Motherhood in Age of Iron

Abstract

What makes J. M. Coetzee’s creation exclusive among other patriarchal cases of motherhood is that it is not restricted to social and spiritual dimensions of femininity in Age of Iron. While creating Elizabeth Curren as a willful motherly figure who constantly attempts to do her role as a socially conscious woman of conscience and compassion, Coetzee admits that motherly values and behaviors may suspend unachieved for want of any subsequent warmth. Furthermore, Coetzee shows that a motherly woman, when abandoned in dispossession, may naturally begin to be conscious of herself as a woman with a physical body that needs to be warmed and cared for. Coetzee, thus, leads us further into another realm of femininity that allows any woman to value and prioritize physical dimensions of her passion even as a mother. Mrs Curren’s motherhood is presented in chaotic South African society as an unachieved attempt to bring in any productive change as an actual power. Coetzee, however, coldly accepts the fact that a woman’s femininity includes motherhood that may lead into intense predominance of the physical, occasionally at the expense of the spiritual or social dimensions.