Amie Souza Reilly teaches in the English Department at Sacred Heart University in Connecticut. She is the Feminist Fridays blogger at The Adroit Journal and publishes creative nonfiction and flash fiction. She caught my attention with her lyrical and thought-provoking feminist posts for Adroit. My favorite essay there so far is “On Maggots and Motherhood: Feminism in Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.” I was working on a similar topic at the time and was particularly struck by these lines: “These maggots, these larvae, are more than just embodiments of death. They are babies. And maybe it was the eclipse, or maybe it was the fumes from the bleach, but then I thought, maybe I am thinking about them all wrong. Maybe these helpless invaders are not only reminders of death, but also life. Something in between,” and, “I went from angrily crushing them between my fingers to being tinged with tenderness. Something about the newly realized juxtaposition—death worms as fly babies—combined with the still unshakeable feeling that I had been invaded suddenly felt a whole lot like motherhood.”
Caroline Hagood: After I read your “On Maggots and Motherhood” essay, I realized we were reading a lot of the same things and thinking a lot of the same thoughts that combined motherhood, literature, tenderness, anger, and abjection. Can you recommend some movies, television shows, and writing that has helped shape this particular set of ideas?
Amie Souza Reilly: I love that you had this realization because I felt this way reading Ways of Looking at a Woman!
It took me a long time to realize that ideas about literature and motherhood could be combined—I used to feel that mixing them was impossible, or at least ill-advised, and was hesitant to write about or even mention my mother status in academic circles. However, Julia Kristeva’s ideas about abjection and motherhood stuck inside my guts, and I return to “Stabat Mater” often. I swoon all over Adrienne Rich’s Of Woman Born—the way she is so honest with herself, with her readers, about the varied experiences of motherhood. When writing and thinking about motherhood and literature, about abjection, anger, and tenderness, I try to hold their brilliance in my head and hope that I might strike the same sort of balance between the analytic and the realistic.
Some of the other texts that have shaped my own understanding of these ideas, or how to write about these ideas, are Lidia Yuknavitch’s raw memoir The Chronology of Water; she has such a way of writing the body. And at least once a week I think about the mother in Arundhati Roy’s God of Small Things, about inherited trauma and the ways it binds mothers and children, how maybe separation isn’t ever really possible. (Also, that line about her dying at a viable, die-able age rips me to shreds.)
I remember watching Charlotte’s Web as a kid and not really understanding Charlotte at the end—her peace about her own death before her babies would hatch was baffling. It made me angry and sad, the way she just perched up there, all blue-eyed and hairy-legged, serene in the face of her own mortality. Now that I’m a mother I think about that scene differently, about how much motherhood made me think more about death; my own and my son’s. That terror seizes me, but is also simply part of the natural course of things. Maybe I should to strive to be more like Charlotte.
More recently, I’ve thought about motherhood and women’s relationships with each other while watching GLOW. The characters in that show are incredible; the way the tension in and out of the wrestling ring evolves into true, deep, unconventional friendships. There is also a lot of juxtaposition between love and violence, anger and tenderness, between the reality of women’s bodies and how they are seen, used, and manipulated (sometimes literally) through the male gaze. And several of the characters are mothers and so must vacillate between what is expected of them at home and in the ring. This leads to a pull between identities, the traditional and the deviant, and although it seems unlikely, we see that both roles are similar—that mothering and wrestling are largely performative.
CH: What books, movies, or television shows on motherhood do you think get it right and tell it like it is?
ASR: Rivka Galchen’s book Little Labors knocked me out—the way she describes her newborn as a panther feels perfect, the way she considers babies, and the lack thereof, in literature echoes my own thoughts more articulately than I ever will. Rachel Zucker’s MOTHERs is a phenomenal work on motherhood, writing, and language. I really liked Sheila Heti’s meditation Motherhood, wherein she tries to decide whether or not to have a child. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s descent in The Yellow Wallpaper feels true not just to post-partum depression/ psychosis, but to that visceral, overwhelming weight of motherhood and misunderstanding. I have always loved Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, though felt estranged from the class privilege of that life. However, in grad school, I discovered the novel Weeds by Edith Summers Kelley, which reimages The Awakening by telling a similar story through the eyes of a tenant farmer’s wife. (Instead of drowning herself in the ocean, she tries to drown herself in the horse pond, and she fails. It is a remarkable, largely unknown book.)
I love stories and storylines that depict mothers who royally botch stuff up, or are so complicated that it is hard to traditionally “like” them. Is messing it up getting it right? Maybe that’s just Schadenfreude, maybe I just like comparing my own shortcomings to someone else’s in order to feel I’m not be as bad at juggling mothering as I think.
Like Ruth in Six Feet Under. She was such a product of patriarchal society, and she seemed lost in her own body, quiet and sometimes befuddled. And yet, not. She loved her children so much, even though she didn’t understand them, or maybe because she didn’t understand them. Her bewilderment is familiar to me. There are times I look at my son and wonder how I made this person, and question what it means that he is inextricably part of me, but also wholly separate.
Part of what I love about Ruth stems from the contradiction that comes from watching the Fishers exist around death. This, too, feels abject. Confronting mortality, living within it, but also, living because of it—the capitalism part of death, and sometimes revolting against it.
