Title: Images of the Mother Figure in the Amos Oz Canon.
Abstract: This essay is the first examination in English of the portrayal of the mother figure in the writing of Israel's most celebrated and greatest living author Amos Oz. Through a reading of several of Oz's novels and short stories, the essay will argue that the anti-motherhood theme permeates Oz's gender constructs in many of the works of fiction he has produced, and is part of a more general campaign of reinforcing negative and conventionalised views of women. In her groundbreaking book Sexual Politics Kate Milett declares that: As we all know, it has been open season on mothers for some two (Millett 1971: 336). In her analysis of misogyny in literature Rogers posits that the twentieth Century has seen the increasing tendency of male authors to attack motherhood and concludes that: most significant new development of recent decades has been the undisguised attacks on woman as mother. (Rogers:1996, 230). Often is the case, that in the Amos Oz cannon, the invented familiar image of an uncaring mother is of one who rejects and abandons her child. In Oz's fictional mother representations, the mothers are neglectful and incompetent not because they are career women who have chosen to work out of the home, and thus driven to leave their young alone. Rather, they are either stay-at-home mothers who for some unexplained reason seem incapable of bestowing love and care for their children, or mothers who forsakes their offspring, figuratively and literally, for self-serving reasons. A related concern is the author's praxis of withholding pivotal information to explicate his heroines' behaviourist aberrations, instead resorting to old cliches to imply that it inherently female to act so. Invariably, the author skews the mother/child dyad by snapping the biological and emotional ties innate in that relationship, and never pauses to explore the emotions involved or the psychological mechanics that propel that situation. On the other hand, the fathers are established as antonyms to the mothers. Aschkenasy observes that the mother in Jewish tradition is often seen as ferocious and capable of betraying her innate and maternal instincts of love and compassion for her offspring (Aschkenasy 1986: 93). She further adds that it is most often only the mothers who are portrayed as faithless and treacherous (Aschkenasy:.93). The attack on motherhood is ossified in My Michael (Oz 1991) through the figure of Hanna Gonen, and underpins Oz's treatment of the central heroine as a whole. Early on in the novel, following the birth of her first son, Yair, she suffers from complications, does not attend the circumcision ceremony, and remains in hospital for ten days (Oz: 58-63). Fuchs argues that: ... Hana's sickness is an excuse, a physical manifestation of her psychological rejection of her son which becomes clear when Hana becomes well again. For although she is able to take care of the baby, she tends to neglect him. Hana's sickness ... may also be interpreted as a metaphorical expression of her mental sickness-namely, her maternal dysfunctioning (1987: 78). Indeed, Gertz offers a similar assessment, writing that Hanna experiences Yair's birth as that of death, and fails to establish any kind of a meaningful bond with him (1980: 45). During the pregnancy, she intentionally refrains from describing her feelings in becoming a mother for the first time, and in her diary entries virtually ignores the actual birth. Apart from a few general statements describing her physical condition, the pregnancy is dealt with fleetingly, especially when compared to the attention her dreams and mundane occurrences receive. Yair's birth is reported in this matter-of- fact description Our son Yair was born in March 1951. (Oz 1991: 57). Hanna depicts before us the pregnancy and the birth- two immensely significant emotional and physical episodes in her life- in cold and passionless terms. …
Publication Year: 2009
Publication Date: 2009-12-01
Language: en
Type: article
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