properly evolved, the French Republic was often [[AnthropomorphicPersonification personified]] as a mother, which provided a useful excuse to show her with one or both breasts bared.
24	* In the crypt of the ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monument_to_the_Battle_of_the_Nations Völkerschlachtsdenkmal]]'' in Leipzig, which was completed in 1913 for the hundredth anniversary of the [[UsefulNotes/TheNapoleonicWars Battle of Nations]], there are four giant statues allegorizing patriotic virtues. One of them, ''Volkskraft'' ("strength of the people", which apparently means fertility) is a mother suckling two children.
25	[[/folder]]
26
27	[[folder:Comic Books]]
28	* ''ComicBook/{{Batman}}'': Villainess ComicBook/PoisonIvy shows nurturing love for all things green and growing and is cranky on issues such as pollution and pesticides. She has attacked polluters without mercy in defense of her beloved plants but has also (in extremism) nurtured humans after an apocalypse with abundant fast-growing fruit and vegetables.
29	* ''ComicBook/TheLegendOfWonderWoman2016'': Gaia is goddess of the earth, the mother of the gods, and when Hippolyta crafted a figure of an infant in her yearning for a child out of her clay Gaia is the one who granted Diana life, making Gaia her other parent.
30	* ''Franchise/MarvelUniverse'' has the Earth goddess called Mother Earth (alternatively: Mother Nature), who under various names is member of every single pantheon. Among others, she is Gaia (Hercules' great-grandmother) in the Greek pantheon and Jord (Thor's mother) in the Norse one.
31	[[/folder]]
32
33	[[folder:Fan Works]]
34	* Creator/AAPessimal's fanfiction character of Doctor Davinia Bellamy is a blonde woman in her middle-to-late thirties who trained as an academic botanist and ran florists' shops in Ankh-Morpork. She came to the attention of the Guild of Assassins through her ability to understand the language of flowers -- she could say ''Drop Dead!'' in a variety of interesting floral ways. A loving wife and mother of three boys, she now teaches botany and Aggressive Flower-Arranging at the Guild school. Her ability to nurture difficult flora is legendary. And Gods help anyone unwise enough to threaten her husband or sons. Unexpected bouquets have been delivered.
35	[[/folder]]
36
37	[[folder:Literature]]
38	* ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'': Sybil Vimes. Especially after her giving birth to Young Sam Vimes.
39	* Eva Wilt in Tom Sharpe's ''Literature/{{Wilt}}'' series. A larger-than-life mother of quadruplet daughters and wife to Henry. Although she is a prime example of the cranky underappreciated kind of Earth Mother.
40	* Molly Weasley in ''Literature/HarryPotter.'' It takes all of two meetings with Harry for her to welcome him into the fold and treat him like an extra son.
41	* Charity is represented as a nursing Earth Mother in Edmund Spenser's ''Literature/TheFaerieQueene''.
42	* Charity Carpenter from ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles'' has overtones of this. She is fiercely protective of her large family.
43	[[/folder]]
44
45	[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
46	* Creator/RoseanneBarr from ''Series/{{Roseanne}}'', naturally.
47	* Television gardener Charlie Dimmock on ''Ground Force''. Charlie was famous for going bra-less while gardening on TV, alleging that it was more comfortable. She managed to upstage her two male co-stars in every show, especially if she wore a loose T-shirt with an open neck, and if it ever ''rained'' on their gardening tasks, she was Queen of the Wet T-Shirt on British TV. And what was generally overlooked was that she knew her gardening, too.
48	* Comedienne Dawn French in most of her roles, especially the nurturing lady vicar in ''Series/VicarOfDibley''.
49	* Long-running sitcom ''Series/TheGoodLife'' revolved around a suburban couple who give up the rat race to become completely self-sufficient. Barbara Good (Felicity Kendal) is a woman who typifies the other sort of Earth Mother--the green-fingered garden goddess who makes things grow and flourish. She nurtures her animals with love and acts as caring mother to husband Tom, an overgrown adolescent who hasn't quite made it to mature adulthood yet.
50	* ''Series/Miranda2009'': Comedienne Miranda Hart is an Expy of the Earth Mother. Built way over scale and dwarfing her elegant, tiny, mother, the six-foot-plus Miranda is a woman brimming with love, nurturing to her friends, and seeking the right man.
51	* ''Series/Charmed1998'': Piper's role when she gets temporarily turned into a goddess in an episode.
52	[[/folder]]
53
54	[[folder:Mythology and Religion]]
55	* Myth/CelticMythology: Irish mythology mentions a people called the Tuatha De Danaan. Since it means something like "people of Danu", Danu has been hypothesized as an ancestor/mother goddess-type figure. She's also been associated with the land, making her even more of an example.
56	* Myth/ClassicalMythology:
57	** Gaia, though she differs from the popular image of one in a number of ways. For starters, she's more associated with rocks and soil, as opposed to plant life, which she is only tangentially associated with. She's also not particularly nurturing, with most of her major stories involving her pursuing the destruction of the Olympians mostly via birthing monsters like [[EldritchAbomination Typhon]] or orchestrating the evisceration of her first husband Ouranos.
