The perception of women's experiences, that is to say, their own experiences and the way they experience the world around them , has been questioned and modified in recent years. Rosalind Coward, in her article This Novel Changes Lives, draws attention to the issue of writing women's experiences in a single novel, often seen as a universal experience for all women. This is not the case. All women experience the world around them differently and are shaped by the experiences they have. This is especially true for mothering and motherhood. There is no shared experience among women as they begin the journey to motherhood. This is evident in literature, such as novels, which have presented readers with different views of a mother, what it means to be a mother, and what a mother is like. While in novels with very different content, We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver and The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson, challenge the typical identity of a mother. Eva, in that she doesn't fit the mold of a caring, caring mother, and Maggie in that she is part of a queer family. I will argue that through these novels, the typical mother identity is challenged and therefore the category of women's experience is problematized. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why violent video games should not be banned"? Get an original essay In Western society in particular, women are held to the cultural assumption that all women want to be mothers or are mothers and that procreation is proof of a permanent relationship with a man and of adulthood. A significant amount of social research has been devoted to women and the role that children play in their lives, allowing for the reproduction of societal assumptions that women acquire their identities from relationships in the domestic setting, particularly the motherhood within the family. Societal beliefs and institutions perpetuate the assumption that a woman's ultimate role is to become a mother and be a "good mother" (Letherby, 525). That is, a mother who became pregnant by her husband who lives to take care of her children and family. The novels We Need to Talk About Kevin and The Argonauts, although their stories and mothering experiences are very different, challenge traditional societal norms about motherhood. While Eva in We Need to Talk About Kevin and Maggie in The Argonauts both have children, their experience of motherhood is radically different from the generally accepted maternal experience. Additionally, their identities differ significantly from what is considered the traditional maternal identity. We Need to Talk About Kevin problematizes the category of women's experience, through Eva's maternal experience. Unlike the typical model of motherhood, Eva does not view motherhood as a powerful experience, but rather as a constricting experience that traps her and limits her identity as her own person. Kevin Katchourian, Eva's son, brutally shoots and kills seven hand-picked victims, including his classmates, a cafeteria worker and a teacher, with a crossbow. Before the school massacre, it is later discovered that Kevin also killed his father and sister, sparing only his mother's life. From Eva's point of view, it seems that Kevin's killing was a calculated act, done just for her. However, this is something that is never truly discovered. Readers are taken on a journey in We Needto Talk About Kevin through Eva, the novel's introspective narrator, recounting the woman's experience, particularly of motherhood, in 1980s America. Through her series of letters to her deceased husband, Franklin, Written two years after the massacre, Eva reflects in retrospect on the idea that her strained and frustrated relationship with her son might have contributed substantially to the way Kevin grew up and transformed. In writing about Kevin, Eva talks about herself and her experience of first-time motherhood, which speaks to the frustrations faced by contemporary middle-class mothers, where the choice to have children is mixed with a more expansive self-expression than social domination. models of mothering allow this (Muller, 38). Throughout the novel, Eva runs the risk of being an unlikeable narrator. Many critics found her an example of “bad mothering” (Epstein, 259). The founding principle of “the good mother,” which the novel attacks aggressively, grounds Eva’s self-blame for Kevin’s character. This concept of “good mother” views the mother as the primary giver of care and unconditional love and nurturing. Although Eva in the novel is the primary caregiver, she is generally not the most loving and caring mother. In the 1980s, where most of Eva's mothering of Kevin takes place, the vision of the good mother who then produces the good child hinders Eva's understanding of self and others in the social sphere (Muller, 39) . Likeable or unsympathetic, Eva shows her readers that motherhood is never “good enough.” The sections of We Need to Talk About Kevin that reference early mothering continue the argument that the novel actually demonstrates the persistence in Western culture of the exclusivity of the good mother myth, despite the current number of maternal discourses . which now take into account the individual circumstances in which motherhood occurs. Eva's letters to Franklin, detailing her relationships with work and her husband before children, show the social pressures women feel when they become mothers and the stigma surrounding those who are or want to become mothers. remain childless. Eva, however, considers having a child and finally, in her late thirties, begins the journey to motherhood. The parts of the novel that document the early stages of motherhood are full of frankness, retrospective cynicism, and self-deprecation, showing the failure of the universal vision of motherhood (Muller, 41). For example, Eva offers a list of reasons that highlight her “disadvantages of parenting.” This list includes “insane boredom,” “worthless social life,” and “unnatural truism.” From what it includes and what it does not include, this list shows a narrow and intractable paradigm of what it means to be a good mother. This is a mother who exists uncomplainingly and selflessly for her child (Letherby, 525). It is not surprising that Eva does not find mothering to be empowering, using this narrow perspective of good mothering. Another important reason why Eva does not find the maternal experience to be powerful is her emotional and physical experience of the child. maternal body. Socially approved texts, such as books on mothering, encourage the dissociation of the body from the sexual in order to create a morally responsible sensuality. It is a measure which is purely at the service of the future child. Reflecting on this reinscription of her body, Eva writes: I have come to consider my body in a new light. For the first time, I understood the little mounds on my chest aspacifiers