Horrible Mothers by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SOC052000 Social Science / Media Studies
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press

6

Voicing Shame

From Fiction to Confession in the Work of Marguerite Andersen

Lucie Hotte and Ariane Brun del Re

Nearly every mother has at one time or another felt unequal to her task. This feeling of being a bad mother surfaces whenever a woman is unable to meet society’s expectations of her as a mother. Indeed, since the eighteenth century, our relationship to motherhood has evolved (see Badinter) and has led to the romanticization of motherhood, which “has divided mothers into the categories of either the naturally good or pathologically bad. This has meant that mothers felt an exaggerated guilt over the slightest feeling of aggression or impulse toward violence against their children” (Lachance Adams 12).

Although loving and devoted to their children, mothers must nevertheless consider their own needs. The tension between the needs of their children and their own has resulted in what many researchers—psychologists and philosophers alike—call “maternal ambivalence,” that is, “mothers’ simultaneous desires to nurture and violently reject their children” (Lachance Adams 4). While it is true that not all mothers will violently reject their children, it is nonetheless a fact that this feeling of ambivalence, which “results from the mother’s efforts to achieve both intimacy and separation in relation to their children” is more common than most women would dare confess (4). How might one express the shame and guilt that haunt women who embrace their own needs to the real or imagined detriment of their children’s well-being?

The work of Franco-Ontarian writer Marguerite Andersen, inspired by her own life, seeks a way to express this shame and guilt.1 These two emotions, which are the driving force behind her work, have various origins: Nazism and her German citizenship, her unfettered sexuality, and her relationships to her mother and to her children. The latter source of shame will be the subject of our analysis of the literary genres Andersen uses. We will begin with an introduction to Andersen’s work and her use of different literary genres, from her first novel, De mémoire de femme (1982), subtitled Récit en partie autobiographique, to her most recent, La mauvaise mère (2013), labeled as “confessions.”2 We argue that this progression from fiction to confession allows the writer to finally declare her failings as a mother. To support this claim, we will analyze the ways in which she recounts her negligence toward her children, especially her sons. This literary analysis will reveal her self-imposed inability to see her performance of motherhood as equal to that of her mother’s. Writing thus becomes a means to confess, to seek exoneration, and to do penance.

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