58	** Demeter is associated with plant life, being the leader of the agrarian gods. Though she is predominantly Olympian, and therefore celestial.
59	** There's also the rather obscure primordial goddess Physis, the goddess of nature, though she doesn't really have any extant myths about her.
60	* Myth/NorseMythology has Jord, the personified earth. She's barely mentioned except as being the mother of Thor and a jotunn. Fjorgyn and Hlodyn are considered other names for her. A male Fjorgynn is also mentioned, but he's also a shadowy, abstract figure who does nothing. The Continental Germanic tribes had a worshiped example similar to Tellus named Nerthus, called Terra Mater by Tacitus. He also mentioned an "Isis of the Suebi" who may or may not have been an example depending on what criteria he used to identify the native Germanic goddess with Isis.
61	* Myth/EgyptianMythology: Gender inverted. Geb is an earth father married to a sky goddess, Nut. He's pretty benevolent as far as personifications go.
62	* Cel was the Etruscan version of Roman deity Terra Mater/Tellus.
63	* Myth/SlavicMythology has Mokosh and (Mate) Zemyla, who may be different names for the same figure. The related Balts also called their mother/earth goddess by a name similar to the latter.
64	* A particularly malevolent version is found in Myth/SonghaiMythology. Nyaberi means "great mother" and she was the cruel earth goddess. Her followers are ghosts, witches, and other evil spirits.
65	* Both Tara in UsefulNotes/{{Buddhism}} and Sherab Chamma in UsefulNotes/{{Bon}} religions are often considered versions of Mother Earth.
66	[[/folder]]
67
68	[[folder:Radio]]
69	* The role of Creator/HattieJacques on ''Radio/HancocksHalfHour'' was, as often as not, to be motherly and comforting to Creator/TonyHancock and the boys, usually after some far-fetched get-rich-quick scheme had failed. She often tries to do this through food, even though she was not the world's best cook.
70	[[/folder]]
71
72	[[folder:Tabletop Games]]
73	* ''TabletopGame/WarhammerFantasy'':
74	** Rhya is the Imperial goddess of the harvest, growth, and summer. She is depicted as a tall, motherly woman, usually pregnant and wearing a crown of barley and wheat. Her worship is strongest in rural lands and the Empire's southern agricultural provinces, and she is prayed to for good harvests and safe births. She is married to Taal, the god of hunting and forest lands, and the two have often argued over issues such as the cutting of forests for farmlands or human prayers for deliverance from predators.
75	** The Elves view Isha, the Mother, as the progenitor of their race and the goddess of living things, fertility, and birth. The High Elves and the Wood Elves revere as one of their primary deities; in both cases, their respective queens are also Isha's high priestesses. Her husband is Kournos, the Hunter, who is similarly seen as the first father of the Elves. Elves who spend enough time in human lands to familiarize themselves with human religion usually come to view Rhya as an imperfect human interpretation of Isha.
76	[[/folder]]
77
78	[[folder:VideoGames]]
79	* ''VideoGame/GoldenSun1'': Generally averted, as the earth element is associated with the planet Venus and use a LoveGoddess vibe instead: the statues in the Venus lighthouse are gracefully built rather than heavy while ''VideoGame/GoldenSunDarkDawn'' shows that Cybele is a similarly beautiful woman (who attacks by throwing a weird frog-like plant creature).
80	* ''VideoGame/WarcraftIII'': [[OurMinotaursAreDifferent The Tauren]] sometimes refer to an Earth Mother (and the Tauren Chieftain's Reincarnation ability is said to come from a strong connection with her).
81	* From ''VideoGame/FireEmblemGaiden'' and its remake, the patron goddess of the country of Zofia is Mila. She founded Zofia in the belief that mankind deserved happiness and ease, and blessed the land so that the crops would grow without work or toil from the citizens, who often refer to her as "the Earth Mother." The conflict of the game begins when Mila's blessings suddenly cease, and Zofia is stricken by famine. Mila's belief in pleasure and happiness above all else eventually began to corrupt the more complacent, rapacious Zofian nobles, as they started to let their appetites dictate all else.
82	* In the ''Videogame/{{Overlord}}'' games, the elves worship a deity known as the Mother Goddess who takes the form of a heavyset woman. It's because of this that Elven Priestesses gorge themselves and it's implied to be why male Elves tend to be {{Chubby Chaser}}s who serve overweight human women.
83	[[/folder]]
84
85	[[folder:Webcomics]]
86	* The four central characters of ''Webcomic/OlympicDames'' are American high school girls who are suddenly and bizarrely thrust into this role. But nobody else around them appears to notice they have become heavily pregnant overnight.
87	* The goddess Cybele in ''Webcomic/TalesOfTheGalli'' appears in dreams and visions to Katia and Daphne, whom she saves in the Colosseum. She is known as The Great Mother and has her own cult and priests called Galli.
88	[[/folder]]

Context Main / EarthMother