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Mothers: An Essay on Love and Cruelty
Mothers: An Essay on Love and Cruelty is guided by a simple argument: that motherhood is the place in our culture where we lodge - or rather bury - the reality of our own conflicts, of psychic life, and what it means to be fully human. Mothers are the ultimate scapegoat for our personal and political failings, for everything that is wrong with the world, which becomes their task (unrealizable, of course) to repair.
To the familiar claim that too much is asked of mothers - a long-standing feminist plaint - Rose adds a further dimension. She questions what we are doing when we ask mothers to carry the burden of everything that is hardest to contemplate about our society and ourselves. By making mothers the objects of licensed cruelty, we blind ourselves to the world's iniquities and shut down the portals of the heart.
To demonstrate this vicious paradox at work, Rose explores a range of material: investigative writing and policies on motherhood, including newspaper reports, policy documents, and law; drama, novels, poetry, and life stories past and present; social history, psychoanalysis, and feminism. An incisive, rousing call to action, Mothers unveils the crucial idea that unless we recognise what role we are asking mothers to perform in the world, and for the world, we will continue to tear both the world and mothers to pieces.
To the familiar claim that too much is asked of mothers - a long-standing feminist plaint - Rose adds a further dimension. She questions what we are doing when we ask mothers to carry the burden of everything that is hardest to contemplate about our society and ourselves. By making mothers the objects of licensed cruelty, we blind ourselves to the world's iniquities and shut down the portals of the heart.
To demonstrate this vicious paradox at work, Rose explores a range of material: investigative writing and policies on motherhood, including newspaper reports, policy documents, and law; drama, novels, poetry, and life stories past and present; social history, psychoanalysis, and feminism. An incisive, rousing call to action, Mothers unveils the crucial idea that unless we recognise what role we are asking mothers to perform in the world, and for the world, we will continue to tear both the world and mothers to pieces.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published April 19, 2018
126 people are currently reading
4682 people want to read
About the author
Jacqueline Rose
94 books182 followersJacqueline Rose, FBA (born 1949, London) is a British academic who is currently Professor of Humanities at the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities.
Rose was born into a non-practicing Jewish family. Her elder sister was the philosopher Gillian Rose. Jacqueline Rose is known for her work on the relationship between psychoanalysis, feminism and literature. She is a graduate of St Hilda's College, Oxford and gained her higher degree (maîtrise) from the Sorbonne, Paris and her doctorate from the University of London.
Her book Albertine, a novel from 2001, is a feminist variation on Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu.
She is best known for her critical study on the life and work of American poet Sylvia Plath, The Haunting of Sylvia Plath, published in 1991. In the book, Rose offers a postmodernist feminist interpretation of Plath's work, and criticises Plath's husband Ted Hughes and other editors of Plath's writing. Rose describes the hostility she experienced from Hughes and his sister (who acts as literary executor to Plath's estate) including threats received from Hughes about some of Rose's analysis of Plath's poem "The Rabbit Catcher". The Haunting of Sylvia Plath was critically acclaimed, and itself subject to a famous critique by Janet Malcolm in her book The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes.
Rose is a regular broadcaster on and contributor to the London Review of Books.
Rose's States of Fantasy was the inspiration for composer Mohammed Fairouz's Double Concerto of the same title.
(from Wikipedia)
Rose was born into a non-practicing Jewish family. Her elder sister was the philosopher Gillian Rose. Jacqueline Rose is known for her work on the relationship between psychoanalysis, feminism and literature. She is a graduate of St Hilda's College, Oxford and gained her higher degree (maîtrise) from the Sorbonne, Paris and her doctorate from the University of London.
Her book Albertine, a novel from 2001, is a feminist variation on Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu.
She is best known for her critical study on the life and work of American poet Sylvia Plath, The Haunting of Sylvia Plath, published in 1991. In the book, Rose offers a postmodernist feminist interpretation of Plath's work, and criticises Plath's husband Ted Hughes and other editors of Plath's writing. Rose describes the hostility she experienced from Hughes and his sister (who acts as literary executor to Plath's estate) including threats received from Hughes about some of Rose's analysis of Plath's poem "The Rabbit Catcher". The Haunting of Sylvia Plath was critically acclaimed, and itself subject to a famous critique by Janet Malcolm in her book The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes.
Rose is a regular broadcaster on and contributor to the London Review of Books.
Rose's States of Fantasy was the inspiration for composer Mohammed Fairouz's Double Concerto of the same title.
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 80 reviews
August 5, 2018
Oh boy, I had really high hopes of this, which might have been one of two reasons behind my disappointment. The other being the fact that I recently finished Elena Ferrante: Parole chiave that though spoke about motherhood within the framework of Ferrante's work, it did so in a way that was both thorough and practical, moving beyond the confines of literature itself.
Maybe the problem here is me, but this book is at best a very spotty introduction to the discussion of motherhood and mothers from a feminist perspective. If you have read a lot of feminist and gender theory, this book is not for you. First because it discusses some very basic concepts, secondly because it does so in an uneven and unsatisfactory way.
Let me explain. "Mothers" starts with a strong and clear-cut argument, presented within the very first lines of the introduction: Mothers, Rose argues, are the recipients of all our hopes and desires, but also where we deposit all our disappointment and failures, making them the scapegoat for all the world's evils. I tend to agree with this assessment and thus expected Rose to discuss roots of the cult of motherhood and what it has done both to women and the experience of motherhood itself.
And to be fair, Rose does do that but to a very limited extent. There are some personal anecdotes and a few references to current political events. However, the vast majority of book is actually spent dissecting and discussing the plights of fictional mothers, from Euripides' Medea to Ferrante's female protagonists. Which is fine, but it's not what this book was marketed as. I understand that throughout history we do not have first-hand accounts of how mothers felt or were treated and thus we have to rely on literature as historical evidence, but at least make that clear from the beginning. And not only does the vast majority of the book focus on fiction, but there is little analysis beyond a rehashing of the plot of these novels interspersed with some basic analysis that anyone who has ever paid attention in a literature class could have come up with herself.
And it's not only literary analysis that suffers from this. Any analysis from a feminist perspective of modern-day pressures of motherhood (how, women are supposed to have it all, and often this portrayal of perfection is based on the exploitation of poor mothers of colour) is done sporadically and usually using block quotes from other feminist texts without Rose giving us anything original from her own perspective.
It just felt very shallow. Throughout the reading I kept expecting more, more examples to support her argument, more analysis of how patriarchal pressures have shaped our understanding of motherhood There were also some jabs at the right-wing polices that are disproportionally onerous to mothers and single mothers at that. But nothing on how even left-wing and "liberal" expectations can be just as detrimental (something that Tiziana de Rogatis does very well in her book). Nothing even on surrogacies, on how childbirth relates to motherhood.
I'm just disappointed. I guess read this text if you want to maybe have a sort of introduction to the topic and take from it a reading list to explore further these topics, because Jacqueline Rose does not do them justice.
Maybe the problem here is me, but this book is at best a very spotty introduction to the discussion of motherhood and mothers from a feminist perspective. If you have read a lot of feminist and gender theory, this book is not for you. First because it discusses some very basic concepts, secondly because it does so in an uneven and unsatisfactory way.
Let me explain. "Mothers" starts with a strong and clear-cut argument, presented within the very first lines of the introduction: Mothers, Rose argues, are the recipients of all our hopes and desires, but also where we deposit all our disappointment and failures, making them the scapegoat for all the world's evils. I tend to agree with this assessment and thus expected Rose to discuss roots of the cult of motherhood and what it has done both to women and the experience of motherhood itself.