This reminds me of Claudia Dey’s Paris Review essay “Mothers as Makers of Death”, which I return to often and used in the Maggots and Motherhood essay. This idea of mothers as creators of death rattles my bones: “When I became a mom, no one ever said, ‘Hey, you made a death. You made your children’s deaths.’ Meanwhile, I could think of little else. It’s scary to think of mothers as makers of death, but it sure gives them more power and complexity than one usually finds.”
Maybe I’m drawn to these ideas about death and motherhood because when I was young my mother and I would rent movies (VHS tapes, from a video store) on Saturday nights. We would intentionally choose movies that would make us cry: Steel Magnolias, Ghost, Fried Green Tomatoes, Mask. Looking back, I can see how these themes appear in those films, and maybe that’s why I will also recommend Ladybird and The Florida Project. There’s truth in tragedy.
However, my favorite fictional mom, the one who I think encapsulates telling it like it is, and who might be the one who gets it right is Linda Belcher. She is flawed and funny, devoted to her own happiness as well as her family’s, and isn’t afraid to admit to her bodily functions.
CH: Do you enjoy any other horror works besides Frankenstein? If so, can you share some with us? Have these influenced your particular view on abjection?
ASR: I do! Though it is difficult for me to watch any movie without falling asleep.
I love a lot of the classics: Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Jaws, The Birds, and I have a not-so-secret love for movies that are bad. Like, Sharknado and Grabbers bad.
As far as the motherhood and abjection conversation goes, I love thinking about monstrosity— both mother-monsters and child-monsters. I love the reversal of tropes, watching innocent children become horrific, like in The Good Son, or when housewives become vengeful, like Peyton in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. Films like Alien and The Babadook certainly have much to add in the conversation about motherhood as a monstrosity, about the body and fear and death.
I’ve been wanting to reread/ rewatch Stephen King’s Misery and consider the ways Annie Wilkes embodies some of these concepts, how she is a mother-monster even though she is childless. There is still something maternal about her; she is a nurse, a caregiver, but is accused of killing babies. And then she becomes nurse and caregiver to her favorite storyteller. We sometimes compare writing to pregnancy and birth, because it is the creation of something new, so Annie’s desire to do anything to make sure Paul Sheldon keeps writing, keeps delivering, stories to her is fascinating to me.
CH: I know you also teach. What are some books, TV shows, or movies that have had a big impact on your students as part of your teaching, and why?
ASR: Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home is a success every semester. I think, especially for freshman, the way Bechdel explains her life by relating to literature matches how they think about themselves: in-relation-to the outside world. They also like digging into the literary and pop culture allusions, so it’s great for developing close reading skills while also giving me an opportunity to talk about other books I wouldn’t otherwise have time to teach them. And for many, it’s their first graphic novel, and their first queer memoir, and they seem to embrace the experience of reading something outside the traditional canon.
I also teach a class about publicness and privacy, and we think about the ways we tell “true” stories, archive history, and shape our understandings of broader cultural phenomena. At the end of the semester we watch a bunch of reality television, including Danielle Bregoli’s first appearance on Dr. Phil. The students delve deeply into a discussion about exploitation, argue whether Dr. Phil is a white savoir, how he aims to embody the idea of a social welfare state, and whether Danielle’s behavior is real or performative. (And isn’t all of our behavior a performance?) Inevitably, we discuss the (myth of) the American Dream and debate what role fame plays in our modern idea of success. At the end of that class, I have them watch the music video for “Gucci Flip Flops,” which I think is a brilliant subversion of the 1950’s picturesque ideal of the American family. The looks on their faces are priceless, there’s a disbelief that this video is academic, or even appropriate, but then they get into it and learn something about how discussions about class, gender, language, and social structures are relevant beyond the classroom. This is something I think freshmen sometimes struggle with, and so Danielle Bregoli Day is, hands down, a class I look forward to every semester.
CH: What are the works that have formed the basis of your feminism? What should budding feminists be reading and watching?
ASR: In addition to Kristeva and Rich, I learned a lot from bell hooks, Sherry Ortner, Judith Butler, Audre Lorde, and Jessica Benjamin. (And by listening to so much Ani DiFranco in my twenties.) If I were to make a gift basket for budding feminists, I would stack everything Maggie Nelson has ever written, as well as all things Roxane Gay. And Rebecca Solnit’s work, especially Men Explain Things to Me. I’d make sure there is a copy of Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties, pre-dog-eared at “The Husband Stitch” and “Especially Heinous: 272 Views of Law & Order SVU.” I would insist everyone watch Kimberle Crenshaw’s TED Talk on Intersectionality, and Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette, and also make sure everyone sees Fleabag, and Shrill, and Shameless, andYou’re the Worst, which is the most real depiction of depressive disorder I’ve seen on television. (Also an incredible study on detestable protagonists.)
If I were to give advice (and I guess I am), I would encourage everyone to engage with works that might not be categorized as feminist, but are created by women, and consider them all with a critical eye. Because women are inherently politicized just by being, all of our art is a testimony to our existence. But and not all of our existences are treated gently, or equally. I think it is important to remember to question the ways women are portrayed, always, whether watching reruns of Friends or getting on the subway, or listening to the latest coverage on presidential candidates, or reading Ulysses. When we ask the questions, we can identify the problems. And maybe, hopefully, make the changes we so desperately need to see.