Mothers: An Essay on Love and Cruelty

In this intellectually rigorous exploration of motherhood in Western culture, British essayist Rose (The Haunting of Sylvia Plath) urges readers to rethink what they expect from mothers. Drawing on feminist theory, the tenets of psychoanalysis, critical theory, and examples from literature, Rose asserts that motherhood “is the ultimate scapegoat for our personal and political failings, for everything that is wrong with the world.” She notes that mothers, as subjects, are idealized as nurturing caregivers who provide humanity’s entry point into the world, yet in the public and political sphere “mothers are either being exhorted to return to their instincts and stay at home or to make their stand in the boardroom.” Rose’s wide-ranging thought experiment probes contentious questions both political (“Why are mothers so often held accountable for... the breakdown in the social fabric?”) and domestic (“What is being asked of mothers when they are expected to pour undiluted love and devotion into their child?”). The last section is a psychoanalytic interpretation of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels in which Rose argues that “the broken edges of Ferrante’s mothers and her writing are mostly in tune with the world’s grief.” Readers of Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts will be drawn to Rose’s rumination. [em](May) [/em]