And to be fair, Rose does do that but to a very limited extent. There are some personal anecdotes and a few references to current political events. However, the vast majority of book is actually spent dissecting and discussing the plights of fictional mothers, from Euripides' Medea to Ferrante's female protagonists. Which is fine, but it's not what this book was marketed as. I understand that throughout history we do not have first-hand accounts of how mothers felt or were treated and thus we have to rely on literature as historical evidence, but at least make that clear from the beginning. And not only does the vast majority of the book focus on fiction, but there is little analysis beyond a rehashing of the plot of these novels interspersed with some basic analysis that anyone who has ever paid attention in a literature class could have come up with herself.
And it's not only literary analysis that suffers from this. Any analysis from a feminist perspective of modern-day pressures of motherhood (how, women are supposed to have it all, and often this portrayal of perfection is based on the exploitation of poor mothers of colour) is done sporadically and usually using block quotes from other feminist texts without Rose giving us anything original from her own perspective.
It just felt very shallow. Throughout the reading I kept expecting more, more examples to support her argument, more analysis of how patriarchal pressures have shaped our understanding of motherhood There were also some jabs at the right-wing polices that are disproportionally onerous to mothers and single mothers at that. But nothing on how even left-wing and "liberal" expectations can be just as detrimental (something that Tiziana de Rogatis does very well in her book). Nothing even on surrogacies, on how childbirth relates to motherhood.
I'm just disappointed. I guess read this text if you want to maybe have a sort of introduction to the topic and take from it a reading list to explore further these topics, because Jacqueline Rose does not do them justice.
August 6, 2019
Jacqueline Rose always gives me a lot to think about. This book of essays about motherhood was no exception. The shifting reflections Rose makes here about motherhood in literature and philosophy and in culture fascinated me. I especially loved the way, late in this essay collection, Rose weaves in her personal experience. My only disappointment was that this book could have been so much longer...it covers a lot of ground and in some cases I felt the themes were lightly touched upon rather than explored at the depth they deserved.
So the book felt more like a springing-off-from place, to explore thoughts of my own about motherhood, rather than a finished thesis.
This approach to writing is very Jacqueline Rose-y, in a way, though. I always feel with Rose that I’m being invited to have a conversation with her, rather than being told what to think. This impression lines up nicely with her style of literary criticism which tends to invite dialogue rather than to insist on there being one definitive way to interpret a given literary work.
So the book felt more like a springing-off-from place, to explore thoughts of my own about motherhood, rather than a finished thesis.
This approach to writing is very Jacqueline Rose-y, in a way, though. I always feel with Rose that I’m being invited to have a conversation with her, rather than being told what to think. This impression lines up nicely with her style of literary criticism which tends to invite dialogue rather than to insist on there being one definitive way to interpret a given literary work.
October 8, 2018
«O reconocemos qué es exactamente lo que les estamos pidiendo a las madres que hagan en el mundo —y por el mundo—, o seguiremos destrozando el mundo y a las propias madres».
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Reseña completa en mi blog. Link en bio.
💕
En mi búsqueda de libros que aúnen Maternidad y Literatura, este libro es una de las #joyitas de mi biblioteca. Por un lado, es un ensayo que ahonda en la responsabilidad que tienen las madres social y personalmente así como su invisibilización en prácticamente todos los ámbitos (leyéndolo recordé la polémica que se generó cuando Carolina Bescansa acudió al Congreso de los Diputados con su bebé); por otro, va poniendo ejemplos muy gráficos de sus argumentos no sólo de noticias y artículos sino también de obras literarias, mencionando a escritoras que han tratado el tema de una u otra manera como Rachel Cusk, Doris Lessing, Adrienne Rich, Virginia Woolf, Edith Wharton, Alison Bechdel, Sindiwe Magona, Simone de Beauvoir, y, por supuesto, Elena Ferrante (a la que dedica un capítulo entero por esa conspiración que denuncia del mundo para ocultar el cuerpo de las madres y por declarar que «Para escribir bien hay que hablar desde el fondo del claustro materno»).
💕
¿Cómo no enamorarme de este libro que he subrayado, disfrutado y anotado hasta la saciedad?
#MaternidadesLit #JacquelineRose #Madres #Mothers #LeoAutorasOct #Librosdefondodebiblioteca #Joyita #Librosquehablandelibros
💕
Reseña completa en mi blog. Link en bio.
💕
En mi búsqueda de libros que aúnen Maternidad y Literatura, este libro es una de las #joyitas de mi biblioteca. Por un lado, es un ensayo que ahonda en la responsabilidad que tienen las madres social y personalmente así como su invisibilización en prácticamente todos los ámbitos (leyéndolo recordé la polémica que se generó cuando Carolina Bescansa acudió al Congreso de los Diputados con su bebé); por otro, va poniendo ejemplos muy gráficos de sus argumentos no sólo de noticias y artículos sino también de obras literarias, mencionando a escritoras que han tratado el tema de una u otra manera como Rachel Cusk, Doris Lessing, Adrienne Rich, Virginia Woolf, Edith Wharton, Alison Bechdel, Sindiwe Magona, Simone de Beauvoir, y, por supuesto, Elena Ferrante (a la que dedica un capítulo entero por esa conspiración que denuncia del mundo para ocultar el cuerpo de las madres y por declarar que «Para escribir bien hay que hablar desde el fondo del claustro materno»).
💕
¿Cómo no enamorarme de este libro que he subrayado, disfrutado y anotado hasta la saciedad?
#MaternidadesLit #JacquelineRose #Madres #Mothers #LeoAutorasOct #Librosdefondodebiblioteca #Joyita #Librosquehablandelibros
February 27, 2022
“I had always assumed, as daughters often do, that any suffering of body or mind I had inherited must have come from my mother.”
guilty of being a daughter, guilty of blaming my mother when she is just a daughter herself
guilty of being a daughter, guilty of blaming my mother when she is just a daughter herself
December 18, 2022
“Elena Ferrante, anneler lehine ağzındaki baklayı çıkarmıştır ve şahsen ona daha fazla minnettar olamazdım.” Rose’dan bu alıntı, kitabın Ferrante’ye ayrılmış bölümünün nasıl haz verdiğini hissettirir sanırım 💛
Rachel Cusk, Simone de Beauvoir, Alison Bechdel, Sylvia Plath ve daha fazlasıyla feminist politik bir annelik incelemesi. 2018’de yazmış feminist yazar ve eleştirmen Jacqueline Rose. İyi ki atlanmamış ve çevrilmiş (Türkçesi Alfa’dan).
Rachel Cusk, Simone de Beauvoir, Alison Bechdel, Sylvia Plath ve daha fazlasıyla feminist politik bir annelik incelemesi. 2018’de yazmış feminist yazar ve eleştirmen Jacqueline Rose. İyi ki atlanmamış ve çevrilmiş (Türkçesi Alfa’dan).
