Free Essays - Memories and Motherhood in Landscape for a Good Woman

512 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Importance of childhood memories (10)

Memories and Motherhood in Landscape for a Good Woman The relevance and subsequent interpretation of memories as they relate to one's desire to mother ". . . refusal to reproduce oneself is a refusal to perpetuate what one is, that is, the way one understands oneself to be in the social world." -- pg. 84 In reading Carolyn Kay Steedman's Landscape for a Good Woman, two themes took center stage: Memories and Motherhood. As the book unfolds Steedman repeatedly points out that childhood memories are used by individuals for various purposes; rather than objective recollections dominated by facts, she proposes that they are more subjective in nature, likely to alter with time or as circumstances dictate. Thus, fact has very little relevance, taking a back seat to the history we create for ourselves. ". . . childhood is a kind of history, the continually reworked and re-used personal history that lies at the heart of each present" -- pg. 128 Though she examined sociological, political, economic and psychoanalytic issues, one aspect Steedman fails to address is the biological, as in the so-called "biological clock". Frankly, her argument may benefit from this phenomena. Though women in their teens and early twenties frequently express an emphatic lack of desire for children, citing specifics of their personal histories to support these decisions, years later the same memories are given an opportunity to soften, recede or even disappear altogether. Thus, in light of this altered history, the individual in question feels more at ease reassessing her choices (in light of these memories) and considering motherhood a viable alternative. "We all return to memories and dreams . . . again and again; the story we tell of our own life is reshaped around them. But the point doesn't lie there, back in the past, back in the lost time at which they happened; the only point lies in interpretation." -- pg. 5 Another point Steedman only touches on lightly is her sister's interpretation of the past. Personally, I find it fascinating to discuss childhood events with siblings who participated in the same events. The significance of seemingly unrelated experiences, occurring after the occasion in question, together with personal feelings, frequently cause siblings' recollections of the same events to differ. In light of Steedman's work, it is easier now to understand how children, raised by the same parents, offered the same opportunities and sharing the same historical events, may end up with radically different memories.

Show More
Related

  • Drinking Memories In Jeannette Wales's The Glass Castle

    821 Words  | 2 Pages

    The memories they have growing up affects how they see people and the life styles they choose. Jeannette’s fathers drinking habits plays a very big role in life. “Yeah, but you love this old drunk, don’t you?” Her dad said in an argument with her mother. Jeannette was just happy they didn’t kill each other. For many parts of her life she yarned to stop her dad’s drinking habits. His drinking habits hindered their family from a decent living environment, he couldn’t keep a job, made him a more violent person and blocked a strong relationship with his family. In her adult life, she made it her goal to never live like that again. His drinking also affected the relationship she had with him in her adult life. “Dad had a heart attack.” She mentioned in an interview if her dad was even still alive she wouldn’t written her books, but she still loved her dad for the good. “We started talking about some of Dad’s great escapades: letting me pet the cheetah, taking us Demon Hunting, giving us stars for Christmas.” Memories of the past helps kids distinguish between good and bad and which route they take in life and how they see the ups and downs in

    Read More

  • Rhetorical Strategies Used in The Morality of Birth Control Speech by Margaret Sanger

    974 Words  | 2 Pages

    Margaret Sanger was, at large, a birth control activist, but this speech was more about the questioning of birth control corrupting morality in women. People must remember, in the day and age where Sanger presented this speech, November 1921, women were considered very far from equal and much closer to servants or maids. In her speech, I saw that ethos was present in the sense that she gave herself credibility. Through Sanger’s detailed words and actions, and her statements including the presence of scientists and, or, professionals, the masses of listening people could infer that she was very well informed and solid in her statements. Though she presented herself as agreeable, Sanger was firm in her beliefs. In addition, Sanger says, “We desire to stop at its source the disease, poverty and feeble-mindedness and insanity which exist today, for these lower the standards of civilization and make for race deterioration. We know that the masses of people are growing wiser and are using their own minds to decide their individual conduct” (Sanger, par.15). To me, Sanger made herself appeal to the audience by using the word ‘we.’ In the practice of ethos, this focused on the author more than...

