About

My study aims to provide fresh literary insight into women in fiction who combine career and motherhood, 'the second shift' (Hochschild, 1989). By exploring techniques writers use to represent relationships between university-educated mothers and their daughters across four generations, my research will respond to the seismic shift in the number of women educated to degree level and beyond over the last century, addressing ongoing matricentric feminist and neoliberal theoretical issues.

Focusing on the novel, I will conduct a comparative analysis between matrilineal narratives by Anne Enright, Bernardine Evaristo and Allison Pearson to seek out methods for use in my own creative writing, with a particular focus on the use of humour in depicting contemporary motherhood. In doing so, I will explore the gap between typically neoliberalist ‘mum’s lit’ and a growing body of experimental and intersectional matricentric writing which addresses the challenges of being a university-educated mother at work.

I will use my findings to inform my creative component, a full-length novel featuring four generations of university-educated mothers and daughters from one family whose experiences have been shaped by post-war cultural and legislative shifts such as the massive increase in women in higher education, the Pill, the Employment Protection Act of 1975, social policy and work structures, which have transformed the traditional family model. These fictional women will showcase the challenges still facing those who combine career and motherhood.

While Elena Ferrante suggests that motherhood’s ‘literary truth has yet to be explored’ (Ferrante, 2016) and matricentric feminist Andrea O'Reilly observes that 'Motherhood... is feminism's unfinished business' (O'Reilly, 2019), there remains space to readdress our approaches to writing through a contemporary matricentric lens. By combining my critical analyses with a multi-generational narrative, I will explore the question: How can writers of matrilineal literature represent the ongoing challenges of career and motherhood?