Louise O'Neill: Of motherhood and personhood

But she wasn’t consumed by us either. I knew that she was her own person, that she had autonomy outside of her role as our mother. She would sign my birthday cards with “Mike and Marie”, a tiny rebellion, a reminder that she wasn’t just a ‘Mammy’. She had an identity that she wouldn’t relinquish.

I read The Awakening by Kate Chopin in first year of college. Published in 1899, it’s set in New Orleans and tells the story of Edna Pontellier.

Edna is struggling with her role as a wife and mother, and how that impacts her sense of herself as a woman. She says she is “not a mother-woman”, not “some sensuous Madonna”.