    Read More

  • The Importance Of Sacrifice In In Beloved

    1920 Words  | 4 Pages

    Women throughout time have been compelled to cope with the remonstrances of motherhood along with society’s anticipations

    Read More

  • Birthcontrol and the Work Of Margaret Sanger

    1619 Words  | 4 Pages

    "A free race cannot be born" and no woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother"(Sanger A 35). Margaret Sanger (1870-1966)said this in one of her many controversial papers. The name of Margaret Sanger and the issue of birth control have virtually become synonymous. Birth control and the work of Sanger have done a great deal to change the role of woman in society, relationships between men and woman, and the family. The development and spread of knowledge of birth control gave women sexual freedom for the first time, gave them an individual identity in society and a chance to work without fearing they were contributing to the moral decline of society by leaving children at home. If birth control and Sanger did so much good to change the role of women in society why was birth control so controversial?

    Read More

  • Analysis Of The Turning By Tim Winton

    808 Words  | 2 Pages

    Through this short story we are taken through one of Vic Lang’s memories narrated by his wife struggling to figure out why a memory of Strawberry Alison is effecting their marriage and why she won’t give up on their relationship. Winton’s perspective of the theme memory is that even as you get older your past will follow you good, bad or ugly, you can’t always forget. E.g. “He didn’t just rattle these memories off.” (page 55) and ( I always assumed Vic’s infatuation with Strawberry Alison was all in the past, a mortifying memory.” (page 57). Memories are relevant to today’s society because it is our past, things or previous events that have happened to you in which we remembered them as good, bad, sad, angry etc. memories that you can’t forget. Winton has communicated this to his audience by sharing with us how a memory from your past if it is good or bad can still have an effect on you even as you get older. From the description of Vic’s memory being the major theme is that it just goes to show that that your past can haunt or follow you but it’s spur choice whether you chose to let it affect you in the

    Read More

  • Margaret Sanger's The Morality Of Birth Control

    1402 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Roaring Twenties were known as a time of economic boom, pop culture and social developments. This was a time when women began to break norms, they acted rebelliously such as wearing releveling clothing, smoking, and drinking. These women were known as “flappers” who wanted to change their roles in the 1920’s. Birth control activist, Margaret Sanger sought to change the world where women had access to a low cost, effective contraception pill. In “The Morality of Birth Control” Sanger battled opponents who claimed that contraception would cause women to become immoral. The author uses rhetorical devices such as ethos, pathos, and fallacies to back up her claim while touching on issues in the church, advancements of women, and the source of disease in the world.

    Read More

  • Margaret Sanger

    2253 Words  | 5 Pages

    “When a motherhood becomes the fruit of a deep yearning, not the result of ignorance or accident, its children will become the foundation of a new race." (Margaret Sanger, 1) Margaret Sanger, known as the founder of birth control, declared this powerful statement. It is reality that the rights that are customary for women in the twentieth century have been the product of the arduous physical and mental work of many courageous women. These individuals fought for the right for women to be respected in both mind and body by bestowing on them the rights to protect their femininity and to gain the equivalent respect given to men. A remarkable woman named Margaret Sanger is the individual who incredibly contributed to the feministic revolution that took place in the 1920’s. Her legacy of making the right to use birth control legal for woman is a precedent in history for the foundation of the equal rights battle that is still being fought today. By giving control back to the women in their sexuality, Margaret Sanger also restored confidence in those women who felt that their lives revolved around pregnancy. She has become an influential icon to women all around the world who enjoy the security of birth control that gives them the freedom in their sexuality on a daily bases.

    Read More

  • Gwendolyn Brooks

    1064 Words  | 3 Pages

    The poem The Bean Eaters (see the included poems) is a fine example of all three of these key elements. First and foremost is the use of ordinary speech. For instance the lines They eat beans mostly, this old yellow pair / Dinner is a casual affair. Each of these words are easily understandable. Though plain speech, each word is used more differently and more intensely than in ordinary discourse. Old yellow pair resounds with more meaning than old couple. “Yellow” implies faded or old; “Pair” is more compassionate than “couple”, suggesting more of a connection than just a matchup. Though easily readable, the first line sets a tone of tenderness. Dinner is a casual affair is also a unique statement. Though five plain words, each is used effectively to create an irony which is maintained for the rest of the stanza. “Dinner” and “affair” imply more formal situations, but yet are described as “casual.” This vague irony is further developed in the next two lines, Plain chipware on a plain and creaking wood, / Tin flatware. Chipware is Brooks’s own term, which originates from flatware. “Dinnerware” implies wealth and elegance, while chipware implies aged dishes used by the poor. Yet, chipware also calls up the dignity of dinnerware. The “plain and creaking wood” or table reinforces a sense of poverty. Consistent with the preceding images, “Tin flatware” implies cheapness because of tin, but also refinement from “flatware.” Each word is used to add or ...

