The perception of women's experiences, that is, women's unique experiences and how they experience the world around them, has been questioned and changed in recent years. Rosalind Coward, in her article This Novel Changes a Life, draws attention to the issue of writing about women's experiences in a novel, often perceived 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 when it comes to motherhood and motherhood. There is no shared experience for women as they begin the journey of motherhood. This is clear through literature, such as novels, which have presented readers with alternative visions of a mother, what it means to be a mother, and what a mother looks like. While very different in content, very different novels, We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver and The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson, challenge a mother's typical identity. Eva, for the way she doesn't fit the nurturing maternal mold and Maggie for the way she's part of a queer family. I will argue that through these novels the typical identity of the mother is questioned and thus the category of female experience is problematized. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't 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 procreating is evidence of a lifelong relationship with a man and of adulthood. A significant part of social research has been devoted to women and the role that children play in their lives, allowing for the reproduction of social assumptions that women obtain their identity from relationships in the domestic environment, particularly motherhood within of the family. Society's 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 becomes pregnant by her male husband lives to care for and feed her children and family. The We Need to Talk About Kevin and The Argonauts novels, although significantly different maternal stories and experiences, challenge traditional social standards of being a mother. While Eva in We Need to Talk About Kevin and Maggie in The Argonauts both have children, their experience of motherhood is drastically different than the generally accepted maternal experience. Furthermore, their identities differ significantly from what is considered the traditional maternal identity. We Need to Talk About Kevin problematizes the category of female experience, through Eva's maternal experience. Unlike the typical maternal mold, Eva does not find motherhood to be a powerful experience but finds it constricting, trapping her and limiting her identity as her own person. Kevin Katchourian, Eva's son, brutally shoots and kills seven selected 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 perspective, it appears that Kevin's killing spree is a calculated act, done just for her. However, this is something that is never fully discovered. In We Need to Talk About Kevin, readers are taken on a journey through Eva, the self-reflexive narrator of the novel, who recounts the woman's experience, especially during motherhood, in 1980s America. Through theseries of letters to her dead husband, Franklin, written two years after the massacre, Eva retrospectively ponders the thought that her strained and frustrated relationship with her son may have contributed substantially to the way Kevin grows up and turns out. Writing about Kevin, Eva talks about herself and often the experience of early motherhood that speaks to the frustrations faced by the contemporary middle-class mother, where the choice to have children is intertwined with a more expansive expression of the self than the socially dominant one . motherhood models allow this (Muller, 38). Throughout the novel, Eva runs the risk of being an unpleasant narrator. Many reviewers found her to be an example of "bad mothering" (Epstein, 259). The founding principle of the “good mother,” which the novel aggressively addresses, involves Eva's self-blame for Kevin's character. This concept of “good mother” sees the mother as the primary caregiver and giver of unconditional love and nurturing. Although Eve is the primary caregiver in the novel, she is generally not the most loving and caring mother. In the 1980s, where Eva did most of Kevin's mothering, the vision of the good mother subsequently producing a good child hinders Eva's understanding of herself and others in the social sphere (Muller, 39). Likeable or unlikeable, Eva shows readers that motherhood is never "good enough." The sections of We Need to Talk About Kevin that refer to early motherhood pursue the thesis that the novel is in fact demonstrative of the persistence in Western culture of the exclusivity of the myth of the good mother, despite the now growing number of discourses on motherhood. which now take into account the individual circumstances in which motherhood occurs. Eva's letters to Franklin, which detail her relationships with work and her husband before children, show the social pressures felt by women to become mothers and the stigma around those who are or want to do so. remain childless. Eva, however, entertains the idea of ​​having a child and finally, almost thirty, embarks on the journey towards motherhood. The parts of the novel documenting the early stages of motherhood are filled with frankness, retrospective cynicism, and self-deprecating humor, showing the failure of the single vision of motherhood (Muller, 41). For example, Eva offers a list of reasons outlining her “disadvantages of parenting.” This list includes “demented boredom,” “worthless social life,” and “unnatural truism.” From what it includes and doesn't 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 no surprise that Eva does not view motherhood as empowering in any way, using this narrow perspective of good motherhood. Another significant reason why Eva does not find the maternal experience to be powerful is through her emotional and physical experience of the maternal body. Socially approved texts, such as books on motherhood, encourage the dissociation of the body from sexuality in order to create a morally responsible sensuality. This is purely in service of the future child. Reflecting on this reinscription of her body, Eva writes: I have come to view my body in a new light. For the first time I felt the little bumps on my chest like nipples for nursing babies... even the gap between my legs transformed. It has lost a certain outrageousness, an obscenity... the twisting of the flesh in front has taken on a serious aspect, its overtly further inclusion, a character, a sweetener to do the heavy lifting of the species, like the lollipops I took once at the dentist. Others aroundshe reinforces the idea of ​​renouncing the sexualized female body. Eva's gynecologist gives Eva