Response to Adrienne Rich’s Of Woman Born – Anger and Tenderness

“Unexamined assumptions: First, that a “natural” mother is a person without further identity, one who can find her chief gratification in being all day with small children, living at a pace tuned to theirs; that the isolation of mothers and children together in the home must be taken for granted; that maternal love is, and should be, quite literally selfless; that children and mothers are the ‘causes’ of each others’ suffering.”

This quote resonated with me because it highlights an idea that I know I have internalized: the expectation that to be a mother, a woman must give up her self, her personhood, to her child. For many years I committed against my mother the injustice of believing this. My mother loves me and has always wanted to give me everything I wanted and needed. As a result, her love and the pressure to be “the perfect mother” (whatever that even means) overwhelmed her.

Growing into adulthood, my relationship with my mother settled and I began to relinquish my unreasonable expectations of her, but I never recognized that I had held them in the first place. I have never truly imagined they were unreasonable, even as I have been letting them go. Even as I began to see my mother as an individual, I never realized that I had made her identity contingent upon the development of my own individualism. This created a transactional relationship between my mother and I. I was quietly demanding, “You are your own person only as far as I am mine.” But where does that leave her?

And yet! I am lucky. I am lucky because my mother has always been self-directed and self-aware. Every moment of my life I have watched her come to new understandings of herself, and apply them in order to grow and change. I think, even as she felt the pressure of motherhood (to be selfless, to be less of her own person), even as it may have overwhelmed her at times, she never fully succumbed. And this does not mean she loved me less than the woman who gives ups herself entirely to her children. She gave me a model of motherhood – of womanhood – that recognizes the need for one to love and care for themselves before they can do so for others. How can a child grow into a complete person when they are born and raised by someone who themselves were never allowed become the same?

Of Woman Born reminded me strongly of another, similar perspective on motherhood that I read about recently. In the final scene of A Doll’s House, Nora Helmer comes to the realization that Rich presents in Of Woman Born.

Nora. And I–how am I fitted to bring up the children?

Helmer. Nora!

Nora. Didn’t you say so yourself a little while ago–that you dare not trust me to bring them up?

Helmer. In a moment of anger! Why do you pay any heed to that?

Nora. Indeed, you were perfectly right. I am not fit for the task. There is another task I must undertake first. I must try and educate myself–you are not the man to help me in that. I must do that for myself. And that is why I am going to leave you now.

Filmed version of the final scene in A Doll’s House:

Nora comes to the realization that she cannot be anything if she is not first herself. And this is what I recognize now. I have been lucky enough to have a mother who was able to be her own individual person, and who was therefore able to help me be one as well. However, as I grow further and further into adulthood, I must seriously take on the task of continuing this development. I feel the constant pressure to conform to what patriarchal society demands of me; to take up no space, to apologize for my existence and successes, to defer to men, to not trust myself, to worry first about what others will think of me before worrying about what I think, to care for others before I care for myself.

I MUST NOT GIVE IN. I must be vigilant about living my life for myself.

I will care for myself. I will educate myself. This does not mean I will trample others, or take from others. And it does not mean I won’t give and do for others. It means I will stand between giving all and taking all. Finding balance. Not perfection. Balance.