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An Analysis of the Identity Constraints and Maternal Burdens Faced by Career Women in All Her Fault

Author(s)

Xi Ruan

Affiliation(s)

School of Foreign Languages, University of Sanya, Sanya, Hainan, China

Abstract

Through a realist narrative approach, All Her Fault portrays the multiple pressures and identity conflicts that contemporary career women face as they navigate between professional advancement and family life. Taking the series as its object of study, this article adopts close textual analysis and a feminist perspective to examine the formation of identity constraints and the maternal burden imposed on working women. The analysis reveals that, through the overlapping narratives of family crises, childcare challenges, and workplace difficulties, responsibility is repeatedly assigned to female characters, reflecting the feminization of maternal responsibility and the persistence of gender-unequal divisions of labor in society. At the same time, motherhood is moralized and idealized, placing women under dual constraints at both emotional and institutional levels. While the series depicts women’s reflection on and resistance to unfair distributions of responsibility, it also underscores the difficulty of overcoming structural limitations through individual effort alone. This article argues that, even as the drama offers a realistic portrayal of women’s lived dilemmas, it also exposes the gendered discursive boundaries that remain to be challenged in female-centered screen narratives.

Keywords

Maternal Burden; Identity Constraints; Gendered Discourse; Maternal Morality; All Her Fault

References

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