Motherhood as Narrative: Sheila Heti’s Wrestling with the Burden of Choice

Abstract

Burdened with the choice whether to become a mother or not, the protagonist of Sheila Heti's autofictional work Motherhood develops a thoroughgoing critique of the notion of having to make that choice in the first place, encompassing philosophical musings on the impossibility of controlling one's existence by making decisions and astute commentary on social pressures on women to fulfill expected roles. It identifies pro-natalism as a culturally pervasive narrative, which is subtle but rigid in its exclusionary binarism and consequent pressure and divisiveness it imposes upon women. Heti dismantles the narratives that make up the concept of motherhood and redefines it as an inclusive, non-divisive, non-coercive concept. Maintaining its relational basis, she reverses its temporal trajectory and suggests the relationship with the mother as its central concern. Mobilizing the creative potential of writing, she rewrites the narrative of motherhood as the reconstruction of ancestral bonds between women through literature. Via this reversal, she undermines the one-directional conception of motherhood and allows for the term's inclusiveness of all women. In this way, she deflates the notion of decisional compulsion and so creates a spirit of egalitarianism and tolerance from which all mothers, non-mothers, and non-non-mothers can benefit.