January 10, 2019
"the mother-daughter relationship, the pregnancy that contains the mother and all her forebears - 'and if my mother should emerge from my stomach just now when i think i am safe?' - is where the world loses its bearings and all boundaries dissolve (giving the lie to the idea that any mother can hold everything in place). [...] allowing borders to open, recognising the radical fragility of the boundaries we create, can also be seen, in relation to mothers, as the foundation for a different ethics and, perhaps, a different world."
i'm not sure how much i have to say about this book, because jacqueline rose speaks so articulately, so sensitively, with such deliberation and such clear-eyed purpose for herself, and for mothers. this is, in some ways, a dense read, not because rose's writing is difficult to follow or because it is dependent on an impenetrable network of theory - it's neither - but because it is such a carefully constructed, critically rigorous project with such a vast scope.
rose is writing a political and social history, a response to psychoanalytical theory, a response to movements in current journalism and other media, an extended piece of literary and biographical criticism, a manifesto for the deconstruction of our cultural attitudes towards motherhood, a proposal to radically rethink motherhood on an individual, communal and global scale: each of these threads is conceptually huge in its own right, and together they form a piece of work that is constantly reaching beyond without ever losing itself.
it's deeply impressive as a piece of work, but i think, just as important, it's model of the kind of empathy i want to practice.
i'm not sure how much i have to say about this book, because jacqueline rose speaks so articulately, so sensitively, with such deliberation and such clear-eyed purpose for herself, and for mothers. this is, in some ways, a dense read, not because rose's writing is difficult to follow or because it is dependent on an impenetrable network of theory - it's neither - but because it is such a carefully constructed, critically rigorous project with such a vast scope.
rose is writing a political and social history, a response to psychoanalytical theory, a response to movements in current journalism and other media, an extended piece of literary and biographical criticism, a manifesto for the deconstruction of our cultural attitudes towards motherhood, a proposal to radically rethink motherhood on an individual, communal and global scale: each of these threads is conceptually huge in its own right, and together they form a piece of work that is constantly reaching beyond without ever losing itself.
it's deeply impressive as a piece of work, but i think, just as important, it's model of the kind of empathy i want to practice.
December 20, 2021
O tópico da maternidade é um que sempre me fascinou, principalmente para além da santidade materna, da imagem higienizada da mãe. Tenho um apreço por representações e reflexões sobre os aspectos mais violentos, desagradáveis e selvagens do maternar, e como sobre a sociedade encara o "ser mãe" ao mesmo tempo como algo santificado e revoltante, centralizado e marginalizado, tanto na ótica de conservadores (mãe enquanto esposa e incubadora) quanto para progressistas (mãe enquanto oprimida). É sobre tudo isso que Jacqueline Rose discute em "Mothers: An essay on love and cruelty", no qual ela abandona o lugar comum para percorrer eras e civilizações em busca do lugar social ocupado pelas mães e todos os sentimentos naturais aos quais elas são negadas a liberdade de sentir. Rose também se detém em representações literárias da maternidade (minha parte favorita), passando pelos clássicos gregos como Medeia e alcançando Sylvia Plath, Toni Morisson e, mais atualmente, Elena Ferrante.
Achei um ótimo livro, embora ele pudesse ter se beneficiado de incluir mais autoras em seus debates literários. No fim das contas, o escopo acabou ficando reduzido a algo muito anglófono e, principalmente, muito ocidental.
Achei um ótimo livro, embora ele pudesse ter se beneficiado de incluir mais autoras em seus debates literários. No fim das contas, o escopo acabou ficando reduzido a algo muito anglófono e, principalmente, muito ocidental.
December 5, 2018
I was privileged to be in conversation with the author on 4 December at The Book Lounge in Cape Town. This is a book that makes you understand why Edward Said says of the author that she has no peer amongst critics of her generation. The analysis is lucid and breathtaking. The prose leaps off the page and the argument allows us to understand clearly why our culture’s approach to mothers and motherhood lies at the core of our contemporary predicament.
December 8, 2022
“Maybe that is one of the agonies of being a mother: to find that your child harbors in the recesses of their soul a story from which you had hoped against hope, once and for all, to free them.”
April 17, 2025
demasiado interesante. tiene excelentes referencias y muy buenos puntos que se van desarrollando con mucha intensidad.
September 12, 2025
unfortunately much too shallow and introductory for my liking 👎 but will definitely read something else by her 👍
February 16, 2021
Este libro recoge reflexiones muy interesantes acerca de la maternidad, desde el punto de vista feminista. Es cierto que hay ciertas voces feministas que en vez de ofrecer apoyo y comprensión a las madres, las excluyen del movimiento, pero este libro es un claro ejemplo de que todas entramos en el feminismo.
La autora analiza la estigmatización de la madre en la sociedad actual a través de noticias en periódicos y televisión, y de lecturas actuales y también clásicas. Algunos de los autores que saca a colación son Virgilio, Esquilo, Sófocles o Shakespeare, y más contemporáneos como Toni Morrison o Edith Wharton y nos muestra numerosos ejemplos en los que la mujer ha querido emerger de la oscuridad para dar su opinión acerca de su propia vida.
Y es que, a lo largo de la historia y hoy en día, la madre queda relegada a un papel benéfico, incluso beatífico, y la que comete el delito de ser mujer y persona se somete a un examen minucioso de la sociedad de la que siempre saldrá culpable. La madre no puede pensar en sí misma ni un minuto, solo en el bebé que ha engendrado, y es culpable de muchas de los problemas que tiene la sociedad, según el punto de vista de esta última.
La estigmatización de la madre pasa desapercibida hoy en día, por los derechos que hemos ido adquiriendo las mujeres en los últimos tiempos, pero que una madre sea juzgada por haber tenido un accidente de tráfico cuando estaba embarazada, y se hable de ella como una irresponsable, me parece que da mucho en lo que pensar. Si este ejemplo os parece lejano e incluso uno entre mil, os doy otro: el de la culpabilización de miles de mujeres pobres de gastar de las arcas nacionales dinero para poder dar a luz en un país del primer mundo. ¿Os suena? La estigmatización de dichas mujeres por los medios de comunicación y los gobiernos de muchos países es indiscutible. Se las culpabiliza de venir de países pobres para dar a luz en países ricos y así gastar dinero de nuestros impuestos. ¡Bravo, patriarcado!
Quizá la parte que me ha parecido menos atractiva haya sido la que desarrolla un análisis sobre el papel del psicólogo en el tratamiento de madres con problemas o trastornos que sean derivados de la maternidad, junto con una amplia reflexión sobre lo que el psicoanálisis opina de la madre y la maternidad. Para mí está parte ha sido más compleja en varios momentos de lo que debería de ser un texto divulgativo, y también me ha parecido que ha hecho un análisis excesivamente minucioso de algunas novelas y libros, tanto que no creo que haga falta leerlos ya. De hecho, en la parte final del libro, la autora analiza en la obra de Elena Ferrante la relación entre madres e hijas y los sentimientos creados por la maternidad, pero es tal el detalle de la autora, que he tenido que parar de leer partes ya que estoy leyendo la saga Dos amigas de Ferrante y me estaba haciendo spoiler. Esto más que gustarme, como fan de la autora italiana, me ha enfadado mucho. ¿Es realmente necesario dar tanto detalle de libros, contar absolutamente todo?
Recomendaría leer este libro solo a alguien a quien no le importe que le destripen una cantidad considerable de libros, y le apetezca comprobar que las madres, y más las no blancas y pobres, siempre son culpabilizadas y vilipendiadas por la sociedad. El borrar esta culpabilización sistemática a las madres es tarea de todas y todos, y creo que aún queda mucho camino que recorrer.
La autora analiza la estigmatización de la madre en la sociedad actual a través de noticias en periódicos y televisión, y de lecturas actuales y también clásicas. Algunos de los autores que saca a colación son Virgilio, Esquilo, Sófocles o Shakespeare, y más contemporáneos como Toni Morrison o Edith Wharton y nos muestra numerosos ejemplos en los que la mujer ha querido emerger de la oscuridad para dar su opinión acerca de su propia vida.
