In Europe in the days when maternal mortality was high—that is, every age till very recently—a bereaved husband acted just like the father in the Tale of the Juniper Tree; he wept greatly, then he wept a bit less, then he rose and took a new wife. At some point, the child of the lost wife is sure to ask: “What did my mother die of?” In the Juniper Tree, the mother died of “joy.” It’s a more acceptable answer than “she died of you.” But not many children, in real life or in fairy tales, can have been fooled in this way. … Generations have been born into blood-guilt and reared by wraiths, the dead mother hovering over the cradle, blighting the new marriage: souring the milk and cracking the bowls, starting fires in the thatch and unravelling the products of the loom.

Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self-…, loc. 166