Mother Without Child: Contemporary Fiction and the Crisis of Motherhood - Softcover

Hansen, Elaine Tuttle

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520205782 ISBN 13: 9780520205789

Publisher: University of California Press, 1997

Synopsis

Revealing the maternal as not a core identity but a site of profound psychic and social division, Hansen illuminates recent decades of feminist thought and explores novels by Jane Rule, Alice Walker, Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris, Marge Piercy, Margaret Atwood, and Fay Weldon. Unlike traditional stories of abandoned children and bad mothers, these narratives refuse to sentimentalize motherhood's losses and impasses. Hansen embraces the larger cultural story of what it means to be a mother and illuminates how motherhood is being reimagined today.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

"This is a conceptually innovative book which expands the meaning of motherhood to include mothers 'without child'; it is also a compassionate political book which refuses the boundary between 'good enough' and 'bad' mothers. Mother Without Child is an engaging, witty, and provocative literary study which should fascinate anyone who is interested in mothering or in looking for new ways to talk about motherhood without erasing some women's experience or dividing mothers from each other."—Sara Ruddick, author of Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace

"Hansen positions her study in a genuinely new space . . . taboo ground, which demands not only a great deal of courage to address, but also enormous intelligence and insight. Hansen is up to this task. . . hers is a pioneer study that will have a significant impact on the ways that non-procreative motherhood is discussed and understood." —Madelon Sprengnether, author of The Spectral Mother: Freud, Feminism, and Psychoanalysis

"Since the beginnings of the second wave of feminism in the 1960s, feminist scholars have been obsessed with motherhood. Mother Without Child takes us to the next stage in this fascinated and fascinating exploration. Through illuminating readings of contemporary stories of thwarted motherhood, Hansen challenges the persistent and constraining definitions of the good and even the good-enough mother. She enjoins us to listen to the moving, devastating, and often inspiring stories of mothers who survive the loss of their children and she urges us to find there not the angry voices of feminist daughters who cannot forgive their patriarchal mothers, but alternative stories of a different maternity that can lead us to alternative plots and visions of women's lives. We need this book."—Marianne Hirsch, author of The Mother/Daughter Plot: Narrative, Psychoanalysis, Feminism

"A careful, committed, and freshly clarifying voice. Hansen's graceful prose and finely interwoven explorations are much needed at this time. Through readings of contemporary fiction, she enriches our vocabulary for discussing the overdetermined topic of motherhood and deepens our understanding of both its psychological and contemporary political dimensions. Mother Without Child is a book for historians and social scientists as well as literary scholars."—Laura Doyle, author of Bordering on the Body: The Racial Matrix of Modern Fiction and Culture

About the Author

Elaine Tuttle Hansen is Provost and Professor of English at Haverford College and author of Chaucer and the Fictions of Gender (California, 1991) and The Solomon Complex: Reading Wisdom in Old English Poetry (1988).

Edition details

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0520205782
• ISBN 13: 9780520205789
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 273