Y es que, a lo largo de la historia y hoy en día, la madre queda relegada a un papel benéfico, incluso beatífico, y la que comete el delito de ser mujer y persona se somete a un examen minucioso de la sociedad de la que siempre saldrá culpable. La madre no puede pensar en sí misma ni un minuto, solo en el bebé que ha engendrado, y es culpable de muchas de los problemas que tiene la sociedad, según el punto de vista de esta última.
La estigmatización de la madre pasa desapercibida hoy en día, por los derechos que hemos ido adquiriendo las mujeres en los últimos tiempos, pero que una madre sea juzgada por haber tenido un accidente de tráfico cuando estaba embarazada, y se hable de ella como una irresponsable, me parece que da mucho en lo que pensar. Si este ejemplo os parece lejano e incluso uno entre mil, os doy otro: el de la culpabilización de miles de mujeres pobres de gastar de las arcas nacionales dinero para poder dar a luz en un país del primer mundo. ¿Os suena? La estigmatización de dichas mujeres por los medios de comunicación y los gobiernos de muchos países es indiscutible. Se las culpabiliza de venir de países pobres para dar a luz en países ricos y así gastar dinero de nuestros impuestos. ¡Bravo, patriarcado!
Quizá la parte que me ha parecido menos atractiva haya sido la que desarrolla un análisis sobre el papel del psicólogo en el tratamiento de madres con problemas o trastornos que sean derivados de la maternidad, junto con una amplia reflexión sobre lo que el psicoanálisis opina de la madre y la maternidad. Para mí está parte ha sido más compleja en varios momentos de lo que debería de ser un texto divulgativo, y también me ha parecido que ha hecho un análisis excesivamente minucioso de algunas novelas y libros, tanto que no creo que haga falta leerlos ya. De hecho, en la parte final del libro, la autora analiza en la obra de Elena Ferrante la relación entre madres e hijas y los sentimientos creados por la maternidad, pero es tal el detalle de la autora, que he tenido que parar de leer partes ya que estoy leyendo la saga Dos amigas de Ferrante y me estaba haciendo spoiler. Esto más que gustarme, como fan de la autora italiana, me ha enfadado mucho. ¿Es realmente necesario dar tanto detalle de libros, contar absolutamente todo?
Recomendaría leer este libro solo a alguien a quien no le importe que le destripen una cantidad considerable de libros, y le apetezca comprobar que las madres, y más las no blancas y pobres, siempre son culpabilizadas y vilipendiadas por la sociedad. El borrar esta culpabilización sistemática a las madres es tarea de todas y todos, y creo que aún queda mucho camino que recorrer.
July 17, 2018
This is a rollercoaster of a book which I part enjoyed very much and I in part wanted to stop and ask a million questions about. To sum up it is a long essay that explores motherhood in Western culture, arguing that motherhood is the condition that all the wrongs of the world are subsumed into, be they political or personal, and that mothers are also supposed to make everything perfect and the demands upon them are immense and impossible. To explore this the writer draws heavily on literature, looking back to the Greeks (though why so little on Oedipus?) to feminism of the 1950s to the current day writing of Elena Ferrante. She jumps from one thing to another like a jack-in-the-box with too much to say and too little time to get it out. That’s not to say it’s not clear, or well structured. I think it probably is, but it is completely exhausting to be looking at the implications of the political policies of Trump against the poetry of Plath against the themes of Medea and their transformation into the murders of children in Beloved. There was too much for me to take in and my head hurts as a consequence of reading in pretty much one sitting. Having said that, what a wonderful text for exploration as part of an undergraduate of senior school class. I can imagine it would be massively enlightening to just take a chapter and pull it apart to discuss. It jumps from the intensely personal on adoption to pretty sweeping statements about immigration and I’m not quite sure what to make about the absence of fatherhood. I can imagine the author baulking at that statement, why should men be focused on, it is about motherhood, and they do feature a little bit, eg the abuse of Hughes or Ferrante’s husband, but could there perhaps be a section perhaps on how boys manage motherhood as the links seem to be largely to daughters. I suspect, someone smarter than me, could pull a lot of whole in this book, but I welcomed it for the ton of questions it opened up to think about.
July 1, 2022
Very well researched, extensive stories, essays, articles and news that make way for the main points and compliment them BUT I didn’t enjoy the way the author actually goes into them and connects them.
It was a little hard to follow the ideas as she was laying them down, repeated the themes redundantly and I found the outline of the themes was not to my liking.
Good information, interesting themes but not very understandable writing style wise.
It was a little hard to follow the ideas as she was laying them down, repeated the themes redundantly and I found the outline of the themes was not to my liking.
Good information, interesting themes but not very understandable writing style wise.
May 27, 2019
no ha resultado ser lo que yo esperaba (tira más por el camino de la teoría literaria que por el de la sociología), pero lo he disfrutado muchísimo. he tomado nota de bastantes referencias bibliográficas y me quedo para siempre con algunas de las reflexiones de la autora (que además me flipa cómo escribe) <3
February 8, 2021
An interesting yet despondent read. Her point, that whatever choices you make around mothering are doomed and lead to criticism, guilt and unease, feels accurate but her reference points are scattered and a bit whimsical at times. Really enjoyed the chapter on Elena Ferrante however.
June 13, 2022
4.5? Really sad that I have to return it to the library
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May 10, 2022In Mothers: An Essay on Love and Cruelty, Rose digs into motherhood and why it is so vilified. Why do we blame mothers for so much that is a societal issue? What about mothers draws so much ire, dismissal, and expectation? This book was overly dense, but was ultimately a useful and fascinating text that will have me thoughtful for a long time.
A couple things. I think that Rose's book was unnecessarily digressive and thick at the start—very dense upfront and increasingly clear near the end. A good layout or thesis at the beginning would provide a good guide for readers, especially ones less used to academic texts.
I did not appreciate her outdated conflation of mental health conditions with societal issues—while mental health is linked, closely, with sociopolitical causes, Rose dismisses various forms of therapy and medical treatment, preferring to speculate that these conditions are solely due to the conditions we place on motherhood. This is misguided when many forms of mental illness are rooted in chemical and genetic causes as well as their sociopolitical factors.
Finally, it's worth noting that Rose is coming from a UK perspective, and some of her mentions of issues within the US, particularly on race, are oversimplified or misleading.
Now back to the thought-provoking text itself. Motherhood is the relinquishing of a certain control, over our bodies and our lives—the epitome of what the world doesn't want to admit it is. We want to believe that we are entirely in control, are above animals, are somehow above our own flesh bodies, that we can self-contain and self-control, that the world is made of borders that are real and solid. Motherhood obliterates all of that. Motherhood is messy and bloody, it is pleasure and hate, it dissolves the borders between life and death in a way that makes us deeply uncomfortable.
Because of that, society must squash mothers. It asks them to be unexplosive and respectable. It sanitizes and purifies motherhood, asking it to be a false image of peace, instinct, and stability. In doing so, mothers must walk an impossible boundary. They are no longer meant to have bodies or sexuality, because that would complicate this purified image. They are meant to devote themselves 100% to their children, but are not meant to take too much pleasure in the bodily or emotional experience, or expose publicly the messy, bodily truth of birth and motherhood. We ask mothers to pretend they never feel hate, that they never feel negative feelings toward their children or the changes they've incurred as a result of being a mother.
If a mother, like our nations, like our societies, is a safeguard of the borders we don't want to admit are malleable, then she bears the brunt of our guilt every time the borders prove otherwise. A grieving mother is our symbol of war, but a protesting mother is silenced. Refugee mothers become villains, poor mothers become selfish. We blame mothers to avoid tackling the systemic inequities that we don't want to admit surround us. Mothers are meant to be stable, so are our societies—both are teeming chaos, complex beings of anger, love, pleasure, and hate, underneath.
