the problematics of motherhood in twentieth century women's fiction

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pregnant woman: nNow that she's the carrier of llfe, she is
closer to death" (HT:26) has suggestions that the birth of
the child brings the mother closer to death
In Meridian,
the bxrth of Meridian's son instils in her the urge to
murder him, "her fingers eager to scratch him out of her
llfe" IM 63). "To strangle that soft, smooth, helpless neck,
to push down that kinky head into a tub of water, to lock it
In rts room to starve" (M.67) becomes her obsessive desire
In Morr;son's
Beloved, Sethe fears that her womb may turn
out to be a graveyard for her slx-month baby, but wlth Amy's
tlmely help, her fears are allayed
Later, the blrth of
Denver is followed by the death of her 'crawllng already?'
~nfanc, who returns as Beloved
5.5.7. The monotonous rut of housekeeping and chlld-
rearlng leads the feminist mothers to compare themselves to
'machines' or 'aucomat (r) ons' ,
feellngs are not taken Into account
lifeless belngs whose
In The Swer Before
the Dark, Kate Brown, after her awakening, realizes wlth
lndlgnatlon what she had been dolng all along "she had been
set llke a machlne by twenty-odd years of belng a wife and
mother" (SBD 47)
The mother-machine Image is used wlth
different lmplicatlons in Woman on the Edge of Time
Connie
1s at first sceptical of the art~flclal techniques of
reproduction followed at Mattapolsett and calls the brooder
a "crazy machineu (WET:96) and its products "bottle babies"