Motherhood

Throughout the entirety of the novel, the author uses the narrator’s indecision about having children in order to explore the expectations of motherhood that have historically been placed upon women. In the early pages of the narrative, the narrator is fairly convinced that she does not want to have children. At the same time, she cannot understand why she spends “so much time thinking about it” (30). Indeed, the older that she becomes and the more of her friends that she witnesses settling down and starting families, the more insecure the narrator feels about her previous decision not to become a mother. She reveals at the novel’s start that when she was 21, she got pregnant and had an abortion. Although this decision was in accordance with what she wanted, she recalls the doctor pressuring her “to change [her] mind” (32). Years later, she wonders, “Why are...