Motherhood in literature and culture: interdisciplinary perspectives from Europe

296 Pages·2017·2.01 MB·English

by  Gill Rye

Motherhood in Literature
and Culture
Motherhood remains a complex and contested issue in feminist research
as well as public discussion. This interdisciplinary volume explores cul­
tural representations of motherhood in various contemporary European
contexts, including France, Italy, Germany, Portugal, Spain, and the UK,
and it considers how such representations affect the ways in which dif­
ferent individuals and groups negotiate motherhood as both institution
and lived experience. It has a particular focus on literature, but it also
includes essays that examine representations of motherhood in philos­
ophy, art, social policy, and film. The book’s driving contention is that,
through intersecting with other fields and disciplines, literature and the
study of literature have an important role to play in nuancing dialogues
around motherhood, by offering challenging insights and imaginative
responses to complex problems and experiences. This is demonstrated
throughout the volume, which covers a range of topics including: dis­
cursive and visual depictions of pregnancy and birth; the impact of
new reproductive technologies on changing family configurations; the
relationship between mothering and citizenship; the shaping of policy
imperatives regarding mothering and disability; and the difficult reali­
ties of miscarriage, child death, violence, and infanticide. The collection
expands and complicates hegemonic notions of motherhood, as the au­
thors map and analyse shifting conceptions of maternal subjectivity and
embodiment, explore some of the constraining and/or enabling contexts
in which mothering takes place, and ask searching questions about what
it means to be a ‘mother’ in Europe today. It will be of interest not only
to those working in gender, women’s and feminist studies, but also to
scholars in literary and cultural studies, and those researching in socio­
logy, criminology, politics, psychology, medical ethics, midwifery, and
related fields.
Gill Rye is Professor Emerita at the Institute of Modern Languages
Research, University of London, UK.
Victoria Browne is Senior Lecturer in Politics at Oxford Brookes
University, UK.
Adalgisa Giorgio is Senior Lecturer in Italian Studies in the Depart­
ment of Politics, Languages and International Studies of the University
of Bath, UK.
Emily Jeremiah is Senior Lecturer in German and Gender Studies at
Royal Holloway, University of London, UK.
Abigail Lee Six is Professor of Spanish at Royal Holloway, University of
London, UK.
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Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature
For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com.
71 Hospitality in American Literature and Culture
Spaces, Bodies, Borders
Ana Mª Manzanas Calvo and Jesús Benito Sánchez
72 Transcultural Poetics and the Concept of the Poet
From Philip Sidney to T.S. Eliot
Ranjan Ghosh
73 Steampunk and Nineteenth-Century Digital Humanities
Literary Retrofuturisms, Media Archaeologies, Alternate Histories
Roger Whitson
74 Food and Foodways in African Narratives
Community, Culture, and Heritage
Jonathan Bishop Highfield
75 The Phenomenology of Autobiography
Making it Real
Arnaud Schmitt
76 The Cultural Imaginary of Terrorism in Public Discourse,
Literature, and Film
Narrating Terror
Michael C. Frank
77 The Centrality of Crime Fiction in American Literary Culture
Edited by Alfred Bendixen and Olivia Carr Edenfield
78 Motherhood in Literature and Culture
Interdisciplinary Perspectives from Europe
Edited by Gill Rye, Victoria Browne, Adalgisa Giorgio,
Emily Jeremiah, and Abigail Lee Six
Motherhood in Literature
and Culture
Interdisciplinary Perspectives
from Europe
Edited by Gill Rye, Victoria Browne,
Adalgisa Giorgio, Emily Jeremiah,
and Abigail Lee Six
First published 2018
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group,
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The right of the editors to be identified as the authors of the
editorial material, and of the authors for their individual
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
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including photocopying and recording, or in any information
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trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
CIP data has been applied for.
ISBN: 978­1­138­64817­3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978­1­315­62658­1 (ebk)
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Contents
Acknowledgements xi
Foreword xiii
LISA BARAITSER
Introduction: Motherhood in Literature and Culture 1
GILL RYE, VICTORIA BROWNE, ADALGISA GIORGIO,
EMILY JEREMIAH, AND ABIGAIL LEE SIX
PART I
Pregnancy and Birth 15
1 Birth Fear and the Subjugation of Women’s Strength:
Towards a Broader Conceptualization of Femininity
in Birth 17
SUSANNAH SWEETMAN
2 The Temporalities of Pregnancy: On Contingency, Loss,
and Waiting 33
VICTORIA BROWNE
3 An (Un)familiar Story: Exploring Ultrasound Poems
by Contemporary British Women Writers 46
EMILY BLEWITT
4 Birthing Tales and Collective Memory
in Recent French Fiction 58
VALERIE WORTH­STYLIANOU
viii Contents
5 Natality, Materiality, Maternity: The Sublime and the
Grotesque in Contemporary Sculpture 70
CHRISTINE BATTERSBY
PART II
Generation and Relation 83
6 Erasing Mother, Seeking Father: Biotechnological
Interventions, Anxieties over Motherhood,
and Donor Offspring’s Narratives of Self 85
GABRIELE GRIFFIN
7 Mums or Dads? Lesbian Mothers in France 98
GILL RYE
8 The Kinning of the Transnationally Adopted Child
in Contemporary Norway 111
SIGNE HOWELL
9 Ties That Bind in Tanja Dückers’s Novel
Himmelskörper: History, Memory, and Making
Sense of Motherhood in Twenty-First-Century Germany 124
KATHERINE STONE
10 Matrixial Creativity and the Wit(h)nessing of Trauma:
Reconnecting Mothers and Daughters in Marosia
Castaldi’s Novel Dentro le mie mani le tue: Tetralogia
di Nightwater 137
ADALGISA GIORGIO
PART III
Experience and Affect 151
11 Publicizing Vulnerability: Motherhood and Affect
in Joanna Rajkowska’s Post-2011 Art 153
JUSTYNA WIERzCHOWSKA
12 Present and Obscured: Disabled Women as Mothers
in Social Policy 169
HARRIET CLARKE
Contents ix
13 Nuria C. Botey’s Short Story ‘Viviendo con el tío Roy’:
Motherhood and Risk Assessment under Duress 184
ABIGAIL LEE SIX
14 Broken Nights, Shattered Selves: Maternal Ambivalence
and the Ethics of Interruption in Sarah Moss’s Novel
Night Waking 197
EMILY JEREMIAH
15 Uncertain Mothers: Maternal Ambivalence in Alina
Marazzi’s Film Tutto parla di te 210
CLAUDIA KARAGOz
16 ‘How to Say Hello to the Sea’: Literary Perspectives
on Medico-Legal Narratives of Maternal Filicide 223
RUTH CAIN
PART IV
Reflections 239
17 To Be or Not To Be (a Mother): Telling Academic
and Personal Stories of Mothers and Others 241
GAYLE LETHERBY
18 Last Will and Testament: Potatoes, Love, and Poetry 256
ANA LUíSA AMARAL
List of Contributors 269
Index 275