“The Most Dangerous Woman in America”: Emma Goldman and the Rhetoric of Motherhood In Living My Life

Abstract

Although she avoided biological motherhood, Emma Goldman depicts herself in her autobiography, Living My Life, in the more conventional role of mother in relationship to the masses, to her anarchist periodical Mother Earth, and to her lovers and certain other men. In doing so, she seems to be aware that motherhood is a cultural construction as a social role that historically, at least since the eighteenth century, has relied on the assumption of “instinct.” However, this perspective does not necessarily reflect Goldman's whole regard for motherhood or all of the feminist points of view during her lifetime. In this paper, I will argue that the lens of late twentieth- and early twenty-first century feminist arguments, which further the earlier feminist claims of Goldman's time, enable us to view the nuances of her maternal identity as it functions to strengthen the anarchist agenda within the text. The constructions of motherhood, as they appear in Living My Life, draw from opposing views of the nature of “woman” and reshape not only power relationships but the conception of motherhood itself, creating a viable rhetoric for the anarchist argument.