a list of things she cannot do and foods and drinks she cannot consume. Eva also reminds her husband of the changes in behavior towards her and her body since she became pregnant. “You were nervous about having sex, it would hurt the baby, and I got a little exasperated. I was already a victim... of an organism the size of a pea. I really wanted to have sex for the first time in weeks... You agreed. But you were depressingly tender." A statement by Luce Irigaray that states, “Becoming a mother means not becoming a woman” is extremely relevant here in Eva's situation. Eva describes 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 of pregnancy and motherhood differs from the romantic stories of joy that traditionally pair with the journey of pregnancy (Lethereby, 525). This is reinforced by Jeremiah when he states that We Need to Talk About Kevin challenges the traditional conflation of motherhood and femininity and that women are not naturally or necessarily capable parents, upsetting the assumption that all women want to be mothers. Kevin constantly explores the misfit between Eva's individual maternal experiences and the social discourses of motherhood that persistently seek to claim her and cause her to dissemble (Muller, 43). Eva writes about the experience of becoming a mother and becoming a subject, saying: “…once you cross 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 somewhat false performance, in which the real woman and all her subjectivity and agency disappear. This is demonstrated on the day Eva found out she was pregnant when she took time before Franklin returned home to "assemble herself into the luminous mother-to-be." She constantly resists the role required of her, over which she has little control. “I felt expendable, disposable, swallowed up by a great biological project that I had not initiated or chosen, which produced me but which would also chew me up and spit me out. I felt used." There is a common belief in society that all women want to be mothers, are excited to be mothers, and that the role of mother will be natural for all women (Letherby, 525). Eva is proof that this is not the case. We Need to Talk About Kevin details the not-so-lovely details of motherhood and provides readers with an alternative view of what is accepted as the norm: that motherhood is a healthy experience for all women. In Maggie Nelson's novel, The Argonauts, a different aspect of pregnancy and motherhood is presented, however, that does not fit the traditional mold of the typical maternal experience. This comes through Nelson's experience of queer motherhood. In the form of episodic snippets, Nelson tells the story of her relationship with gender-fluid Harry Dodge, and their lives and the family they built together. Nelson details their sexual connection, finding and maintaining love, and their shared journey to building a family and home. This relationship and Nelson's family structure challenge traditional social expectations of a nuclear family and “normative” pregnancy and motherhood (Letherby, 525). This sentiment is reinforced by Nelson's citation of Susan Fraiman, who is also committed to destroying "the tired binary that places 'femininity, reproduction and normativeness on one side and masculinity, sexuality andqueer resistance on the other'”. Fraiman's concept of the “sodomite mother,” supported by Nelson, is delineated as the mother who has access “even as a mother” to a “non-normative, non-procreative sexuality, in addition to the dutifully instrumental.” Unlike Eva's maternal experience in We Need to Talk About Kevin, much of Nelson's experience centers on her queer motherhood. However, the concept of heteronormativity is still in the foreground. Early in the novel, Nelson tells the story of one of her friends' response to pregnancy, in a familiar context. Having coffee with this friend in the kitchen, Nelson receives a mug given to his family by his mother. On it, a photo of a pregnant Nelson, Harry and his stepson, going to see a Nutcracker show 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 think about the strangeness of pregnancy itself. “Is there something strange about pregnancy itself, insofar as it profoundly alters a person's “normal” state and causes radical intimacy with – and radical alienation from – one's body? How can such a profoundly strange, wild, and transformative experience symbolize or enact even ultimate conformity?" In this excerpt of questions, Nelson uses her personal experience as a means of proof for the allegorical exposition of queer motherhood that she proposes (Cooke, 20) In this way, Nelson shows how everyday life, as a fleeting comment, can be a driver for a cultural critique of the status of motherhood in queer politics he charge that motherhood is neglected in queer contexts because it cannot be detached from the normative. This is highlighted when Nelson draws attention to how her embodiment as a pregnant woman and her subsequent maternal experience prevent her from accessing a privileged status. in radicality. Here Nelson invites us to recognize that criticisms of normativeness can be sexist and consequently can replicate what they criticize. In other words, Nelson wants us to question the antisexist commitments of radical queer politics when they coincide with acts of contempt for maternal embodiment as just another indication of ongoing normativeness (Cooke, 20). The mug anecdote Nelson writes about does not block the allegorical expression on queer motherhood. This exposition argues that the concern with fixing queer motherhood to cognitivism can lead to its rejection, which relies heavily on the division between the normative and the transgressive. Here, Nelson registers the contradictions of binary logic and the seemingly paradoxical subject positions they produce – in particular, the queer mother. Furthermore, identity is also highlighted here. Not only do readers become aware of identity struggles as a woman, but also identity struggles within the queer community. Nelson's total rejection of the "normative" differs from most mothering experiences in which women do their best to fit into the "good mother" category. The stories included in The Argonauts about motherhood and motherhood delve into literary and academic spaces, extending beyond settings of domesticity. For example, when Nelson is at work and meets a superior in the cafeteria, he pays for her lunch with a wink that her research interests will return after she has the baby. The text then takes us to a panel discussion for Nelson's book The Art of Cruelty in which a "well-known playwright" asks Nelson, "I can't help but notice that you're pregnant, which brings me to the question: How”,.