It's a fascinating and crucial text despite its minor faults. (Her essay on the work of Elena Ferrante is especially enlightening and fascinating.) I read this book on Mother's Day, which was a worthwhile endeavor. We have to acknowledge motherhood in all its complexities, without fear or shame, to save mothers. We have to fix our treatment of mothers, particularly as we look at the bleak turns regarding Roe.
CW: mental illness and dismissal, and discussion/mentions of rape, infanticide, violence, racism.
A couple things. I think that Rose's book was unnecessarily digressive and thick at the start—very dense upfront and increasingly clear near the end. A good layout or thesis at the beginning would provide a good guide for readers, especially ones less used to academic texts.
I did not appreciate her outdated conflation of mental health conditions with societal issues—while mental health is linked, closely, with sociopolitical causes, Rose dismisses various forms of therapy and medical treatment, preferring to speculate that these conditions are solely due to the conditions we place on motherhood. This is misguided when many forms of mental illness are rooted in chemical and genetic causes as well as their sociopolitical factors.
Finally, it's worth noting that Rose is coming from a UK perspective, and some of her mentions of issues within the US, particularly on race, are oversimplified or misleading.
Now back to the thought-provoking text itself. Motherhood is the relinquishing of a certain control, over our bodies and our lives—the epitome of what the world doesn't want to admit it is. We want to believe that we are entirely in control, are above animals, are somehow above our own flesh bodies, that we can self-contain and self-control, that the world is made of borders that are real and solid. Motherhood obliterates all of that. Motherhood is messy and bloody, it is pleasure and hate, it dissolves the borders between life and death in a way that makes us deeply uncomfortable.
Because of that, society must squash mothers. It asks them to be unexplosive and respectable. It sanitizes and purifies motherhood, asking it to be a false image of peace, instinct, and stability. In doing so, mothers must walk an impossible boundary. They are no longer meant to have bodies or sexuality, because that would complicate this purified image. They are meant to devote themselves 100% to their children, but are not meant to take too much pleasure in the bodily or emotional experience, or expose publicly the messy, bodily truth of birth and motherhood. We ask mothers to pretend they never feel hate, that they never feel negative feelings toward their children or the changes they've incurred as a result of being a mother.
If a mother, like our nations, like our societies, is a safeguard of the borders we don't want to admit are malleable, then she bears the brunt of our guilt every time the borders prove otherwise. A grieving mother is our symbol of war, but a protesting mother is silenced. Refugee mothers become villains, poor mothers become selfish. We blame mothers to avoid tackling the systemic inequities that we don't want to admit surround us. Mothers are meant to be stable, so are our societies—both are teeming chaos, complex beings of anger, love, pleasure, and hate, underneath.
It's a fascinating and crucial text despite its minor faults. (Her essay on the work of Elena Ferrante is especially enlightening and fascinating.) I read this book on Mother's Day, which was a worthwhile endeavor. We have to acknowledge motherhood in all its complexities, without fear or shame, to save mothers. We have to fix our treatment of mothers, particularly as we look at the bleak turns regarding Roe.
CW: mental illness and dismissal, and discussion/mentions of rape, infanticide, violence, racism.
March 7, 2024
I had pretty high hopes for this book (want to say I first heard about it because Maggie Nelson referenced it in her book, On Freedom, or a different book of hers, I can't remember now).
I really liked the section about Elena Ferrante, especially after my disappointment after reading her first novel, Troubling Love, last year. Reading about Ferrante through Rose's eyes made me feel like I understood the mother-daughter relationship in that book better and I almost want to go back and re-read.
Rose is so clearly brilliant and a great writer but a lot of it felt unfortunately shallow to me. Also wished she had reflected a bit more on her positionality as a white woman from the UK adopting a Chinese baby .....
I really liked the section about Elena Ferrante, especially after my disappointment after reading her first novel, Troubling Love, last year. Reading about Ferrante through Rose's eyes made me feel like I understood the mother-daughter relationship in that book better and I almost want to go back and re-read.
Rose is so clearly brilliant and a great writer but a lot of it felt unfortunately shallow to me. Also wished she had reflected a bit more on her positionality as a white woman from the UK adopting a Chinese baby .....
January 4, 2025
Dissertation book - don't really know how to review it, i feel like every book i read in this process makes me rethink the idea of motherhood
March 23, 2024
(2.5 ?) this could have been so good but it just felt shallow and boringly written
June 28, 2020
I wish I had read this while I was in the depths of postnatal depression instead of the many mothering manuals I desperately trawled for the cure to mine and my baby's endless tears. I could have done with a decent feminist analysis of why it was ok that I wasn't perfect.
Three stars purely because there were bits of the book that just weren't for me but I'm sure are other people's cup of tea - I am glad I read about mothers in classical literature but I admit I skipped the Elena Ferrante chapter after a while as having no prior knowledge of her work there was just too much to keep up with. I'm sure it's great for Ferrante fans though!
I enjoyed much more the writing on borders, racism, and motherhood outside of western cultures as well as the discussions of Leve and Plath. I would have loved her to explore more around depression, frustrated motherhood and poverty as when she did touch on this it was great. Had been worried about how she may include or exclude transgender experiences but her writing on Susan Stryker was great.
Three stars purely because there were bits of the book that just weren't for me but I'm sure are other people's cup of tea - I am glad I read about mothers in classical literature but I admit I skipped the Elena Ferrante chapter after a while as having no prior knowledge of her work there was just too much to keep up with. I'm sure it's great for Ferrante fans though!
I enjoyed much more the writing on borders, racism, and motherhood outside of western cultures as well as the discussions of Leve and Plath. I would have loved her to explore more around depression, frustrated motherhood and poverty as when she did touch on this it was great. Had been worried about how she may include or exclude transgender experiences but her writing on Susan Stryker was great.
January 16, 2022
I’m conflicted with Mothers. On the one hand, I liked a lot of the commentaries and found them to be fascinating. But I also don’t think Rose went as deep as she could have with the subject. A lot of the essays just introduce beginner level topics and then never further examine them, which left me, as a learner, a bit dissatisfied. I understand I can’t expect one book to teach me everything, but I still believe these ideas deserved to be explored more. As for the writing style, I enjoyed it, but I didn’t find it to be particularly alluring or anything special.
June 19, 2020
4.5: Thought-provoking and helpful to me personally and for my scholarly interest in literary representations of ambivalent mothers.
