Narcissistic Mothers in Modernist Literature

1. Why did you choose this topic?

When I started working on my manuscript, I was in my late twenties and became more sensible to socio-cultural expectations and perceptions of motherhood. Many of them were based on preconceived ideas, conveyed by the media, literature and the art, which sustained a dichotomous representation of mothers as either benevolent or deviant. Thus, it was necessary to address and challenge this image of women, which is well exemplified in the depiction of narcissistic mothers in modernist literature.

2. What new perspectives does your book offer?

Recently, there have been some major publications which also focus on the persisting paradoxical representation of mothers/motherhood and aim at deconstructing the cultural invention of ›good‹ or ›bad‹ mother. My book differs from these prominent works by essentially drawing on a Freudian reading of narcissism in order to debunk the myth of ›selfless mothers‹, and by specifically dealing with concrete examples found in modernist literature, while other works concentrate on contemporary cases.

3. What makes your topic relevant for current research debates?

Alone in 2018, there were at least three high-profile publications on this issue, e.g: Sheila Heti's Motherhood, Dale Salwak's Writers and their Mothers and Jacqueline Rose's Mothers: An Essay on Love and Cruelty. It indicates a strong and constant need to further explore the issue of the representation of motherhood. Therefore, my book is relevant to contemporary socio-political debates on the question as well as to the on-going literary criticism and study of these mainstream writers.

4. Choose one person you would like to discuss your book with!

I would like to discuss my book with Sheila Heti, who in her book written as a diary reveals the conflictual thoughts of a woman in her mid-thirties, who hesitates between her desire/duty to have or not have a child. She tackles important questions such as whether women really exercise free will over their fertility or again if the act of procreation should be considered a means to satisfy one's vanity. Although set in a different time frame, her book raises similar issues as mine.

5. Your book summary in one sentence:

Inspired by Freudian psychoanalytic theory and modernist literature, my book re-conceptualizes the notions of ›narcissism‹ and ›motherhood‹ in order to embrace a more positive and constructive reading of narcissistic mother figures.