Bearing Witness to Maternal Subjectivities: Experiencing Pregnancy and Early Motherhood in Contemporary Irish Women’s Life Writing
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2025-07-25
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en
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This thesis analyses experiences of pregnancy and motherhood in three contemporary works of Irish life writing, namely Sinéad Gleeson’s Constellations: Reflections from Life (2019), Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s A Ghost in the Throat (2021), and Alice Kinsella’s Milk: On Motherhood and Madness (2023). The introduction discusses the position of (pregnant) women and mothers from the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922 to contemporary Irish history. It continues by introducing the role of Irish literature in giving voice to women and, in particular, to mothers. It argues that the study of contemporary Irish women’s life writing on pregnancy and motherhood has not yet been approached through the discipline of motherhood studies, identifying the research gap that is at the centre of this thesis. The theoretical framework shows that contemporary feminism is moving towards an inclusion of maternal experiences. Andrea O’Reilly’s ten dictates of normative motherhood are introduced as a framework for the analyses of the three texts. The chapter continues by explaining how works of life writing can be read as testimonies. Lastly, it introduces and explains the theories of feminist phenomenology used in the analyses, namely Jonna Bornemark’s a-subjectivity and Susi Ferrarello’s dualism, embodied intersubjectivity, objectification, alienation, and a loss of identity. The narrated experiences of pregnancy in Constellations, Ghost, and Milk are the main focus of chapter 2. After identifying the dominant conceptualisations of the female body as ‘unpregnant’ and the pregnant body as a site for sin, profit, suffering, mystery, and powerlessness, which relate to O’Reilly’s dictates ‘essentialisation’, ‘idealisation’, and ‘depoliticalisation’, the analysis turns to how the authors are described to experience their own pregnant bodies. This analysis shows that objectification is a common experience in pregnancy. Feelings of alienation seem to originate in responsibility, rather than objectification, reflecting the dictate ‘intensification’. These descriptions are shown to problematise Ferrarello’s theory of embodied intersubjectivity. Furthermore, a loss of identity is seemingly absent in the authors’ depictions of pregnancy. Chapter 3 focuses on dominant conceptualisations of motherhood, identified as the sacrificial body, the private body, and the desexualised body. The discourses reflect the dictates ‘essentialisation’, ‘intensification’, ‘idealisation’, and ‘privatisation’. Experiences of objectification in early motherhood are shown to particularly involve breastfeeding. Alienation is, paradoxically, argued to both connect and disconnect. Ferrarello’s theory of
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losing one’s identity and embodied intersubjectivity are both reflected upon and challenged, for example through the term ‘motherbaby’. The final chapter discusses how the autobiographical genre of the three texts is effective in challenging the identified dominant discourses on pregnancy and motherhood. The focus shifts to descriptions of the writing mother and how, by publishing these texts, the authors can be seen as activists, testifying to experiences of pregnancy and motherhood in Ireland. The conclusion answers the research question: How does contemporary Irish life writing on pregnancy and motherhood challenge dominant discourses of pregnancy and early motherhood in both content and genre? It reflects on O’Reilly’s, Ferrarello’s, and Bornemark’s theories as basis for literary analysis and suggests alterations that would enhance these theories to form more thorough frameworks.
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