Reply to this genre of instagram mom confessions is off putting

Forum Index » General Parenting Discussion

Reply to "this genre of instagram mom confessions is off putting - why???"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote][quote][quote]Disagree with you all. I'm glad it's happening. For centuries mothers have been allowed no interior life, and even now it is barely, and only uncomfortably, acknowledged. (Any great novels with Mom protagonists? No! Definitely not before 1970s.)

So does that mean you have to think any and all mommy insta posts or memoirs are worthy -- and somehow not navel-gazing and attention seeking? NO. They probably are.

But it is ridiculous to carve out mother confessions from all other confessionals. And sexist and myopic too.

So if you do not like endless self-regard, fine. But then stay off all social media. No need to declare mommy blogging any more narcissistic than the next pundit/commentator/social media maven (or bitch about a lady's mascara).
[/quote]

Uh, Mrs. Murry from A Wrinkle in Time? Try harder, PP.[/quote]

Doubt PP is much of a novel fan.[/quote]

Ha ha.  I teach this stuff.

Wrinkle in Time was basically the 1970s, but Mrs. Murry was a side character. Certainly not a protagonist in any sense of the word.

Carol in Main Street was not even a mother until like the last chapter, and certainly by no stretch of the imagination was the book about her being a mother.

Sons and Lovers the mother was at best the antagonist - though I'll give you points that at least it dealt with the parent-child relationship.

The Awakening is perhaps the closest, but it is basically the first of its kind, and a feminist forerunner for this reason.

The Dollmaker??   A little random.

None except the Awakening--the exception that proves the rule--remotely look into the "interior life" of a mother as mother.  So the fact that this is the "best" of mother "protagonists" is a very sad way to prove my point, and that PPs think this could prove the opposite show how little we really want to hear from mothers as mothers.

(Also: Not exactly a new idea or controversial that "mothers" haven't really figured as protagonists in "great" Western literature...  Yours is an uphill battle friends!)
[/quote][/quote]

Maybe this deserves it's own S/O thread...but Kitty's struggle as a young, overwhelmed mother in Anna Karenina includes this beautifully written line that has always stuck with me -- “These joys were so trifling as to be as imperceptible as grains of gold among the sand, and in moments of depression she saw nothing but the sand; yet there were brighter moments when she felt nothing but joy, saw nothing but the gold.”

formatting issue above[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics