If there’s one thing a woman can never be forgiven for, it’s being a woman. bad mother. When Rachel Cusk posted in 2001 A job for a lifetime (first translated into Spanish by Libros del Asteroid in 2023) was a literal revolution. He talked about the longing for freedom, the desire to escape, the feeling of being locked in a cell. The naturalization of the concept of bad mother in literature is a new phenomenon. And it continues to be associated with a terrible sense of guilt. The sin of not being perfectprioritizing your life over those that depend on your care.
To put ourselves in a situation, let’s cite two contemporary examples of literary fiction: good song related to Leyla Slimani, a mother who wants to save her professional life, leaves her children in the care of another woman and eventually kills them. or the narrator mothers don’t The one that leaves Katixa Agirre’s son in the nursery so he can write every day, at the hours everyone understands he needs to devote to caring. Whatever the hero’s vital choice, it always seems wrong.
We asked four writers who covered these topics how they handled the plot decisions about female characters and motherhood. And in addition, how do they do this from crime fiction?
One of the hallmarks of Laura Lippman (Atlanta, 1959) is, strong female characters full of contradictions. Lady of the Lake (Salamandra, 2023) is set in the sixties, and the protagonist Maddie is “yes, brutally ambitious.” Family life incompatible with work? “This is a tough question since my marriage ended three years ago, and I sometimes wonder if things would have been different if I had found happiness in a more traditional setting. But for me, motherhood is the complement to my life as a writer. In fact, I enjoy the challenge of continuing to work at a fairly steady pace as a mother, something many women have warned me would be impossible. But of course it comes from a place of great privilege, because I too have the means to pay for the help I need.”
at Claudia Pineiro time of the flies (Alfaguara, 2023) saves the hero yoursis a story in which Inés prioritizes the urgency of her daily life in the care of her teenage daughter. “Full professional and family life in the way that traditionally makes us believe we should participate is incompatible or takes excessive effort. If we women have to take responsibility for and handle the day-to-day chores of family life alone or with little help, it is very likely that we will not have time to fully develop our chosen profession. I think instead of giving up, you should evaluate the situation and look for options for joint division of duties.”
care responsibility
Responsible for taking care of women. And they are rarely forgiven for mistake. Therefore, the appearance in fiction bad mothers, imperfect entities that show the difficulty of facing this role. stories Bonnie Jo Campbell (Michigan, 1962) is full of people who get it wrong. from the hero once a river (Kirli Jobs, 2019) to the characters in their stories women and other animals (Dirty Works, 2023). “Yes, man is imperfect, woman is human, mother is woman, and therefore mothers are imperfect. In literature, we are glad that people are imperfect. If you have a great person, you have a religion. If you have an imperfect hero, you can have literature.” He even went so far as to say, “It seems unfair that while every mother is expected to be as perfect as the Virgin Mary, babies are never expected to be as perfect as Jesus. All moms should wear signs or t-shirts. ‘I am not the Virgin Mary. To get used to.’”
Marie Ndiaye: “It always bothers me that my characters or stories are associated with community issues”
Marie Ndiaye (Loiret, France, 1967), author among others revenge is mine (Gatopardo, 2021) and chef (Gatopardo, 2022) eschews the label of the social novel and affirms: “It always bothers me when my characters or stories are associated with social issues. I don’t write about the ‘problem’ of women oppressed by patriarchy. As a citizen, I can think of patriarchy and fight against it. As a writer, I don’t think about it”
This deadly woman
There was no place for female characters in the origins of crime fiction. The genre was highly urban, and the field of action of women in those years was limited to the four walls of the domestic space. There was no place for mothers, daughters or wives. From these social constraints emerged the character of society. fatal woman, an archetype that fits this kind of novel, but which condemns the protagonists to succumb to a cliché that perhaps needs to be revised or even forgotten.
Laura Lippman: “The traditional concept of motherhood is a double-edged sword. It crushes women”
Lippman writes that “the femme fatale exists only in the male gaze, or in the female gaze, which accepts this framework without thinking. With burned skin I wanted to write about a woman who finds it exhausting for men to be attracted to her. Femme fatale is a masculine creation, a justification, a rationalization.. But it is also an opportunity. If men believe women can screw them up, why not take advantage of this fact?
In her stories, Campbell says, women “do their best to manage in a difficult situation” and sometimes “use sexual tricks to stay alive.” Sex has always been something the strong can buy from the less powerful and steal from the less fortunate.. And sex is something less powerful that people may need when they have nothing else to trade. I’d like to think our society has made great progress, but we can’t even pass the Equal Rights Amendment in America in 2023 that gives equal rights to women and men.”
Structure
Piñeiro stressed: “We have to eliminate the concept. deadly woman. The world is full of manipulative, psychopathic men and women, and men who sneeze, and if so, I think names closer to this concept should be sought. This deadly woman supposedly such an attractive woman that the poor man falls head over heels in love and falls into her trap. Everything in this structure looks old and lost to me.”
for Ndiaye deadly woman They’re very interesting to us as characters, a projection of a ghost or a fear or something that I missed.” And “great characters, those that stay in our memory for a long time, are often complex, not necessarily friendly, full of conflicting emotions. When a character looks like a prototype to us, it may be because the author has failed to give it the complexity of any human being.”
Pineiro: “If a man wants to write about motherhood in conflict, he can do that too, why not?”
HE detective fiction portrayed female characters very distorted It raises the question of whether writers are the ones who have inevitably renewed the genre for so long and given these heroes the presence and character they deserve. “As an atheist, I believe in fiction,” says Piñeiro. “And it is within the freedom of anyone to write about the subject. The fact that the subject of motherhood is in conflict has started to emerge from the pen of women, because these are the issues that remind us. But if a man wanted to write about these topics, he could do that too, why not.” Along the same lines, Campbell said, “Both male and female writers should write realistically about men and women.”
But, Lippman says, “fiction can help us understand that much of what we think about motherhood is an invention. The traditional notion of motherhood is a double-edged sword. It crushes women. It holds them in place while they’re devastated by their flaws as mothers. It’s crucial that women write these stories.” Ndiaye says she likes “female artists showing different kinds of female characters, it’s so depressing for both men and women: You can be a woman and still be trapped in a very stereotypical system of representations.”