    Read More

  • Summary Of The Most Dangerous Game

    1453 Words  | 3 Pages

    Summary- A hunter of big game, Rainsford, falls over the side of his boat while smoking a cigar. He swims to a foreboding island where he finds a mansion. General Zaroff, who is the owner of the island, invites him in and offers him dinner. He is a posh man who enjoys hunting, but not the conventional type. He hunts humans, since he’s grown uninterested animals. He challenges Rainsford in his game and he accepts. In the end, Rainsford wins by outsmarting the General by jumping off the cliff, and then showing up in his bedroom and presumably kills him.

    Read More

  • Future Of Nursing

    1270 Words  | 3 Pages

    The initiative recognized that nurses have the opportunity to change health care, as we know it, and transform it to meet the needs of the ACA. The barriers that were identified include “outdated policies, regulations and cultural barriers” (IOM, 2011, p. 85). While increasing the scope of practice for APRNs was a large part of this key message, cultural diversity, gender diversity, and the aging workforce were also highlighted.

    Read More

  • Gender Differences and Memory

    958 Words  | 2 Pages

    Experience plays an immense role in presenting the desolation that age and education has on one's capacity to remember. Individuals compare and contrast the correlation between these two variables; for example, the greater ones age the less recollection they seem to have. However, Psychologists Agneta Herlitz and Jenny Rehnman challenged this case by presenting a similar a preposition comparing two opposite variables: Does one’s sex affect his or her ability to remember day to day events? The interconnection between sex and memory is surprisingly a controversial topic. According to the research they provide, an individual’s sex does, indeed, play an immense role in commemorating the affairs that arise day to day.

    Read More

  • Guy Fawkes

    1006 Words  | 3 Pages

    Fawkes Guy, was one of the greatest conspirator in the Gunpowder Plot. Fawkes, pronounced fawks Guy, English conspirator, born in York. A protestant by birth, he became a Roman Catholic after the marriage of his widowed mother to a man of Catholic background and sympathies(Miller 578). In 1593 he enlisted in the Spanish Army in Flanders and in 1596 participated in the capture of the city of Calais by the Spanish in their war with Henry IV of France. He became implicated with Thomas Winter and others in the Gunpowder Plot to blow up Parliament as protest against the anti-Roman Catholic laws.This paper will demonstrate the life of Guy Fawkes. Guy Fawkes was born on 13th April, 1570.

    Read More

  • Reflection in Iris Murdoch's Under the Net

    2319 Words  | 5 Pages

    ...e made up of moments which pass and become nothing. Yet through this shaft of nothings we drive onward with that miraculous vitality that creates our precarious habitations in the past and the future. So we live; a spirit broods and hovers over the continual death of time, the lost meaning, the unrecaptured moment, the unremembered face, until the final chop that ends all our moments and plunges that spirit back into the void from which it came. (p244)

    Read More

  • Cross-Platform Media: A Study on Harry Potter

    2149 Words  | 5 Pages

    “All media are cross Platform” what is the meaning of the word cross platform and when does a media become a cross platform? This essay is going to explain in detail how media companies use each platforms to attracted more and new consumers. How do media companies use one specific text to create multiple platforms and why do they do so? Besides that what are media convergences? Harry Potter will be used as the main case study for this essay, it will explain how Harry Potter started and how it became cross platform. It would have a few other example of media convergences and it will include a variety of example on cross platform media. To write this essay lots of reading had to be done and mostly Henry Jenkins book was very helpful to understand

    Read More

  • Importance Of Quality Education

    1933 Words  | 4 Pages

    There is a distinction in product and services that services directly affect the final users (p. 53). The

    Read More

More about Free Essays - Memories and Motherhood in Landscape for a Good Woman

Open Document