Mask Of Motherhood Essay

Finally, I will now discuss the repercussions of the wife role and the mask of motherhood on Eva’s relationship with Kevin. Ruddick states, “a ‘good mother’ may well be praised for colluding in her own subordination, with destructive consequences to her and her children” (104). Accordingly, the mask of motherhood strips Eva of her authenticity and integrity, and as it becomes her way of life, it diminishes her power (Maushart 463). Her “anger at the conditions of motherhood…become translated into anger at the child,” so that her relationship with Kevin becomes controlled by the wife role and mask of motherhood (Rich 52). Subsequently, even the act of loving him becomes problematic for her. Eva notes, “the harder I tried, the more aware I became

With Eva, he is at least partially his honest self. Eva, in moments where she unmasks, is able to be her honest self with him. For example, after throwing Kevin across the nursery, she declares, “I’d felt…like [his] real mother…I felt we were finally communicating” (Shriver 196). She then theorizes that Kevin, at that moment, may have known himself “for my son” (Shriver 201). Years later, he tells her he was proud of her honesty at that time (Shriver 174). Surrounded by inauthenticity, Kevin becomes preoccupied with finding out what secret lies beyond the masks in his life by testing his capacity for cruelty, and Eva’s capacity to tolerate it. After the nursery incident, Kevin’s glimpse behind her mask and “this revelation of his mother’s true colors—her viciousness, her violence—seemed to please him” (Shriver 203). His interest in the secrets behind the mask culminates in the shooting, where he discovers “the secret is that there is no secret” (Shriver 379). Because when we fake a life, we no longer make a life, and in the end, there is nothing authentic left behind the mask – there is no secret left to uncover (Maushart

Finally, I argue that “truth in mothering is a far better policy” (Thurer 334). As Eva observes during a prison visit, “it was following…pat scripts that had helped to land me in [this] room” (Shriver 44). In her letters, she is finally able to break free from the wife role and speak truths that the mask of motherhood had suppressed. Her authenticity with Kevin during the prison visits nets more progress in their relationship than all those years of pretending ever had. When she finally asks Kevin why he did it, he is honest about his uncertainty. Remorseful, he returns Celia’s eye to her and asks her to bury it. He then embraces her, showing vulnerability. As Eva and Kevin look upon each other in this moment unmasked, she finally realizes, “I love my son” (Shriver 400). Ruddick describes attentive love – a mother perceiving and supporting a child’s real experience – as a counter to the mask’s fantasy and inauthenticity (105). When Eva and Kevin finally unmask, she is able to attentively love him as he truly is. Eva’s love, in its unconventionality, is not the “continuous, unconditional” mother-love of myth; but in its authenticity, it is far more meaningful (Rich