Maternal ambivalences in Kate Chopin's selected works

Abstract EN

The question of motherhood seems to haunt the works of Kate Chopin, a nineteenth century American writer.

Though a mother-woman herself, Chopin gives a paradoxical portrait of motherhood in her works.

She implies that motherhood might be a liberating experience for some women as it is constricting for others.

This paper tackles the paradoxical nature of motherhood in Chopin's novel, The Awakening and other four short stories.

In The Awakening, A Pair of Silk Stockings and Desiree's Baby, motherhood is depicted as a tool of selfdestruction, while in Athénaise and Regret, it is a source of life-giving.

A theme which Kate Chopin (1851-1904), a nineteenth century American writer, presents throughout her career is the dilemma of desire versus duty, selfrealization versus socially sanctioned self-sacrifice.

Motherhood often serves to emphasize a woman's self-deprivation, but there are also cases where a woman can achieve self-realization through motherhood and caring for children.

In her own life, Chopin was a mother-woman.

She loved her children and was deeply devoted to them.

Linda Byrd writes that “Kate Chopin's genuine feelings about motherhood and children are best illuminated in her comments about her own six children.

Loving her children immensely, she never wanted to shut them out or turn them away, even when she was very busy”1.

In her work, Chopin depicts children as affecting the lives of adults in many ways : they may pacify, heal, enlighten and comfort2.

Despite her own feelings about children, Chopin is aware that motherhood is, sometimes, not the role all women seek or find fulfillment in.

Some of Chopin's most famous works illustrate the writer's preoccupation with this paradoxical nature of motherhood.

Chopin consistently presents motherhood as a “form of ideological entrapment that some women accept, along with the loss of self, and some do not”3, but she always successfully depicts the female strength granted to mothers.

In her work, Chopin implies that motherhood may be as “freeing, generative experience”4 for some women as it is constricting for others.

This idea is most evident in her novel The Awakening and other four short stories.

In The Awakening, A Pair of Silk Stockings and Desiree's Baby, the darker side of motherhood is explored, while Athénaise and Regret demonstrate the rewards of maternity.