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June 23, 2022"Despite the nod to 'fixers in Nigeria', the image of Ayelabola, holding her five babies, had clearly been chosen to reinforce the age-old stereotype of [B]lacks and the poor reproducing irresponsibly and to excess." (pg. 6)
"Why are mothers not seen as having everything to contribute, by dint of being mothers, to our understanding and ordering of public, political space? Instead, mothers are either being exhorted to return to their instincts and stay at home (on which more later) or to make their stand in the boardroom - to 'lean in', to use the ghastly imperative in the title of Sheryl Sandberg's bestseller - as if being props of neo-liberalism were the most that mothers can aspire to, the highest form of social belonging and agency they can expect." (pg. 17)
"I started this chapter by asking: what are mothers being asked to carry, what forms of failure and injustice are they made accountable for, above all, in the modern Western world? What are the fears we lay on mothers, both as accusation and demand (the one following the other)? Why do we expect mothers to subdue the very fears we ourselves have laid at their door?" (pg. 37)
"After the birth of her first child, Cusk felt she had been left stranded on the far shore of any viable political life. Her horizons narrowed. She was cur down to size. Cusk is pointing out that this isolation from the wider world - separate spheres, as it was first defined in the nineteenth century - is as sudden as it is absolute (this regardless of whether today's mother eventually returns to work). But it is neither natural nor eternal. It is a piece of history, and should be recognised both as personally amazing and as a fully political fact." (pg. 40)
"Not being explosive will do nicely as a definition of what is mostly asked of mothers, although, as any mother will testify, explosive is what she, to her utter dismay, often feels: there is nobody in the world aI love as much as my child nobody in the world who makes me as angry. It is this demand - to be respectable and unexplosive - that I see as most likely to drive mothers, and by extension their infants, crazy. I realise, of course, that this is the opposite of how these matters are normally thought about: if a mother cannot hold things together, who can?" (pg. 126)
"'A mother who dreams of attaining through her child a fullness, warmth and value she has not managed to create for herself is headed for the greatest disappointment,' de Beauvoir writes. 'The child brings joy only to the woman who is capable of disinterestedly desiring the happiness of another, to one who without reversion to herself, seeks to go beyond her own experience.'" (p. 138) (Simone de Beauvoir, Le Deuxieme sexe, folio II, p. 385 [trans. p. 537])
"In this context, to be a mother is to struggle to save - while also knowing that you will fail to save - your child. To be f9aced with8 the prospect that the world is not getting better, that there will not be a better life for the lives you have made (a feeling that for so many in the world as I write is becoming more intense by the day). Violence breeds violence." (pg. 176)
"Like the pregnant body, like Lila's mind, like the city - in harmony, or rather disharmony, with each other - writing expands, secretes, spills, dissolves, disintegrates. It is, remember, the boundaries that are fake: 'When we tell a story, the only thing that should matter is to find a cascade of our words that will flood all the marked-out territory with the persistence - even if devastating - of mucilage.'" (pg. 180) (Ferrante, Frantumagliea, pg. 126-7)
"Throughout this book I have argued against the pernicious weight of the ideal. But it has only been in the course of writing it that I have come to think that the worst, most insufferable demand that so many cultures of the modern world impose on their mothers is not just the saccharine image laid across the mother in expectation of a better future, but the vast reach of historical, political and social anguish that we thereby asked a mother to nullify. We expect her to look to the future what else is she meant to do?), but the seeming innocence of that expectation is an illusion, as if it were the task of mothers to trample over the past and lift us out of historical time - or, in the version that at least has the virtue of its own sentimentality, to secure a new dawn." (pg. 188)
"It is, of course, a truism of bother femin9ism and Marxism that the image of stability represented by safe white middle-class homes is a complete myth, resting as such homes do on the exploitation of workers, women and colonies." (pg. 193-4)
"Why are mothers not seen as having everything to contribute, by dint of being mothers, to our understanding and ordering of public, political space? Instead, mothers are either being exhorted to return to their instincts and stay at home (on which more later) or to make their stand in the boardroom - to 'lean in', to use the ghastly imperative in the title of Sheryl Sandberg's bestseller - as if being props of neo-liberalism were the most that mothers can aspire to, the highest form of social belonging and agency they can expect." (pg. 17)
"I started this chapter by asking: what are mothers being asked to carry, what forms of failure and injustice are they made accountable for, above all, in the modern Western world? What are the fears we lay on mothers, both as accusation and demand (the one following the other)? Why do we expect mothers to subdue the very fears we ourselves have laid at their door?" (pg. 37)
"After the birth of her first child, Cusk felt she had been left stranded on the far shore of any viable political life. Her horizons narrowed. She was cur down to size. Cusk is pointing out that this isolation from the wider world - separate spheres, as it was first defined in the nineteenth century - is as sudden as it is absolute (this regardless of whether today's mother eventually returns to work). But it is neither natural nor eternal. It is a piece of history, and should be recognised both as personally amazing and as a fully political fact." (pg. 40)
"Not being explosive will do nicely as a definition of what is mostly asked of mothers, although, as any mother will testify, explosive is what she, to her utter dismay, often feels: there is nobody in the world aI love as much as my child nobody in the world who makes me as angry. It is this demand - to be respectable and unexplosive - that I see as most likely to drive mothers, and by extension their infants, crazy. I realise, of course, that this is the opposite of how these matters are normally thought about: if a mother cannot hold things together, who can?" (pg. 126)
"'A mother who dreams of attaining through her child a fullness, warmth and value she has not managed to create for herself is headed for the greatest disappointment,' de Beauvoir writes. 'The child brings joy only to the woman who is capable of disinterestedly desiring the happiness of another, to one who without reversion to herself, seeks to go beyond her own experience.'" (p. 138) (Simone de Beauvoir, Le Deuxieme sexe, folio II, p. 385 [trans. p. 537])
"In this context, to be a mother is to struggle to save - while also knowing that you will fail to save - your child. To be f9aced with8 the prospect that the world is not getting better, that there will not be a better life for the lives you have made (a feeling that for so many in the world as I write is becoming more intense by the day). Violence breeds violence." (pg. 176)
"Like the pregnant body, like Lila's mind, like the city - in harmony, or rather disharmony, with each other - writing expands, secretes, spills, dissolves, disintegrates. It is, remember, the boundaries that are fake: 'When we tell a story, the only thing that should matter is to find a cascade of our words that will flood all the marked-out territory with the persistence - even if devastating - of mucilage.'" (pg. 180) (Ferrante, Frantumagliea, pg. 126-7)
"Throughout this book I have argued against the pernicious weight of the ideal. But it has only been in the course of writing it that I have come to think that the worst, most insufferable demand that so many cultures of the modern world impose on their mothers is not just the saccharine image laid across the mother in expectation of a better future, but the vast reach of historical, political and social anguish that we thereby asked a mother to nullify. We expect her to look to the future what else is she meant to do?), but the seeming innocence of that expectation is an illusion, as if it were the task of mothers to trample over the past and lift us out of historical time - or, in the version that at least has the virtue of its own sentimentality, to secure a new dawn." (pg. 188)
"It is, of course, a truism of bother femin9ism and Marxism that the image of stability represented by safe white middle-class homes is a complete myth, resting as such homes do on the exploitation of workers, women and colonies." (pg. 193-4)
November 5, 2020
The author is no doubt both passionate and extremely educated on the subject. I'll couch my review in the fact that I am far from learned when it comes to the concept of motherhood, nor will I ever personally experience it. Therefore, my feelings on this book are more for the writing and the intellectual integrity supporting the central argument: "motherhood is, in Western discourse, the place in our culture where we lodge, or rather bury, the reality of our own conflicts, of what it means to be human."
The "what it means to be human" essentially boils down to being a fallible, vulnerable, and learning individual. There's no way to prepare for motherhood and any expectation on society that you suddenly "fix yourself" and be all things for someone is not only ludicrous but also extremely damaging to anyone. I don't know that this concept is not appreciated or becoming more appreciated over time. In fact, I'd say most folks with some semblance of emotional intelligence would understand that there are sleepless nights, feelings of detachment from your child (and subsequent guilt about that detachment), a loss of identity, etc.
I can find no clearer or succinct way of pointing out the difficult I had reading this than the author's frequent referencing of Freud.
