https://doi.org/10.67147/literariness.v1i2.031
Demounting Motherhood: Construing Rachel Cusk’s A Life’s Work: On Becoming a Mother
DR VIDHYA VISWANATHAN
Associate Professor of English
RSM SNDP Yogam Arts and Science College
(Affiliated to the University of Calicut)
Abstract: From oral folk traditions to contemporary written and digital modes of expression, literary texts have consistently engaged with the subjectivity and agency of individuals as central to the dignified human condition in all societies. However, the representations circulated and canonised over time appear to have inadequately addressed the deeply embodied and life-oriented experiences of women. A critical examination of fictional and non-fictional texts reveals that the multifaceted dimensions of women’s lives remain underrepresented, obscured, or silenced, and that such representations serve to uphold entrenched socio-political ideologies that operate at the expense of women in society. Theoretical interventions and critical analysis reveal how popular literary and non-literary texts confine women to stereotypical roles that curtail narrative agency. In this scenario, which seeks to marginalise women’s individuality through various customs and socio-political institutions, select contemporary narratives by women articulate suppressed experiences that have the potential to dismantle the ideological structures that govern literary production and circulation.
Accordingly, it is imperative to examine contemporary narratives by women to explore the lived realities of womanhood and motherhood experiences. Consequently this paper seeks to analyse, through the lens of feminism and gender politics, the text A Life’s Work: On Becoming a Mother (2001), a memoir by the Canadian-born British novelist and writer Rachel Cusk that presents a brazen representation of motherhood as experienced by the author in an aberrant manner vis-a-vis the glorified experiences of the same as depicted and assured by men and women in conventional social contours.
Keywords: Ideology, stereotypes, womanhood, motherhood, feminism, gender politics
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