Morphing Together: Motherhood, Old Grievances, and Corporeal Materiality in Deborah Levy’s Hot milk

Abstract

In the twenty-first century when mothers are frequently styled as their daughter’s ‘best friend’ and confidante, feminist writings on motherhood continue to construct mother–daughter relations as problematic. Deborah Levy, a contemporary writer with an experimental bend, mobilizes Hélène Cixous’ famous essay ‘The laugh of the Medusa’ (1976), and in particular the line, ‘It’s up to you to break the old circuits’ to explore embodiment, female rage, abandonment and co-dependence in her most recent work, Hot milk (2016). This chapter explores the conditions of maternality in the twenty-first century as a replay of ‘the drama of the gifted child’ (Miller 1979) which requires ‘morphing together’ as an antidote to female victimhood.KeywordsMotherhoodCo-dependenceDifferenceDrama of the gifted childFemale rageSomatized identity