Both dig out the most extreme of relationships and hold them as a mirror for the rest of society to see their repressed ills and unknowing manifestations that make us all that much unhappier. Is there something to be learned from Freud or Rose? Of course. Is it where we bury everything of our humanity and hide from? No, that's extremely hyperbolic. Symbolically and developmentally, there's a lot to be learned from our relationship with our mother and mothers everywhere. They are our literal origin. Perhaps if the book focused more on that rather than being angry with society for treating mothers so poorly (and often times derailing the points it attempted to make with little asides such as this one), then I would have enjoyed it more as a learning experience. And I don't meant to say that the way we treat mothers all over is not a worthy discussion. Where the book starts in discussing the vilification of refugee mothers is a great example fo the work we need to do, but the subsequent exploration of the theme being left to these very nuanced psychological explorations is a disconnect between the very basic Maslow needs of a vulnerable population and the very lofty self-actualization areas the author chooses to explore. I truly love Wharton, but does her, Plath and others who have incredibly nuanced, damaged relationships prove to be the most applicable to support the central thesis the book sets out explicitly from the outset?
Furthermore, in exploration of the extreme cases, Rose treats men as completely non-existent in any of this discussion. To the extreme that she and her friends are surprised to understand that their genetic health is dependent on both their mother and their father at one point. I'm not trying to assert a patriarchy in stating that men should be part of the argument, but rather that the degree of omission of men as a factor in even what is biologically predetermined, the growing non-conformity of gender roles, or the overall ability that a partner (forget it even being a heteronormative relationship) can provide support and allow a woman to more or less have her identity back once they have had a child is truly damaging to any larger point or purpose that this writing wishes to instill on the reader.
I'm sure those that are more cultured in the references that Rose makes will enjoy this more than a novice such as myself to the ongoing conversation did. For example, I've never heard of Elena Ferrante or her work prior to reading this and it's an entire chapter. Otherwise, I have to believe that there's stronger writing to explore the nuanced psychology the world has with its mothers.
The "what it means to be human" essentially boils down to being a fallible, vulnerable, and learning individual. There's no way to prepare for motherhood and any expectation on society that you suddenly "fix yourself" and be all things for someone is not only ludicrous but also extremely damaging to anyone. I don't know that this concept is not appreciated or becoming more appreciated over time. In fact, I'd say most folks with some semblance of emotional intelligence would understand that there are sleepless nights, feelings of detachment from your child (and subsequent guilt about that detachment), a loss of identity, etc.
I can find no clearer or succinct way of pointing out the difficult I had reading this than the author's frequent referencing of Freud.
Both dig out the most extreme of relationships and hold them as a mirror for the rest of society to see their repressed ills and unknowing manifestations that make us all that much unhappier. Is there something to be learned from Freud or Rose? Of course. Is it where we bury everything of our humanity and hide from? No, that's extremely hyperbolic. Symbolically and developmentally, there's a lot to be learned from our relationship with our mother and mothers everywhere. They are our literal origin. Perhaps if the book focused more on that rather than being angry with society for treating mothers so poorly (and often times derailing the points it attempted to make with little asides such as this one), then I would have enjoyed it more as a learning experience. And I don't meant to say that the way we treat mothers all over is not a worthy discussion. Where the book starts in discussing the vilification of refugee mothers is a great example fo the work we need to do, but the subsequent exploration of the theme being left to these very nuanced psychological explorations is a disconnect between the very basic Maslow needs of a vulnerable population and the very lofty self-actualization areas the author chooses to explore. I truly love Wharton, but does her, Plath and others who have incredibly nuanced, damaged relationships prove to be the most applicable to support the central thesis the book sets out explicitly from the outset?
Furthermore, in exploration of the extreme cases, Rose treats men as completely non-existent in any of this discussion. To the extreme that she and her friends are surprised to understand that their genetic health is dependent on both their mother and their father at one point. I'm not trying to assert a patriarchy in stating that men should be part of the argument, but rather that the degree of omission of men as a factor in even what is biologically predetermined, the growing non-conformity of gender roles, or the overall ability that a partner (forget it even being a heteronormative relationship) can provide support and allow a woman to more or less have her identity back once they have had a child is truly damaging to any larger point or purpose that this writing wishes to instill on the reader.
I'm sure those that are more cultured in the references that Rose makes will enjoy this more than a novice such as myself to the ongoing conversation did. For example, I've never heard of Elena Ferrante or her work prior to reading this and it's an entire chapter. Otherwise, I have to believe that there's stronger writing to explore the nuanced psychology the world has with its mothers.
January 8, 2019
maybe jacqueline rose's flair for the dramatic and gestural in this book can best be emblematized by her unusually frequent use of the word "plaint." i say this neutrally or even affectionately, i think—and also as a (self-) reminder that we attend to a book's necessary limits, even if that book has decided to call itself, mightily, "mothers." i think really that the subtitle—"an essay on love and cruelty"—is far more revealing. we might want to think about this book not as about mothers (i mean, of course it is, but) but about love and cruelty via mothers. that way we can take it a bit less polemically, less sweepingly (though, again, i do think rose writes with full knowledge of these adjectives, had to write this without fear of these adjectives), more on its own terms.
i say this as a reaction to merve emre's marvelous review of the book in the nation (thanks, molly), which is at its weakest in its last line, full of whip-smart bravado that imposes emre's preferred—and still, eternally, valuable!—second-wave-feminism-descended framing upon rose and then calls it a definition. i also say this as a reaction to my own amusement and sort of playful disgust at a THEN chapter about, what else, the greeks. citing scholars like edith hall and mary beard, who else. it's more than possible and perhaps just better to write about mothers without discussing medea, perhaps impossible to write about love and cruelty (as grand rather than particularized abstractions) via mothers without discussing medea, and i think here in the waning 2010s we may as well be clear that to dwell upon our favorite tools to think with, in a general-audience work—the greeks, the romans, but really of course the greeks—is to situate the work in part in the gestural, the literary, to acknowledge its incompleteness—that is, its perfectly acceptable inability to cover the entire subject. it's likely that we'll come to see this book as the first to provide a useful literary-psychoanalytic account of mothers in order to trace a proper genealogy from tragedy to ferrante.
my mother was immediately drawn to the book, of course—i'll have to leave it behind for her, i'm sure. will this make you look at me in a whole new light? she asked shortly after i began. no, i scoffed (a child, i had to scoff); she seemed disappointed by my reply.
i say this as a reaction to merve emre's marvelous review of the book in the nation (thanks, molly), which is at its weakest in its last line, full of whip-smart bravado that imposes emre's preferred—and still, eternally, valuable!—second-wave-feminism-descended framing upon rose and then calls it a definition. i also say this as a reaction to my own amusement and sort of playful disgust at a THEN chapter about, what else, the greeks. citing scholars like edith hall and mary beard, who else. it's more than possible and perhaps just better to write about mothers without discussing medea, perhaps impossible to write about love and cruelty (as grand rather than particularized abstractions) via mothers without discussing medea, and i think here in the waning 2010s we may as well be clear that to dwell upon our favorite tools to think with, in a general-audience work—the greeks, the romans, but really of course the greeks—is to situate the work in part in the gestural, the literary, to acknowledge its incompleteness—that is, its perfectly acceptable inability to cover the entire subject. it's likely that we'll come to see this book as the first to provide a useful literary-psychoanalytic account of mothers in order to trace a proper genealogy from tragedy to ferrante.
my mother was immediately drawn to the book, of course—i'll have to leave it behind for her, i'm sure. will this make you look at me in a whole new light? she asked shortly after i began. no, i scoffed (a child, i had to scoff); she seemed disappointed by my reply.
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March 16, 2019 "What are we doing – what aspects of our social arrangements and of our inner lives, what forms of historic injustice, do we turn our backs on, above all, what are doing to mothers – when we expect mothers to carry the burden of everything that is hardest to contemplate about our society and ourselves?"
