{"id":51759,"date":"2019-10-21T01:26:13","date_gmt":"2019-10-21T05:26:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/?p=51759"},"modified":"2019-10-20T21:52:52","modified_gmt":"2019-10-21T01:52:52","slug":"imagining-motherhood-and-the-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/2019\/10\/imagining-motherhood-and-the-past\/","title":{"rendered":"Imagining Motherhood and the Past"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Present day visions of motherhood may feel so askew that we might look in many directions\u2013religion? the past? other places?\u2013for correction.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The current issue of the journal\u00a0 Image<\/a><\/em>\u00a0 carries an arresting art piece, \u201cMotherhood: A Visual Contract,<\/a>\u201d aiming to find some use in religious imagery of motherhood from the past.\u00a0 The art and text from Israeli-born London artist Leni Dothan<\/a> engage contemporary perplexities in ways that echo a noteworthy book from earlier this year, Sarah Knott\u2019s Mother is a Verb<\/a><\/em>. \u00a0Both have historical approaches. \u00a0The uses they hope to derive from history merit some joint reflection.<\/p>\n

Knott strives, with the elusive documentary evidence of women in the past, to frame current experience in light of the way it used to be for those with child. The book impresses on a number of levels, blending the historical and personal. The British Knott<\/a>, associate professor of history and gender studies at Indiana University, has sharp eyes and apt words for the striking and strange in motherhood past and present. The book weaves tidings of her pregnancy and early motherhood around those of her sources. \u00a0But its success at doing so invites questions about why history is the right tool to do what she aims. Does reckoning female involvement with children as active, rather than passive or invisible, help retrieve women from obscurity and the presumption of having accomplished little? Does seeing mothers\u2019 struggles in the past help us see them more clearly in our own time? \u00a0Does finding precedent for behaviors now deemed obvious help excavate them from the taken-for-granted and explain why we do should retain them\u2014or should not?<\/p>\n

A case could be made for affirmative answers to all of the above. \u00a0But we might not rush to those answers too quickly.<\/p>\n

Reading Knott\u2019s book, I kept recalling a feeling common to my own days with young children, a kind of startlement that this was how it was and that people had allowed things to get this way.\u00a0 Those first few nights with a newborn in the house when the baby wakes up\u2014scared? cold? hungry? Maybe some or none or all of those things, but crying urgently and in need of someone, mother, to go, soothe, and feed. Really? Is this supposed to be how it is? When does sleep come? It\u2019s an insistent anxiety insinuating itself when one is alone awake in a dark house, one\u2019s own body all that holds back a newborn\u2019s desolation. Those days feeding a baby out of one\u2019s body and getting that hard-labored milk vomited all down the back moments later. Really? This is normal?\u00a0 Those dire diaper-changes, stripping soaked clothes off an infant whose limbs balk at bending through sleeves, because he has leaked all out, again, really?<\/p>\n

And those are the startlements that come with happy outcomes of healthy babies.\u00a0 Knott recognizes, as a\u00a0New York Times<\/em> photo essay<\/a> recognizes, that maternity often can be more about miscarriage and loss. As Knott narrates her motherhood and the experience of other mothers, she seems sometimes stunned that she should find herself in such situations. Not, how did she become a mother, but how did motherhood become like this? Given the way we in the United States handle birth and work and family, she and we, upon having children, might find ourselves without a thick network of other mothers to assure her that, yes, this is how it is.<\/p>\n

For that reason, finding corroboration in the past could be useful. \u00a0See, mothers from many years ago attest, we could have told you how it is. Because the historian has given us voice we are telling you, this is how it is. One reason to look to the past is to find support in this common work from women in the past who did it, often under hardship more acute than ours. \u201cWhat are the many different pasts of becoming a mother?\u201d Knott asks. These pasts need to be told differently than histories of other things: \u201cWhen not on maternity leave, I tell my students grand narratives about the late-eighteenth-century transition from kingdoms to republics\u2026.About mothering an infant, I am on smaller, grittier ground. The drama is piecemeal and the record is fragmentary.\u201d \u00a0She turns this piecemeal character into a virtue:<\/p>\n

