Sexuality after War Rape by Nena Močnik

Author:Nena Močnik [Močnik, Nena]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, General, Sociology
ISBN: 9781351866637
Google: j6QzDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-09-01T03:27:40+00:00

4.1 Womanhood and motherhood

In the beginning and at the end of the novel As If I Am Not There, we can witness struggles of S. with her newborn, the child born of rape, which is first seen as a burden and a parasite that she wants out of her body. But as the story progresses, and her breasts begin to lactate, she finally takes over her role of the mother of this child, even if she never will be able to picture the father of the child – because there were many attackers, all of them faceless, with no real personality or identity. Children conceived from the rapes, and women’s ways of coping with them, were investigated by scholars as one of the most visible and lasting effects of war and the defeat of certain social groups. The book raises the question of alleged motherhood in the patriarchal tradition, where women are born to be mothers and the perception of the rape child as a “tumour” (Drakulić 1999, 7) that makes a woman disgusted by her own body. The struggle faced by women who gave birth in this context is the struggle between their socially ascribed yet naturalized role of mothers, and the rejection of a child as a burden, forcefully conceived under morally unacceptable circumstances. Drakulić described the women’s role in a short scene at the end of the novel, when S. is traveling as a refugee to Croatia. A fellow woman is giving birth in a demolished house where they stay overnight, and as soon as the child is born, the woman strangles it. She illustrates this with the symbol of women’s hands, which are usually used for protection, for securing food and a warm house, and clean clothing for the children. But in this changed condition of war, the very same hands became the tools of murder. A woman helped to give a life to a newborn; but only a moment after tied a scarf around its neck and took its life (Drakulić 1999, 143).

In Braddock’s novel, his main character Mirna is a good mother and wife. She is well educated with a passion for her job, but her priorities are family and her children, the biggest blessing in her life (Braddock 2012, 67). The narrative about the relationship among men and women and a woman and her children is romanticized and idealized. In any narration, the everyday patriarchal oppression or even domestic violence is not portrayed. Also the protagonists are always educated and neat women: indeed, Mirna wanted to have a large family, but at the same time, as Braddock puts it, she wanted to leave the life of the underdeveloped and primitive villagers. Similarly, S. is originally urban-bred and educated and represents the modern and emancipated urban woman, while she is leafing through a fashion magazine, enjoying reading the lifestyle articles about finding the right man to marry, peeking into the secret life of a famous actress and finding healthy recipes (Drakulić 1999, 52). This

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