Jacqueline Rose's brilliant new book Mothers can be described as one person's attempt to come to terms with motherhood, with what Rose describes as the "acute pleasure of being a mother". Acute is the operative word here, I think, because it registers both the particular joys and the precise sharpness of feeling – the cut – of what it means to be a mother.
But because this is Jacqueline Rose, a lifelong student of psychoanalysis, and a feminist critic of the cultural imaginary, she need not come to terms with the dialectic between motherly joy and pain (between "love and cruelty", as the book's subtitle has it) within the generic and perhaps even self-indulgent territory of biography or memoir. Instead, Rose's essay works through her own role as a mother – a mother to an adopted child from China – by writing about, but also through, cultural representations of the mother.
From Medea to Roald Dahl to Elena Ferrante, Rose traces how these cultural representations of the mother simultaneously index and reimagine some of the most pervasive notions of the mother as the one who is expected to solve every problem. In characteristically careful and exacting prose, Rose argues that "motherhood is, in Western discourse, the place in our culture where we lodge, or rather bury, the reality of our own conflicts, of what it means to be fully human."
There's no need or demand for readers to take this totalising and generalising argument at face value. It is more a strategic essentialism – a deliberately far-reaching claim, intended to reveal to us the stories we tell ourselves about motherhood. And for that, it is a beautiful and painful book, full of incisive cultural analysis and insight, delivered in Rose's inimitable style. A great read.
Jacqueline Rose's brilliant new book Mothers can be described as one person's attempt to come to terms with motherhood, with what Rose describes as the "acute pleasure of being a mother". Acute is the operative word here, I think, because it registers both the particular joys and the precise sharpness of feeling – the cut – of what it means to be a mother.
But because this is Jacqueline Rose, a lifelong student of psychoanalysis, and a feminist critic of the cultural imaginary, she need not come to terms with the dialectic between motherly joy and pain (between "love and cruelty", as the book's subtitle has it) within the generic and perhaps even self-indulgent territory of biography or memoir. Instead, Rose's essay works through her own role as a mother – a mother to an adopted child from China – by writing about, but also through, cultural representations of the mother.
From Medea to Roald Dahl to Elena Ferrante, Rose traces how these cultural representations of the mother simultaneously index and reimagine some of the most pervasive notions of the mother as the one who is expected to solve every problem. In characteristically careful and exacting prose, Rose argues that "motherhood is, in Western discourse, the place in our culture where we lodge, or rather bury, the reality of our own conflicts, of what it means to be fully human."
There's no need or demand for readers to take this totalising and generalising argument at face value. It is more a strategic essentialism – a deliberately far-reaching claim, intended to reveal to us the stories we tell ourselves about motherhood. And for that, it is a beautiful and painful book, full of incisive cultural analysis and insight, delivered in Rose's inimitable style. A great read.
December 1, 2024
Mothers spins a bold, if unsettling, argument: motherhood has become the cultural dumping ground for our deepest conflicts, fears, and unresolved questions about what it means to be fully human. Mothers, the book suggests, are our go-to scapegoats - expected to shoulder the blame for personal and societal failures while simultaneously tasked with fixing an unfixable world.
It’s not just that we demand too much of mothers - a point long championed by feminist thinkers. Jacqueline Rose takes it a step further, questioning what lies beneath these demands. What are we really doing when we pile these expectations onto mothers? In turning them into lightning rods for our discomfort, Rose argues, we justify a certain societal cruelty, blinding ourselves to the real injustices around us and closing off vital channels of empathy and understanding. The result? A world that offloads its messiest truths onto the shoulders of those we claim to revere, without ever reckoning with the cost.
I really wanted to like this book, but honestly, I couldn't get through it without feeling frustrated and underwhelmed. The premise (and Goodreads reviews) seemed so promising - a deep dive into the complexities of motherhood, love, and its darker side - but what I got felt more like a scattershot collection of thoughts rather than a cohesive, insightful exploration. The book leans heavily on abstraction and theoretical musings, which might work if they were grounded in something more tangible or relatable. Instead, it reads like the author is constantly circling around big ideas without ever landing on anything solid. It felt detached and, dare I say, self-indulgent, rather than offering a meaningful connection to the realities of motherhood or the universal themes it claims to address. The tone, too, comes across as overly critical without much nuance. Yes, motherhood is complicated and messy, but the narrative here felt overwhelmingly negative, almost as if it was determined to strip away every shred of tenderness or beauty in the experience. Instead of a balanced take, it felt like a diatribe, which quickly became exhausting.
It’s not just that we demand too much of mothers - a point long championed by feminist thinkers. Jacqueline Rose takes it a step further, questioning what lies beneath these demands. What are we really doing when we pile these expectations onto mothers? In turning them into lightning rods for our discomfort, Rose argues, we justify a certain societal cruelty, blinding ourselves to the real injustices around us and closing off vital channels of empathy and understanding. The result? A world that offloads its messiest truths onto the shoulders of those we claim to revere, without ever reckoning with the cost.
I really wanted to like this book, but honestly, I couldn't get through it without feeling frustrated and underwhelmed. The premise (and Goodreads reviews) seemed so promising - a deep dive into the complexities of motherhood, love, and its darker side - but what I got felt more like a scattershot collection of thoughts rather than a cohesive, insightful exploration. The book leans heavily on abstraction and theoretical musings, which might work if they were grounded in something more tangible or relatable. Instead, it reads like the author is constantly circling around big ideas without ever landing on anything solid. It felt detached and, dare I say, self-indulgent, rather than offering a meaningful connection to the realities of motherhood or the universal themes it claims to address. The tone, too, comes across as overly critical without much nuance. Yes, motherhood is complicated and messy, but the narrative here felt overwhelmingly negative, almost as if it was determined to strip away every shred of tenderness or beauty in the experience. Instead of a balanced take, it felt like a diatribe, which quickly became exhausting.
June 14, 2020
“...every birth, no matter how glorious or empowering, is a harbinger of death...mothers are still left to die in hospitals, in prisons, and on the streets.”
This was the final quote of many in a review by Merve Emre of Oxford University in The Nation which convinced me to read this book.
Dr. Rose is one of the most astounding young scholars of postmodern feminism in Britain today and something of a “scoundrel,” having ruffled feathers with her previous work on Peter Pan, Sylvia Plath and Zionism. Here she goes full bore into the very darkest corners of the human psyche and asks the deepest questions we can imagine. Yet she returns, like Dante and Virgil with some quite remarkable and enlightening answers for our unpredictable future.
It made me queasy at times because my family, and especially my relationship with my mother, the mother of my children and the position I hold as a father have always been somewhat tenuous in my mind. Always happy to talk about me, but I’m not going to talk about my mother or anyone else in my family. Wants hints that make you dizzy? Read my fiction. But unless you’re my shrink (God forbid) my relative or my best friend you aren’t getting any closer than that.
This was the final quote of many in a review by Merve Emre of Oxford University in The Nation which convinced me to read this book.
Dr. Rose is one of the most astounding young scholars of postmodern feminism in Britain today and something of a “scoundrel,” having ruffled feathers with her previous work on Peter Pan, Sylvia Plath and Zionism. Here she goes full bore into the very darkest corners of the human psyche and asks the deepest questions we can imagine. Yet she returns, like Dante and Virgil with some quite remarkable and enlightening answers for our unpredictable future.
It made me queasy at times because my family, and especially my relationship with my mother, the mother of my children and the position I hold as a father have always been somewhat tenuous in my mind. Always happy to talk about me, but I’m not going to talk about my mother or anyone else in my family. Wants hints that make you dizzy? Read my fiction. But unless you’re my shrink (God forbid) my relative or my best friend you aren’t getting any closer than that.
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