Perhaps the best way to explore the pasts of having a baby is to put grand narratives aside, and pay attention to the fragments and anecdotes. Perhaps the best way to explore mothering\u2019s many pasts is to build a trellis of tiny scenes, pursuing the many different actions involved. Conceiving, miscarrying, quickening, carrying, birthing, And then, cleaning, feeding, sleeping, not sleeping, providing, being interrupted, passing back and forth. These make up the visceral ongoingness, the blood and guts of being \u2018with child.\u2019\u00a0 The verbs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For Dothan, what the past gives women is not fellowship in common experience but constraint. What we learn of mothers in the past, she avers, is usually of a few unattainable models\u2014mostly the Virgin Mary\u2014and that composes a past that fails to support and instruct. By valorizing extraordinary women, the outliers and saints, the past hands down to women a model that binds, that makes \u201cideological prisons.\u201d \u00a0Her art, reinterpreting conventional maternal poses to show women\u2019s complexity, suggests that a liberated present might enable a revision of the past. Women can free themselves from the straitjacket of \u201cobedient mothers\u201d by seeing them differently and by refashioning themselves. \u00a0By this \u201cVisual Contract,\u201d the artist revises motherhood and invites viewers to follow.<\/p>\n

Dothan\u2019s work calls for sustained looking. She gives us a not-quite-Madonna, clothed in red with an exposed breast, who sleeps as wearily as the child in her arms. Dothan shows women giving and taking grief and comfort. In one piece, the bodies of a mother and young son are composed in a shape like a cross that turns, imagining Mary and Jesus both in the tomb. Most moving for me was Double<\/em> (2015, Wooden structure, concrete wall<\/em>), a photo of a double coffin, one side adult-sized and the other side proportioned for a child, but with no partition or lid. \u00a0The text says of the image:<\/p>\n

For hundreds of years, the mother has been presented as a predetermined, professional mourner. This work proposes an alternative iconography. Forged as an asymmetrical heart, the double coffin imagines a mother who chooses to die with her child, refusing to accept either his destiny or her own. The coffin appears custom made to fit a particular parent and child, and thus the structure itself becomes a replacement for the usual notation of death: dd\/mm\/yyyy. It stands quiet and foreboding before parents, who cannot bear the thought of sacrificing their children. Not for God, not for the state, not for anyone.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That is not what I see in this image.\u00a0Double<\/em> looks like a piercing statement of what is, what, to some degree, Knott describes in her book. Mother and child are joined in present and future. Boundaries, privacy, distinctions, growing apart, all those may happen, but their eventuality imposes a division on what remains, for the mother, an open fact. There is no way to set the child into pain, suffering, or death that does not belong to her too.<\/p>\n

