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UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI PRESS |
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Throughout human history, motherhood and maternal experience have
been largely defined and written by patriarchal culture.
Religion, art, medicine, psychoanalysis, and other bastions of
male power have objectified the maternal and have disregarded
female subjectivity. As a result, maternal perspectives have been
ignored and the mother's voice silenced. In recent literary
texts, however, more substantial attention has been given to
motherhood and to the physical, psychological, social, and
cultural dynamics affecting maternal experience. In Maternal
Body and Voice in Toni Morrison, Bobbie Ann Mason, and Lee
Smith, Paula Gallant Eckard examines how maternal experience
is depicted in selected novels by three American writers,
emphasizing how they focus on the body and the voice of the
mother. These novels include: The Bluest Eye, Sula, and
Beloved by Morrison; In Country, Spence + Lila, and
Feather Crowns by Mason; and Oral History, Fair and
Tender Ladies, and Saving Grace by Smith.
By employing this focus, these writers lessen the objectification the maternal has received and restore a rich subjectivity that foregrounds the mother's perspective. Moreover, their fiction reflects a deep concern for history and culture and for a woman's experience of her world. They challenge the traditional representations of black and white motherhood that have appeared in southern literature and society, rendering complex portrayals of motherhood that defy cultural stereotypes.
Eckard incorporates historical perspectives on African American and southern motherhood, utilizing the works of Elizabeth Fox- Genovese, Sally McMillen, Deborah White, Jacqueline Jones, and others. She draws upon the feminist criticism of Adrienne Rich, Elaine Showalter, Naomi Schor, Tillie Olsen, Karla F. C. Holloway, Barbara Christian, and others, and the linguistic and psychoanalytic theories of Julia Kristeva, H‚lŠne Cixous, and Luce Irigaray. The author also addresses the cross-cultural connections shared by Morrison, Mason, and Smith, showing that, despite their racial and cultural differences, striking similarities can be found in their renderings of maternity.
The three women writers employ related image patterns, metaphors, and symbols involving the maternal body. By centering maternity so strongly in their novels, Morrison, Mason, and Smith establish the primacy of the mother and obviate the neglect to which maternal perspectives have been subjected. They restore the mother's lost voice and her diminished subjectivity. Together they depict the maternal as a powerful force that shapes human lives and communities.