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This paper contexualises and reads Doris Lessing’s The Fifth Child (1988) as a criticism towards the Family Acts conducted by Thatcher’s government in 1980s Britain. The article principally draws attention to the main and minor protagonist’s “annomalous” bodies and their relation to ablism that underlies the British government in its utilitarian campaign to strengthen the values of “conventional families”. Lessing’s text shows the way in which society makes a mother be intimate to her child, simultaneously distancing them from society, and relating the child’s heath to the idea of “happiness”. To prove this close maternal relationship, first of all, we will look at the Family Acts that the Conservatives propounded in the eighties, and investigate the rhetorics involved in their justifying the blueprint of the “conventional family” (nuclear family, stable income, home purchase, moral for “healthy” reproduction and nurturing). Based upon this point, secondly, I will show how the couple Harriet and David internalise the “happiness” of the conventional family in Fifth, and the way in which their happiness is destroyed by the birth and growth of their fifth child, Ben, by the effect of the story’s Gothic narrative. Positioning Fifth in the neo-Gothic revival movement by women writers, I will argue how the Gothic narrative is employed in an effective manner in Fifth for blurring the boundaries of the bodies between mother and child: using the theories of Margrit Shildrick, I read it as the leakiness of the bodies in the text making readers uncertain as to who is the monster, the baby or the mother. The leaky maternal body, which represents the intimate physical relationship between the mother and the baby, and the Gothic narrative both lead to distancing the mother-and-child from society, as the mother/child are seen as monsters. Finally, this chapter will point out the narrative in which Ben is always closely associated with minor characters in the novel (the disabled and the unemployed). From these readings, Ben’s monstrous physicality and Harriet’s fixation on a “happy (conventional) family” shows Lessing’s accusation of the exclusive and utilitarian society that Thatcher made for Britain: behind the “happiness” that neoliberalism offers, the citizens in such utalitarian societies are asked to be productive and have able bodies, and especially for forming “happy conventional families”, mothers are asked to give birth to “healthy” children, who are productive for society at large.
The Lion and the Unicorn, 2015
New Formations, 2020
Hélène Cixous's Mother Homer is Dead gives us a vibrant example of hybrid form. It hauls Hélène Cixous’s writing out of the trap of the essential ‘feminine’ and into a key position as a central driving force in avant-garde writing. Placing Cixous in this legacy is productive because it works against a common practice in literary theory: that of placing writers coded as feminist in the no-exit zone of ‘female’ or ‘maternal’ writing, obscuring the enormous impact that these writers had and continue to have on avant-garde and experimental writing more generally.
Is the maternal just another identity, like gender, as Judith Butler shows in Gender Trouble, one that has been socially prescribed and constructed? Simone de Beauvoir might agree with this (though her critics might not). Julia Kristeva might find the notion somewhat simplistic, even given the fact that she has been critically read as essentializing the maternal.[1] How is Kristeva's theory of the abject used by Butler? Where are the intersections of the abject for all three theorists? How did Beauvoir's notion of woman as "abject" contribute to a "maternal" abject? How does Lacan's theory of the subject inform their maternal narratives? What if the real concern masked within the critique of Thelma and Louise was not that they transgressed into male authored territory, but that there was no accounting of the maternal for either character. The refusal to have forced sex is the refusal to appropriate out their body for reproduction. What if that is the real threat or fear strong women pose?[2] Reminding us what is at stake here is Linda Zerilli: …(the maternal) body whose biological meaning is culturally produced by being inscribed in discourses of motherhood-discourses that uphold the mother as subject by denying mothers and women as subjects. Thus just as surely as there is a political stake in maintaining the difference between mothers and masculinist cultural representations of the mother, so is there at stake for feminism in maintaining the difference between the mother-tobe as the speaking subject and the maternal space as filter, that vast and subjectless "thoroughfare."[3] After I began this paper with the idea to write about intersections of maternal in Kristeva, Beauvoir and Butler (Kristeva because of the obvious: her chapter on maternal and the abject; Beauovoir, because of the way in which she continues to be routinely castrated in contemporary classroom discussions; and Butler, because I see an odd affinity in some of her remarks and Donna Haraway's Cyborg[4]). Though it happens all the time, I was somewhat taken aback when I came across Linda Zerilla's excellent article "A Process
UDEKAD, 2024
Julia Kristeva asserts that maternal bond plays a significant role in the formation of an individual's subjectivity. She claims that when the child gets separated from the mother to form its own identity, it goes through the process of abjection. As a result of this separation from the (m)other, all human desires, fears, insecurities, and sense of creativity associated with the semiotic aspect of language come to the fore. Kristeva relates the semiotic part to the unconscious, while the symbolic is all about properly representing objects, logic, and order through language. Thus, the symbolic realm functions to balance our desires, drives, and feelings and helps the subject to express its drives through language, yet in a filtered way according to the laws of the father and society. However, if the child cannot enter the symbolic order; or cannot liberate itself from the mother, it may have inner and mental struggles. Even though years pass, the remnants in the psyche continue to disturb the individual. In this respect, this study will reflect the condition of two daughters portrayed in The Beauty Queen of Leenane and The Lambs of London who are still in the process of abjection and incapable of entering the symbolic order.
Studies in Literature and Language, 2018
Reading Marsha Norman’s ‘night, Mother in the light of Lacan’s imaginary and symbolic orders, as well as Adrianne Rich’s notions presented in Of Women Born, one can detect that Jessie’s suicide has roots in the complicated bond she shares with her mother, her struggle for separation from her while unconsciously yearning the imaginary fusion with her, as well as failure in understanding the true nature of her relationship with her father and following in his footsteps. This paper will take a close look at the ways patriarchy has invaded the mother-daughter relationship that Jessie's and Thelma share, and their struggles for achieving self-autonomy, as well as the role Jessie’s father plays in the finality of her decision. Terms such as matrophobia, death drive, abjection, imaginary father, and symbolic father will be used in this paper in order to clarify the ways in which Jessie’s parental ties are destructive.
Altorientalische Forschungen, 2023
CITIZENSHIP STUDIES, 2023
Journal of the Adventist Theological Society, 2003
Littératures classiques, 2015
Seminars in Orthodontics, 2011
Desacatos Revista de Ciencias Sociales, 2016
Mimarlık bilimleri ve uygulamaları dergisi, 2024
European Chemical Bulletin, 2014
Surveys in Operations Research and Management Science, 2013
Mitologías hoy
Journal of Computer Science, 2013
Behavioural Brain Research, 2005
The Egyptian Journal of Hospital Medicine, 2022