Dothan\u2019s art and Knott\u2019s writing both ask a lot of history on behalf of present motherhood. What should history offer women who, bearing children, find current mothering ways out of kilter? Can it help, by showing something different, even by showing something worse but in a different way? Can compassion for the ways mothers have labored and suffered nourish empathy for other mothers around us now?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Present day visions of motherhood may feel so askew that we might look in many directions\u2013religion? the past? other places?\u2013for correction. The current issue of the journal\u00a0 Image\u00a0 carries an arresting art piece, \u201cMotherhood: A Visual Contract,\u201d aiming to find some use in religious imagery of motherhood from the past.\u00a0 The art and text from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1190,"featured_media":52083,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[306,1],"tags":[6006,6003,5368,6000],"class_list":["post-51759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-agnes-howard","category-uncategorized","tag-image","tag-leni-dothan","tag-motherhood","tag-sarah-knott"],"yoast_head":"\nImagining Motherhood and the Past<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Present day visions of motherhood may feel so askew that we might look in many directions--religion? the past? other places?--for correction. The current\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/2019\/10\/imagining-motherhood-and-the-past\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Imagining Motherhood and the Past\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Present day visions of motherhood may feel so askew that we might look in many directions--religion? the past? other places?--for correction. The current\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/2019\/10\/imagining-motherhood-and-the-past\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Anxious Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2019-10-21T05:26:13+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2019-10-21T01:52:52+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/168\/2019\/10\/IMG_1595.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"768\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"576\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Agnes Howard\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Agnes Howard\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/2019\/10\/imagining-motherhood-and-the-past\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/2019\/10\/imagining-motherhood-and-the-past\/\",\"name\":\"Imagining Motherhood and the Past\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2019-10-21T05:26:13+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2019-10-21T01:52:52+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/#\/schema\/person\/fc2cee04061a5ae3e685e9683c67b32d\"},\"description\":\"Present day visions of motherhood may feel so askew that we might look in many directions--religion? the past? other places?--for correction. The current\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/2019\/10\/imagining-motherhood-and-the-past\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/2019\/10\/imagining-motherhood-and-the-past\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/2019\/10\/imagining-motherhood-and-the-past\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Imagining Motherhood and the Past\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/\",\"name\":\"Anxious Bench\",\"description\":\"The Relevance of Religious History for Today\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/#\/schema\/person\/fc2cee04061a5ae3e685e9683c67b32d\",\"name\":\"Agnes Howard\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/02a9ccb6020ab4e457da8a132fee204a?s=96&d=identicon&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/02a9ccb6020ab4e457da8a132fee204a?s=96&d=identicon&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Agnes Howard\"},\"description\":\"Agnes Howard teaches at Christ College, the honors college of Valparaiso University. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia. Her writing has appeared in Commonweal, First Things, The Cresset, and other publications.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/author\/agneshoward\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Imagining Motherhood and the Past","description":"Present day visions of motherhood may feel so askew that we might look in many directions--religion? the past? other places?--for correction. The current","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/2019\/10\/imagining-motherhood-and-the-past\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Imagining Motherhood and the Past","og_description":"Present day visions of motherhood may feel so askew that we might look in many directions--religion? the past? other places?--for correction. The current","og_url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/2019\/10\/imagining-motherhood-and-the-past\/","og_site_name":"Anxious Bench","article_published_time":"2019-10-21T05:26:13+00:00","article_modified_time":"2019-10-21T01:52:52+00:00","og_image":[{"width":768,"height":576,"url":"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/168\/2019\/10\/IMG_1595.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Agnes Howard","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Agnes Howard","Est. reading time":"6 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/2019\/10\/imagining-motherhood-and-the-past\/","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/2019\/10\/imagining-motherhood-and-the-past\/","name":"Imagining Motherhood and the Past","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/#website"},"datePublished":"2019-10-21T05:26:13+00:00","dateModified":"2019-10-21T01:52:52+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/#\/schema\/person\/fc2cee04061a5ae3e685e9683c67b32d"},"description":"Present day visions of motherhood may feel so askew that we might look in many directions--religion? the past? other places?--for correction. The current","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/2019\/10\/imagining-motherhood-and-the-past\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/2019\/10\/imagining-motherhood-and-the-past\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/2019\/10\/imagining-motherhood-and-the-past\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Imagining Motherhood and the Past"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/","name":"Anxious Bench","description":"The Relevance of Religious History for Today","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/#\/schema\/person\/fc2cee04061a5ae3e685e9683c67b32d","name":"Agnes Howard","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/02a9ccb6020ab4e457da8a132fee204a?s=96&d=identicon&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/02a9ccb6020ab4e457da8a132fee204a?s=96&d=identicon&r=g","caption":"Agnes Howard"},"description":"Agnes Howard teaches at Christ College, the honors college of Valparaiso University. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia. Her writing has appeared in Commonweal, First Things, The Cresset, and other publications.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/author\/agneshoward\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51759\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}