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Writer's pictureArlette

The sacred halo of motherhood

Contemporary women have been assigned a destiny: that of home carers and mothers. And for them to accept it smoothly, we crowned motherhood with a sacred halo.*

  

  •  During the Italian Renaissance, children were given dolls of Mary and Jesus, both for veneration and aspiration for child bearing and for Church guidance. There were niches at every street corner in Florence. The Virgin and Child (article by Mary Kisler, Department of women’s studies, the University of Aukland, NZ)

  • "There aren’t really any contemporary images to help us as we raise small children, only advertisements of posed, smiling, clean, fresh faced calm creatures. No utter chaos." Reclaiming the Madonna (Susan Wilson, 1993)


WHERE IS THE CHAOS?




Not Your Mother (2023), lino cut print on Awagami Paper (price on demand)


*This is an excerpt translated by myself. Here is the original text in French in full:

 

"(...) On a attribué (à la femme) dans la société contemporaine un destin : celui de la femme au foyer et de la maternité. Et, pour qu'elle l'accepte plus facilement, on a paré la maternité d'une auréole. On fait de la famille un pilier, un refuge. On noie tout cela dans un sentimentalisme pseudo-populaire. On fabrique une imagerie attendrissante.

En réalité, faire de la maternité un destin, une fatalité, c'est favoriser la famille monogamique. La femme appartient au mari et aux enfants."

 

Propos recueillis par Marie Cardinal, La cause des femmes, Paris, Grasset, coll. « Enjeux », 1973



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