Second Thoughts

How NOT to Write About Motherhood

Since Sunday is Mother's Day in the US; in Israel, I would like to use the opportunity to bring up a minor yet important point about motherhood and fiction.

Rereading Jane and Prudence (1953) the third novel of the British novelist Barbara Pym (1913--1980), I was surprised to read that Jane, one of the protagonists, states that she does not feel much like a mother, since she only has one child. At first, this statement didn't register, I glossed over it. But then I kept thinking about it and realized that this was a major error. Even in fiction, the feeling of motherhood does not depend on how many children you have. I believe that the narrator here reveals the lack of knowledge and inexperience of the author, who herself never married and had no children of her own.

It is true that Jane, a clergyman's wife, has romantic notions about her role and the life that comes with it. She regards her inability to produce a large family, like the ones exemplified in the clerical novels by the Victorian author  Charlotte Yonge, as a personal failure. However, to me this does not feel like an authentic emotion that could come from a mother.

Before our first daughter was born my husband and I took prenatal Lamaze classes. I remember that on the last class the instructor suggested, "before you leave the house to go to the hospital to have the baby take a good look around, your home will never be the same." Although it sounds like a cliché, this statement could not have been more accurate. Coming back with our first baby life has never been the same.  I felt like a bond to my baby and did not feel more like a mother  when I had another child.

I don't subscribe to the belief that in order to write about something you have to personally experience it, although it does help as it provides a shortcut. But if I don't have personal experience about divorce, for example, I will have to compensate for it. Since it means that I don't have instincts or intuitions to rely upon I will have to conduct thorough research on divorce.

Moreover, because I don't have that personal experience, even when I do conduct thorough research, my knowledge will lack a certain depth and could never be equal to someone who had life experience. There could always be surprises -- those issues that I didn't even know existed.

On the other hand, not going through the experience myself means that I am not bound by reality, granting me the freedom to write about the subject in a novel way. But I still have to be careful, since I cannot rely on my own experience and intuition I would likely want to consult with experts. The most obvious way is to find an informed reader ,and especially a good editor.

Barbara Pym does not make many mistakes, generally her information is reliable and the sentiments of her characters ring true, to the extent that her novels are often used as a source for social and church historians.

In a way it is gratifying to find a flaw in an otherwise great writer. It makes me feel better about my own errors.