Cixous and the Un/forgettable Child

In the fictional texts Neutre (1972) and Le Jour où je n'étais pas là (2000), Hélène Cixous weaves the tapestry of a woman's life faced with the difficulties of motherhood after the birth of a Trisomy 21 child and his subsequent death. By pulling together birth/death, forgotten/unforgettable, revealed/hidden, Cixous transforms the protagonist's ambivalent feelings into a positive struggle of the wise woman and the mid-wife (femme sage and sage-femme.) Both books, written twenty-eight years apart, stand as a study in contrast but respond to each other, illuminating Cixous' autobiographical path and the crucial link of the book as redemptive judge.