Toni Morrison and Motherhood: A Politics of the Heart

Notes

PREFACE 1. In 1986 little had been written on motherhood in feminist theory or in feminist literary theory. The major texts on motherhood were all published after 1986; 1989, in particular, was a watershed year for feminist scholarship on motherhood, seeing the release of groundbreaking works such as Sara Ruddick’s Maternal Thinking, Marianne Hirsch’s Mother/Daughter Plot, Paula Caplan’s Don’t Blame Mother, Valerie Walkerdine and Helen Lucey’s Democracy in the Kitchen, and Miriam Johnson’s Strong Mothers, Weak Wives. The notable exceptions were Adrienne Rich’s classic Of Woman Born and Dorothy Dinnerstein ’s The Mermaid and the Minotaur, both published in 1976, and Nancy Chodorow’s influential The Reproduction of Mothering, published in 1978. The first collection of feminist theory on motherhood, Joyce Trebilcot’s Mothering: Essays in Feminist Theory, was published in 1984. As well, Sara Ruddick’s landmark articles, “Preservative Love and Military Destruction: Reflections on Mothering and Peace and ‘Maternal Thinking’” (in Mothering: Essays in Feminist Theory, ed. Joyce Trebilcot [Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Allanheld]) were published in 1984 and Marianne Hirsch’s important review article, “Mothers and Daughters,” was published in 1980 (Signs 7, no.1 [Autumn 1981]: 200–22). However, early feminist theorists on motherhood, with the exceptions of Rich and Ruddick, generally analyzed motherhood in terms of the daughter’s experience of being mothered and/or regarded motherhood as oppressive to women. In the 1970s, the received view of motherhood was that it was the site and cause of women’s oppression; see in particular: Jeffner Allen (1984), “Motherhood: The Annihilation of Women,” in Mothering: Essays in Feminist Theory and Shulamith Firestone (1970), The Dialectic of Sex. As well, the mother and daughter relationship was seen as the way in which this female oppression was reproduced. Nancy Chodorow in The Reproduction of Mothering (1978) argued that female mothering constructs gendered identities that are both differentiated and hierarchical. The pre-Oedipal mother-daughter attachment, according to Chodorow, is more prolonged and intense than the motherson relationship. Because the daughter and the mother are the same gender, the mother perceives and treats her daughter as identical to and continuous with her self. The sameness and continuity of the pre-Oedipal mother-daughter symbiosis engenders a feminine psychic structure that is less individuated and differentiated. The daughter’s sense of self is relational; she experiences herself as connected to others. The relational sense of self which women acquire from the prolonged and intense pre-Oedipal attachment with their mothers, and bring to their own mothering, Chodorow goes on to argue, exacerbates female self-effacement and frustrates women’s achievement of an authentic autonomous identity. Relationality, Chodorow concludes, is problematic for women 181 Notes because it hinders autonomy, psychological and otherwise; and since daughter-mother identification is the cause of this relationality in women, it is, in her words, “bad for mother and [daughter] alike.” Chodorow, as Penelope Dixon noted in her feminist annotated bibliography on mothers and mothering, “was one of the first to write on the subject [of mothering] and subsequently has authored more books and articles on this subject than any other feminist writer” (4). Indeed, Chodorow’s writings, particularly her now classic The Reproduction of Mothering (1978) has influenced the way a whole generation of scholars views motherhood. What is less acknowledged however, is how this influential writer, who is identified as a feminist, reinscribes the patriarchal narrative of mother-daughter estrangement even as she seeks to dismantle it. The dominant view of the mother-daughter relation was that this relationship, particularly in the daughter’s adolescent years, was one of antagonism and animosity. The daughter must differentiate herself from the mother if she is to assume an autonomous identity as an adult. The mother, in turn, is perceived and understood only in terms of her maternal identity. The mother represents for the daughter, according to the received narrative, the epitome of patriarchal oppression that she seeks to transcend as she comes to womanhood, and the daughter’s failings, as interpreted by herself and the culture at large, are said to be the fault of the mother. This is the patriarchal narrative of the mother-daughter relationship. These cultural narratives shape the lives of mothers and daughters even as mothers and daughters live lives different from, and in resistance to, these assigned roles. 2. For a detailed discussion on how motherhood has been represented in feminist theory see Lauri Umansky’s Motherhood Reconceived (1996) as well as...