Cookie Consent by FreePrivacyPolicy.com
Skip to main navigation menu Skip to main content Skip to site footer

Special Issue Articles

Vol. 5 No. 1 (2023): The Childfree Woman in Literature, Film, and Television

Motherhood as Narrative: Sheila Heti’s Wrestling with the Burden of Choice

Submitted
November 30, 2022
Published
2023-12-30

Abstract

Burdened with the choice whether to become a mother or not, the protagonist of Sheila Heti's autofictional work Motherhood develops a thoroughgoing critique of the notion of having to make that choice in the first place, encompassing philosophical musings on the impossibility of controlling one's existence by making decisions and astute commentary on social pressures on women to fulfill expected roles. It identifies pro-natalism as a culturally pervasive narrative, which is subtle but rigid in its exclusionary binarism and consequent pressure and divisiveness it imposes upon women. Heti dismantles the narratives that make up the concept of motherhood and redefines it as an inclusive, non-divisive, non-coercive concept. Maintaining its relational basis, she reverses its temporal trajectory and suggests the relationship with the mother as its central concern. Mobilizing the creative potential of writing, she rewrites the narrative of motherhood as the reconstruction of ancestral bonds between women through literature. Via this reversal, she undermines the one-directional conception of motherhood and allows for the term's inclusiveness of all women. In this way, she deflates the notion of decisional compulsion and so creates a spirit of egalitarianism and tolerance from which all mothers, non-mothers, and non-non-mothers can benefit.

References

  1. BBC. "Fierce Abortion Debate Spills Over into Canada." BBC, 11 May 2022, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-61416354.
  2. Bieker, Nadine, and Kirsten Schindler. "Wenn Frauen Kinder bekommen – Mutterschaft als Schreibblockade." Schreiben, Text, Autorschaft II: Zur Narration von Störung von Lebens- und Schreibprozessen, edited by Carsten Gansel et al., V+R, 2021, pp. 259–74.
  3. Chodorow, Nancy. Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender. U of California P, 1978.
  4. Currie, Mark. "Maybe Baby: Uncertainty and Decision in Sheila Heti's Motherhood." Textual Practice, vol. 36, no. 1, 2022, pp. 116–34, https://doi.org/10.1080/0950236X.2020.1789207.
  5. Dey, Claudia. "The Child Thing: An Interview with Sheila Heti." The Paris Review, 26 Apr. 2018, https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/04/26/the-child-thing-an-interview-with-sheila-heti/.
  6. Gollom, Mark. "Why Canada's Roe v. Wade Didn't Enshrine Abortion as a Right." CBC News, 4 May 2022, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/abortion-rights-canada-morgentaler-court-1.6439612.
  7. Gronemann, Claudia. "Autofiction." Handbook of Autobiography/Autofiction: Volume I: Theory and Concepts, edited by Martina Wagner-Egelhaaf, De Gruyter, 2019, pp. 241–46.
  8. Heti, Sheila. Motherhood. Vintage, 2018.
  9. Löschnigg, Martin. "Narratology." Handbook of Autobiography/Autofiction: Volume I: Theory and Concepts, edited by Martina Wagner-Egelhaaf, De Gruyter, 2019, pp. 103–10.
  10. Meretoja, Hanna. "Metanarrative Autofiction: Critical Engagement with Cultural Narrative Models." The Autofictional: Approaches, Affordances, Forms, edited by Alexandra Effe and Hannie Lawlor, Palgrave Macmillan, 2022, pp. 121–40, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78440-9_7.
  11. Miller, Michael F. and Melissa Bailar. "An Interview with Sheila Heti." Contemporary Literature, vol. 60, no. 2, 2019, pp. 146–73.
  12. Moore, Julia, and Patricia Geist-Martin. "Mediated Representations of Voluntary Childlessness, 1900–2012." The Essential Handbook of Women's Sexuality Vol. 1: Meanings, Development, and Worldwide Views, edited by Donna Castañeda, Praeger, 2013, pp. 233–51.
  13. NAF. "Revised Ethics Statement." National Abortion Federation, Dec. 2018, https://members.prochoice.org/iweb/upload/naf%20ethics%20statement%202019.pdf.
  14. Reese, Hope. "'What Kind of Responsibility Is It to Sentence Somebody to Life?' Sheila Heti on Motherhood." Vox, 10 May 2018, https://www.vox.com/conversations/2018/5/10/17337426/motherhood-sheila-heti.
  15. Rich, Adrienne. Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution, Norton, 1986.
  16. Rodgers, Julie. "On the Margins of Motherhood: Choosing to Be Child-Free in Lucie Joubert's L'Envers du landau (2010)." Women: A Cultural Review, vol. 29, no. 1, 2010, pp. 75–96, https://doi.org/10.1080/09574042.2018.1425537.
  17. Rye, Gill, et al. "Introduction: Motherhood in Literature and Culture." Motherhood in Literature and Culture: Interdisciplinary Perspectives from Europe, edited by Gill Rye et al., Routledge, 2018, pp. 1–13.
  18. Schmitt, Arnaud. "The Pragmatics of Autofiction." The Autofictional: Approaches, Affordances, Forms, edited by Alexandra Effe and Hannie Lawlor, Palgrave Macmillan, 2022, pp. 83–99, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78440-9_5.
  19. Shirm, Gretchen. "Sheila Heti, Melanie Klein and Motherhood." Critique, vol. 63, no. 3, 2022, pp. 309–20, https://doi.org/10.1080/00111619.2021.2024128.
  20. Smith, Sidonie, and Julia Watson. Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives, 2nd ed., U of Minnesota P, 2002.
  21. Stanford Friedman, Susan. "Women's Autobiographical Selves: Theory and Practice." Women, Autobiography, Theory: A Reader, edited by Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, U of Wisconsin P, 1998, pp. 72–82.
  22. Venkatesan, Sathyaraj, and Chinmay Murali. "'Childless? Childfree? Neither, Just ME': Pronatalism and (M)otherhood in Paula Knight's The Facts of Life." Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, vol. 12, no. 2, 2021, pp. 108–21, https://doi.org/10.1080/21504857.2019.1617179.
  23. Wagner-Egelhaaf, Martina. "Of Strange Loops and Real Effects: Five Theses on Autofiction/the Autofictional." The Autofictional: Approaches, Affordances, Forms, edi-ted by Alexandra Effe and Hannie Lawlor, Palgrave Macmillan, 2022, pp. 21–40, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78440-9_2.
  24. Wolf, Kate. "A Fundamentally Absurd Question: Talking with ‘Motherhood' Author Sheila Heti." Los Angeles Review of Books, 7 May 2018, https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/a-fundamentally-absurd-question-talking-with-motherhood-author-sheila-heti/.
  25. Worthington, Marjorie. The Story of "Me": Contemporary American Autofiction. U of Nebraska P, 2018.

Similar Articles

41-50 of 109

You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.