theories and methodologies Always Lonely: Celebrity, Motherhood, and the Dilemma of Destiny brenda r. weber BRENDA R. WEBER is an associate pro- fessor in gender studies at Indiana Uni- versity, with adjunct appointments in English, cultural studies, American stud- ies, and communication and culture. She is the author of Makeover TV: Selfhood, Cit- izenship, and Celebrity (Duke UP, 2009) and Women and Literary Celebrity in the Nine- teenth Century: The Transatlantic Produc- tion of Fame and Gender (Ashgate, 2012). It is not fame nor praise that contents me. I seem never to have needed love so much as now. —Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1852 If I’m such a legend, then why am I so lonely? Let me tell you, legends are all very well if you’ve got somebody around who loves you. —Judy Garland, 1967 I’m deinitely lonely. I’m not convinced there’s anybody out there who can handle me and my situation. —Kate Gosselin, 2010 JUST WHAT IS IT ABOUT FAME THAT SO ALIENATES WOMEN? OR, WHY IS IT THAT FAMOUS WOMEN OFTEN SPEAK OF THEIR EXPERIENCE OF celebrity as something that is ultimately lonely and a shabby substi- tute for love? And why are these statements of loneliness in celebrity attenuated for mothers? Whether it is a famous American author of the nineteenth century and mother of seven, Harriet Beecher Stowe; an iconic and volatile star of the mid–twentieth century and mother of three, Judy Garland; or a twenty-irst-century reality celebrity and mother of eight, Kate Gosselin, these women suggest that the expe- riences of fame are isolating and ultimately unsatisfying. To para- phrase Stowe, it is not fame and celebrity that satisies the heart of the female star; it is the old-fashioned comforts of love. heir com- bined comments are thus a corrective to fans’ implied perception of famous people as happy, when, indeed, their celebrity seems to have alienated them from love. Whether the female celebrity seeks ro- mantic or familial love is not clear, and we would do well to realize that the abstract palliative is actually a culturally imagined comfort that probably has little to do with either these women in particular or stardom more broadly. But the consistent remarks about fame as a condition of loneliness establish a discursive imperative that the [ PMLA 1110 [ © 2011 by the modern language association of america ]