Checking my body for signs of life: A novel – ‘I think I hated her. I also love her.’ A creative and critical analysis of maternal ambivalence as experienced by the adult daughter

Abstract

This thesis comprises a full-length novel, entitled Checking My Body for Signs of Life, and an accompanying critical exegesis. The former falls under the genre of literary fiction, and follows thirty-two-year-old Sky, who, along with her twin sister Jess, is trying to come to terms with the fact that her abusive mother Kelsie has just died. Sky’s attempts to navigate her mother’s death see her confront her traumatic upbringing and subsequent behaviours, the foundations of which are the ambivalence felt between her and her mother. Resultingly, the critical exegesis explores this link, being underpinned by one central question: can daughters ever really know their mothers? To answer this, particular focus is paid to the relationship between maternal ambivalence and first, female hunger, then second, female sexuality, owing to the fact that, for Sky, hunger and sex are two experiences invariably influenced by her mother, in tandem with heteropatriarchal conditioning. My inquiry is based on close analysis of Checking My Body for Signs of Life; in particular, the development of the creative decisions behind it. It also discusses the three main ways my research informed the book: the creative representation of maternal ambivalence as inevitable; maternal ambivalence as situated within heteropatriarchy; and the idea of maternal selves as concealed or ‘split’. The critical essay draws on feminist (Angel 2021; Febos 2021 and 2022; Rich 1976; Srinivasan 2021), psychoanalytic (Parker 1995; Winnicott 1964 and 1994), and fat-activist (Gay 2017; Gordon 2020; Hornbacher 1998; Orbach 1978) approaches. With reference to Donald Winnicott and Adrienne Rich’s representations of maternal ambivalence, Chapter One argues in favour of the existence of private and public ‘selves’, and how the gap between the two inevitably leads to ambivalence. Chapter Two discusses how literal and symbolic hunger is born from ambivalence, contending that the mother informs the daughter’s sense of her ‘self’ as a hungry person within a heteropatriarchal society. Chapter Three examines female sexuality, with a focus on the ambivalence that inevitably – and, it argues, crucially – resides within desire. This thesis concludes with reflection on how the very process of conducting research or producing a thesis is itself an exercise in ambivalence, owing to a requisite degree of enquiry and curiosity.