Motherhood, Witchcraft, and the Refusal to Conform
2024; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 80; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/arq.2024.a941981
ISSN1558-9595
Autores Tópico(s)American Constitutional Law and Politics
ResumoAbstract: This essay reads an American literary history of motherhood, witchcraft, and resistant bodies through the lens of Rachel Yoder's Nightbitch (2021). Like Kelly Barnhill's When Women Were Dragons (2022), Nightbitch asks why mothers and other care workers might fantasize about escaping the social expectations placed upon mothers and maternal bodies. These novels, and the canonical works they point to, from "Bartleby the Scrivener" and "The Yellow Wallpaper" to Alice in Wonderland and The Marvelous Land of Oz , suggest that both Christian and capitalist systems identify mothers and care workers as witches because their labor in creating and maintaining bodies challenges a myth of dispassionate rationality.
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