Motherhood and Creativity in Contemporary Self-Life Writing

Writers and Mothers

Alice Braun

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9781032609829
• eBook ISBN: 9781040111536
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism for Women Authors
• Index: Literature

This book aims to study the representation of motherhood in self-life writing by English-speaking authors. It highlights the particular issues women writers are faced with when they try to combine their vocation as artists with their duties towards their children. For those women who claim their right to be both mothers and writers, several cultural myths need to be taken down, chief among which is the representations that we have of what being an artist should be like, as well as the role a mother should have towards her children. This book looks at self-life writing by women from English-speaking countries to reveal the common themes and tropes which recur in texts written on the subject of motherhood, by looking at them from both a literary and a cultural perspective. It also aims to demonstrate that a new generation of women writers is taking up the subject and forging a new literary tradition.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: A soundproof room of one’s own
• 1 The impossible subject
• 2 To have and have not
• 3 On pregnancy and childbirth
• 4 Mother writing
• 5 Bad mothers
• Conclusion: Throwing the baby out with the bathwater
• Index