강요된 모성과 진짜 어머니: 섹스턴의 모성시 읽기
Forced Motherhood and the Voice of the Real Mother: Anne Sexton’s Motherhood Poems
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Although plentiful literary works ‘about’ mothers have been published throughout literary history, mothers’ own voices have only appeared in poetic works relatively recently, and have received little scholarly attention. This essay explores Anne Sexton’s motherhood poems from a matricentric perspective. As a mother who raised two kids in the 1950s when American society used an ideal mother image as propaganda, Sexton in her brutally candid motherhood poems invites readers to look into the issue of forced motherhood, what Betty Friedan once called the “problem that has no name.” Against a backdrop of this motherhood discourse in the 1950s, Sexton addressed what mothers encountered in reality in the voice of the mother-speaker and constructed the space of matricentric motherhood poems in her era. By analyzing how Sexton poeticizes her thoughts about the female body with the reproductive system without romanticizing it, this paper proposes that her writing process foregrounds the metaphorical connection of the female body to its creativity. Her motherhood poems delve into maternal experiences to reveal motherhood’s inherent status, which is liminal and constantly re-defined through mother-child relationships. The essay concludes by proclaiming the significance of motherhood poetics generated by Sexton’s poetic praxis, which gives voice to maternal experiences as a mother-poet.
Abstract
Although plentiful literary works ‘about’ mothers have been published throughout literary history, mothers’ own voices have only appeared in poetic works relatively recently, and have received little scholarly attention. This essay explores Anne Sexton’s motherhood poems from a matricentric perspective. As a mother who raised two kids in the 1950s when American society used an ideal mother image as propaganda, Sexton in her brutally candid motherhood poems invites readers to look into the issue of forced motherhood, what Betty Friedan once called the “problem that has no name.” Against a backdrop of this motherhood discourse in the 1950s, Sexton addressed what mothers encountered in reality in the voice of the mother-speaker and constructed the space of matricentric motherhood poems in her era. By analyzing how Sexton poeticizes her thoughts about the female body with the reproductive system without romanticizing it, this paper proposes that her writing process foregrounds the metaphorical connection of the female body to its creativity. Her motherhood poems delve into maternal experiences to reveal motherhood’s inherent status, which is liminal and constantly re-defined through mother-child relationships. The essay concludes by proclaiming the significance of motherhood poetics generated by Sexton’s poetic praxis, which gives voice to maternal experiences as a mother-poet.
참고문헌 (23)
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