The Intriguing History and Silences of Of Woman Born: Rereading Adrienne Rich Rhetorically to Better Understand the Contemporary Context

Abstract

Adrienne Rich's text Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (1986) is a canonical text in Women's Studies generally and specifically for contemporary feminist maternal scholars. From its inception to the present day, both the response to and use of Of Woman Born have been intriguing and permeated by different kinds of silences about mothering. Rereading Of Woman Born within its larger historical situation and within the white second-wave's relationship to motherhood reveals, externally, that the text was situated within a demonizing discourse that positioned the book as "anti-motherhood," and, internally, that the text emerged from within a sisterly feminist subject-position that was founded on "matrophobia"—the fear of becoming like our mothers. Both the external demonization and the internal matrophobia begin to explain both the intriguing history and curious silences on mothering. Thus, contemporary feminist maternal scholars must understand our past and present use of Rich's text to conceive a feminist subject-position that accounts for and anticipates the ongoing external and internal rhetorical situations of contemporary culture and, finally, purges past and lingering matrophobia.