Driven up the Wall: Maternity and Literature in Contemporary Women Writers

Abstract

Analysis of the anguish a woman suffers as a consequence of the physical, emotional, psychological, and identity changes she is compelled to undergo when she assumes the role of mother. The narratives with which the present essay is concerned are by two acclaimed Latin American authors: the Argentine Ana María Shua ("Como una buena madre" [Like a Good Mother, 1988] and "Te tapa los ojos" [She Covers Your Eyes, 19921) and the Chilean Pía Barros (''Artemisa" [ 1990) and "Madres" [Mothers, 2009]). Prominent in both writers is the assumption of the grotesque as a suitable category both for denouncing the feeling of alienness provoked by giving birth, and for revealing the alienation of which woman is the object when she undertakes a function that others have normativized, and from which she escapes through a violence that sometimes degenerates into outright madness.