I've been reading Claire Dederer's Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma for a couple of weeks. Dederer, a professional film and book critic as well as a memoirist, writes about one of the big questions facing fans right now: can I enjoy art created by a person who has done terrible things?
Her book is an engaging and nuanced approach to the complicated question, and she addresses many of the expected figures in this discussion (e.g. Woody Allen, Roman Polanski, Michael Jackson, Pablo Picasso). Of course, as Dederer repeatedly points out, these figures are almost exclusively men.
The chapter I read last night, however, is about female monsters. Dederer argues that, from a societal perspective, male monsters are defined as such because they prey on women and children. Female monsters are defined as such because they abandon children, abdicating their duties as mothers.
Dederer argues that being an artist is orthogonal to being a mother, for both practical reasons (artistry requires free time that motherhood consumes) and psychological (artistry requires selfishness that motherhood precludes). Historically, male artists have prioritized their art over fatherhood in a way that is approved, or at least accepted, by the broader culture. Women who do the same, however, are despised for abandoning their caretaking role.
It's a point I've thought of a lot since watching Lost Daughter, an adaptation of an Elena Ferrante novel, and then reading the novel itself. In the Ferrante story, the reader learns the protagonist, Leda, abandoned her young daughters, leaving them with her husband, for several years to pursue her academic career (and, to be fair, to have an affair with an admiring peer). As an older woman, Leda struggles to come to terms with her actions and with her relationship to her children, feeling she is an "unnatural mother."
Of all the stories I've seen about motherhood, Lost Daughter hit me especially hard. I identified so strongly with the suffocating experience of motherhood, particularly in the years when my girls were very young. If I'm being honest, I also identified with the desire to disappear, to leave it all behind and feel untethered. I remember wryly telling a friend that I was lucky I'm not in a career where my intelligence or ambition are rewarded, or where I have the potential to "rise to the top"--I have no justification for an action like Leda's.
My friend looked at me in surprise, and I felt a little embarrassed. I don't think he could understand just how paradoxical motherhood can be. Of course I love my children; I'm grateful to be their mother. I believe I'm a better person today because of them. I would never abandon them. But that doesn't mean the desire to cut it all loose doesn't exist sometimes.
Fittingly enough, I was pulled away from this essay after the paragraph before--to move the laundry into the dryer and to start a new load; to console Clara, who was angry Amelia had thrown her Shopkin; to make both girls grilled cheese for lunch. They're now eating quietly in the kitchen, while I steal back into my office to finish this essay. An essay that no one will read, that has no real exigence or purpose, that I care about anyway.
For that reason, I appreciate Dederer taking on Ferrante's themes from a critical perspective, and from the perspective of an artist and a mother who's grappled with similar issues. It gave me a sense that maybe I'm not a "monster," or an "unnatural mother," as Leda feared. I can love my children and want to be more than a mother.
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