Beginning a discussion of Femininity

1. Motherhood
2. Woman on Display
3. Sirens and Witches

Adrienne Rich’s book Of Woman Born: Motherhood as

Experience and Institution
The first ground-breaking book to really discuss motherhood
in ways that did not reproduce the propaganda
that get’s told about what it’s like to be a mother.

What are those stories?

myth of the maternal instinct, selfless and self-
sacrificing, mother/child bond as sacrosanct, protected
“most fulfilling and important job a woman can do”.
“bliss of motherhood” – a “sacred calling”
motherhood as nation-building
(racial and colonialist arguments here)
Critical theory and “subjugated knowledge”
feminist critique begins with “the personal is political”

Rich’s argument: Motherhood under patriarchal conditions

exists in institutional forms – this is what determines
women’s lived experience.
Institutionalized motherhood
Institutionalized heterosexuality – control of women
and their bodies
Reality:
Women must serve the needs of men,
produce children,
create a “home” and look after it,
and all its members, under all conditions
create children who support all other patriarchal
institutions, especially nationalism
do all this while never getting angry (p.45)
How did this begin?

Late Victorian England “traditional” roles for middle class

women – actually not so “traditional” – that is
ideology too.
Ideal for women domestic life – marriage and domestic life
mother and child in the home

But – at the same time, beginning to open up somewhat

early feminist struggles for the vote
skills learned in other movements
anti-slavery, anti-vivisection, anti-child labour
rescue of prostitutes – “feminine” interests impel
women into politics
Women expected to marry –
if not, to pursue “respectable” work
maintain “respectability” – more ideology
Separate spheres - man’s world was the public
Home – woman’s world – separated from the public sphere
enshrined in laws about work, marriage and motherhood

How did this happen?

until industrialization (early capitalism) separation of
work and home life was minimal
women and children integrated into economic life
Motherhood and “keeping of the home as a private refuge”
was not “the central occupation of women”
nor were “mother and child” an isolated relationship. (47)

Pioneer women – cleared trees, built houses, gathered food,

raised animals, preserved food, taught children to read
and run the house etc.
all while having babies constantly – drain on women’s
health, high mortality rates for women and children
Working class women – factory jobs, paid 1/3 a man’s wage
then go home to housework and childcare
often leaving children at home with slightly older
dosed with laudanum or gin

separation of home and work very hard on mothers

and children, but millions worked out of necessity
(cheaper labour for owners)

*legislation passed, limiting women’s and children’s labour

“the home, its cares and employments, is the woman’s
true sphere”. (49)
ideology of motherhood receives state sanction.
what follows are many state laws regulating
women’s lives and enshrining state control
over women’s bodies.

Waged work:
Laws about child labour, women’s work (married women)

Education:
Child care (nurseries) not supported

Domestic Labour:
Doubling of women’s work
waged labour plus childcare plus housework
women today work more on domestic work than men
men do contribute but tends to be childcare.
Health care and sexuality:
medicalization of birth process
masculinization of obstetrics
male control of birth control, abortion,
reproductive technologies
Mary Cassatt,Young Mother Sewing, 1900
The Caring Wife
rising middle classes and the feminine
Ideas of Marriage
ideas of femininity (passive, domestic, nurturing)

Structure of marriage – separate spheres:

Heterosexual, monogamous and nuclear
Contained family unit with Mother at home
Father at work
Purpose - Who do these ideas serve ?
division of labour
ideas of femininity (nurturing, self-sacrificing
mother) serves the social needs of reproduction
Home care, Child care, elder care and husband
care
But – also serves needs of production
Women are temporary and part-time work force
that can move in and out as needed.
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How is this accomplished? How is it that women agree,
indeed, come to identify themselves through the roles they
play as wife, daughter, mother, nurse, servant,
cook, cleaner, etc….

Institution / ideology

Through ideology of femininity - hegemonic

Rich – she is not saying we should not be married or
mothers.
she is saying our experience of motherhood is
entirely shaped by
a) the institution of heterosexuality
b) the institution of motherhood

These institutions produce ideologies.

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Each mode of production produces necessities of life
in specific ways (children)

creates specific social relations between workers

and those who control means of production

develops specific social and cultural institutions

Each mode of production shapes that society and its future.

Base / superstructure:
culture exists between these two

Base – forces of production, workers,

relations of production
Superstructure – institutions that support
those relations of production 12
Under capitalism:
Base – factories, technology, resources etc.
all elements that are necessary to all forms of
production
relations of production
between those who control means of production
and those who work

Superstructure – institutions that support those relations

and keep them going - including
institution of heterosexuality
institution of motherhood
also church, legal system, educational system,
health system, banking, etc.
plus forms of social consciousness
generated by those institutions
w does this happen? Through ideology:
a system of ideas that teaches people how to b
- always in the service of the ruling class
- reinforced in multiple ways.

pically through a system of rewards and punishments,

laws, yes, but also cultural practices and beliefs
passed on through institutions.

ts up a tension between

ideology / lived experience

e of ideology is to disguise or re-interpret

lived experience, in the service of the ruling class

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Victorian ideology about femininity:

historian Barbara Welter. “Cult of True Womanhood:

1820-1860”, American Quarterly 18
studied women’s magazines to determine ideas of the
feminine
woman was
1. pure
2. pious
3. submissive
4. domestic
5. obsessed with sickness
this idea was related to class
upper classes were frail and sickly but also
“ministering angels”
lower classes were carriers of disease, unclean,
etc.
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"Whatever have been the cares of the day, greet your
husband with a smile when he returns. Make your
personal appearance just as beautiful as possible.
Let him enter rooms so attractive and sunny that all
the recollections of his home, when away from the same,
shall attract him back."
Hill's Manual of Social and Business Forms, 1888

“It is the wife's responsibility to provide her husband

"a happy home... the single spot of rest which a man
has upon this earth for the cultivation of his noblest
sensibilities.”**

“If she has the true mother-heart the companionship of her

children will be the society which she will prefer above that
of all others.”*
Ideology of motherhood vs. experience

ideology connects gender differentiation to the

economic needs of the culture

gender ideology teaches us to internalize those roles

sets up some pretty terrible conflicts for women
in various situations
conflicts around sexuality, in absence of reliable
birth control
conflicts for women who are not able to fulfill the
dominant idea of the mother role
(i.e. everyone)
emotional conflicts (eg. Love and anger co-existing)
failing at motherhood (grief, guilt, powerlessness –
women always feel it’s their fault, even if there are
many other forces at work
17
mother-blaming
Birth: is it truly a woman’s decision? When is it not?
when does a woman decide to have a child?
is it a personal decision, free and without
encumbrances?
Is she doing it because she is expected to?
pressures to have children
Is she doing it because she has no option?
options not to
eg. Birth control fails.
husband wants a son.
she is raped.
she has no access to birth control.
she has no access to abortion.
Marriage: why truly does a woman decide to get
married?
for financial considerations?
her father arranges it?
her best friend got married and she feels left out?
she can’t afford to live alone and hates her family?
she gets pregnant and can’t live with the idea of
an abortion?

Child care: early childhood education (2 and up)

whose interest is served here?
child based industries