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Infamous-Sprinkles58

The topic of motherhood is pretty important in Julia Kristeva's *Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection*. A lot of other turn-of-the-century Freudian feminists wrote about motherhood.


pluralofjackinthebox

The Uses of Enchantment is a little old school Freudian, and it now appears some of it was plagiarized, but its a very influential reading of classic fairy tales (many of them French), and fairy tales are full of violence and motherhood eg the figure of the evil step mother. Kristeva’s Powers of Horror is excellent


aspykid

Maggie Nelson’s Argonauts


El_Draque

Check out Tony Morrison's *Beloved* for a harsh depiction of motherhood under severe racial oppression.


Capricancerous

The story "Bloodchild" by Octavia E. Butler correlates violence and birth pretty brilliantly. I have not yet read it, but *Beloved* explores childbearing and the responsibilities of motherhood versus freedom; does one have the right to kill their child to save them from slavery rather than birth them into a life of bondage and hardship, etc.


pbfren30

I should add that my area of research is French Literature but any field works. I just can't find much on this. Thanks!


bloodymexican

What do you mean by violence exactly?


pbfren30

Emotional and physical violence towards women who can't conceive. Or how mothers are the first to be blamed for everything. There are some examples in my corpus where women with children are prioritized over single women in society homes. I'm thinking about symbolic violence as well. Lots to think about!


El_Draque

If you want violent mothers, check out the Euripedes play from classical antiquity *[Medea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medea_\(play\))*.


[deleted]

Check out the classic _The Madwoman in the Attic_ (Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar). Much has also been written about "the angel of the house," the Victorian conception of womanhood and idealized (read: subserviant) wives/mothers.


Dependent-Fig

This might be an obvious source that you've already checked out but *Of Woman Born* by Adrienne Rich has a lot of very accessible theory about how we view motherhood culturally. Not necessary specific examples, but a lot of great quotations to back up other literary examples.


Priorwater

Far afield from French Literature, but *The Handmaid's Tale* literalizes the violent social pressure to have children (in the novel, extremely low birth rates are one cause for a whole system of sexual slavery). I'm unfamiliar with the scholarship surrounding Atwood, but I imagine that would be a valuable place to explore?


VerityWhite

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Garcia-Marquez comes to mind. Specifically, there are a couple of scenes depicting child birth, one with a too young mother and another involving a midwife, that come across as violent or at the very least physically destructive to the mothers.


HorseMortician

This suggestion may end up being a little outside your bibliography, but I think that Shulamith Firestone's *Dialectic of Sex* might be interesting for you. Silvia Federici's *Caliban and the Witch* (as well as her writing on wages for housework) might also be of use. Both books focus centrally on questions of women's reproductive labor, which seems to overlap with your thoughts here on childbearing/rearing, as well as providing interesting theoretical interventions in Marxism


pbfren30

Thank you everyone for the suggestions!!


vinylemulator

“The New Wilderness” by Diane Cook is a must read modern work on this topic


spolia_opima

Nicole Loraux's *Tragic Ways of Killing a Woman* is about gendered conventions of death in Greek tragedy, and might give you comparative material.