to breastfeed the little ones… the gap between my legs has also transformed. It lost a certain excess, an obscenity... the twisting of flesh in front took on a serious aspect, its openly unacknowledged inclusion, a temper, a sweetener to do the heavy lifting of the species, like the lollipops I had once bought from the dentist. Others around her reinforce the idea of ​​renouncing the sexualized female body. Eva's gynecologist gives her a list of things she cannot do, as well as food and drinks she cannot consume. Eva also reminds her husband of his changes in behavior towards her and her body since she became pregnant. "You were nervous that if we were supposed to have sex it would hurt the baby, and I became a little exasperated. I was already a victim... of an organism the size of a pea . I really wanted to make love for the first time in weeks... You agreed, but you were depressingly tender. A statement from Luce Irigaray that “becoming a mother is not.” becoming a woman” is extremely relevant here in Eva’s situation Eva details her experience as a mother, particularly pregnancy, as an imposition on her life and body Unlike the stereotypical mother that society is aware of, Eva remains selfish. in her needs. Her writing about her pregnancy and motherhood differs from the fictionalized stories of joy that are traditionally associated with the journey of pregnancy (Lethereby, 525). Kevin questions the traditional conflation of motherhood and womanhood and that women are not naturally or necessarily capable parents, which challenges the assumption that all women want to be mothers. Kevin constantly explores the mismatch between Eva's individual experiences of motherhood and the social discourses of motherhood that constantly seek to claim her and push her into hiding (Muller, 43). Eva writes about the experience of becoming a mother and becoming a subject, saying, “…crossing the threshold of motherhood, you suddenly become social property, the animated equivalent of a public park.” Eva also describes the different stages of pregnancy and motherhood as a kind of false performance, in which the real woman, all her subjectivity and agency, disappear. This is evident on the day Eva found out she was pregnant when she took time, before Franklin came home, to "gather up to be the glowing mother-to-be." She constantly resists the role imposed on her, over which she has little control. “I felt disposable, disposable, swallowed up by a great biological project that I had neither initiated nor chosen and which had produced me but which would devour me and spit me out. I felt used.” In society, it is commonly accepted that all women want to be mothers, are enthusiastic about being one, and that the role of mother will come naturally to all women (Letherby, 525). Eva is proof that this is not the case. We Need to Talk About Kevin details the not-so-pretty details of motherhood and offers readers an alternative view of what is accepted as the norm: motherhood is a healthy experience for all women. In Maggie Nelson's novel, The Argonauts, a different view However, the aspect of pregnancy and motherhood is presented, but it also does not fit the traditional mold of the typical maternal experience. It’s through Nelson’s experience of queer motherhood. In episodic fragments, Nelson tells her story of her relationship with the gender-fluid, Harry Dodge, and the life and family they hadbuilt together. Nelson details their sexual connection, their discovery and maintenance of love, and their shared journey to starting a family and home. Such a relationship and Nelson's family configuration challenge traditional societal expectations of a nuclear family and "normative" pregnancy and motherhood (Letherby, 525). Such a sentiment is reinforced by Nelson's citation of Susan Fraiman who is also invested in disrupting "the tired binary that places "femininity, reproduction and normativity on one side and masculinity, sexuality and resistance queer on the other'. Fraiman's concept of the "sodomitic mother", championed by Nelson, is described as the mother who has access "even as a mother" to "a non-normative and non-procreative sexuality, beyond consciously instrumental sexuality". maternal experience in We Need to Talk About Kevin, much of Nelson's experience centers around her queer motherhood. However, the concept of heteronormativity is still at the forefront. At the beginning of the novel, Nelson tells the story of one of her friends' reactions to her pregnancy, in a family setting. While having coffee with this friend in the kitchen, Nelson receives a cup given to his family by his mother. In it, a photo of a pregnant Nelson, Harry and her stepson, on their way to see a performance of The Nutcracker at Christmas time. The friend says, “Wow…I’ve never seen anything so heteronormative in my entire life.” Nelson reflects on this comment with a series of rhetorical questions that ultimately lead her to reflect on the strangeness of pregnancy itself. “Is there something strange about pregnancy itself, in that it profoundly alters the “normal” state and provokes a radical intimacy – and radical alienation – with one's body? How can an experience so profoundly strange, wild, and transformative also symbolize or enact ultimate conformity? In this question excerpt, Nelson uses her personal experience as evidence for the allegorical account of queer motherhood that she advances (Cooke, 20). In doing so, Nelson shows how everyday life, as a passing commentary, can be the driving force for a cultural critique of the status of motherhood and motherhood in queer politics. For example, Nelson interprets her friend's comment as an accusation that motherhood is neglected in queer contexts because it cannot be detached from the normative. This is highlighted when Nelson draws attention to the ways in which her embodiment as a pregnant woman and her subsequent maternal experience prevent her from achieving a privileged status in radicalism. Here, Nelson calls us to recognize that critiques of normativity can be sexist and, therefore, reproduce what they criticize. In other words, Nelson wants us to question the antisexist commitments of radical queer politics when they coincide with acts of disregard for maternal embodiment as simply another indication of normativity at work (Cooke, 20 ). The anecdote Nelson writes about does not block allegorical expression about queer motherhood. This presentation develops the fact that the concern to fix queer motherhood to normativity can lead to its rejection, which relies heavily on the division between the normative and the transgressive. Nelson here records the contradictions of binary logic and the supposedly paradoxical subject positions they produce – most significantly the queer mother. Furthermore, identity is also emphasized here. Not only do readers become aware of identity struggles as a woman, but also identity struggles within the community »,.