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A Critique on Rebecca Solnit’s Magazine Article: The Mother of All Questions

Women are often viewed as self-sacrificing handmaidens to domesticity and male vanity. The article revolved around the experiences of the author as an unmarried woman who chooses not to have children. A fresh, new perspective on the role of women in society was exemplified in the text as the writer narrates her experiences on offensive questions on why she chose not to start a family. She talked about the standard society has put on women worldwide, particularly on their expected role of being a mother. Women are treated like criminals for leaving their child alone for a few minutes, even whose father left it alone for several years; they cannot be taken seriously professionally because they will go off and reproduce at some point. Having a family is what society views as the expected role of every woman. It is thought to be the sole center of a woman’s happiness, but in this article, the writer urged the readers that there are different ways happiness can emerge in a lifetime.

Culture tells the readers that there is a certain benchmark on living a happy life. According to Solnit, happiness is understood to be a matter of having great many ducks lined up in a row– spouse, offspring, private property, erotic experiences– even though a millisecond of reflection will bring to mind countless people who have all those things and are still miserable. These standards has put people through such burden in order to achieve them. Solnit highlights that there is not just one single good plot with one happy outcome. Each individual possesses different views on what a happy life looks like to them. They may see a happy life as a life with honor, meaning, engagement, hope, and the like. Moreover, she stresses the fact that society’s expectations for everyone, particularly women, causes a great deal of pressure and unhappiness, fearing being unable to carry them out.

The traditional worldview of happiness is essentially private and selfish. It is often wrapped around one’s self-interest. In relation to this, Solnit emphasizes that people lock onto motherhood as a key to feminine identity in part from the belief that children are the best way to fulfill a woman’s capacity to love, even though the list of monstrous, ice-hearted mothers is extensive. Additionally, she stands firm on her opinion that there are so many other things to love beside one’s own offspring, so many things that need love, so much other work love has to do in the world.

To wrap the whole text together, she quoted Todd Kashdan, a psychology teacher from George Mason University which states, “Organizing your life around trying to become happier, making happiness the primary objective of life, gets in the way of actually becoming happy.” This stresses that there is no equation to living a perfectly happy life. People must understand themselves enough to know what one’s definition of a happy life is. After the answer has been identified, go live it.

Rebecca Solnit is an American writer and a contributing editor at Harper’s Magazine. Founded in 1851, the Easy Chair Column of Harper’s Magazine appointed her as its first woman editor. She is an activist, focusing on environmental and human rights campaigns since her mid-twenties. Growing up as a battered child, her works lean towards women empowerment, especially violence against women. She is highly praised in the world of literature for her works such as “Men Explain Things to Me” and “River of the Shadows”. Due to her excellent works in literature, she was the recipient of two NEA fellowships for literature, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lannan literary fellowship, a Wired Rave Award, a National Book award, Harvard’s Mark Lynton History Prize, and a National Book Critics Circle Award.

While reading the article, most readers would highly praise the ability of the writer to evoke sadness out of them. Since human decision-making processes are heavily influenced by emotion, the writer effectively convinced the audience that no woman has an expected role to play in society. This was observed in several parts of the text wherein she was able to narrate different stories of different people. In one of her experiences, she states that she was ambushed by an interviewer who asked whether her abusive father was the reason why she had failed to find a life partner. This brings out so much emotion from the audience not only to the author, but to every other woman as well. Consequently, this led the readers to be convinced that there definitely is something wrong with our societal culture today.

Since the text revolved around worldwide views on women and the standard on joyous living, it definitely leaned towards spreading information on what was right and just. The main objective of the writer was to relay her opinion on equality among individuals in our society. It was able to support its main ideas through supporting details with the use of her own personal experiences as the firsthand victim to the subtle acts of inequality today. She was able to use different people from various sectors in society, who at the same time, have experienced unjust and offensive acts shown towards them due to them being a woman.

With regards to her stand on the role of women in society, the writer was able to support her main ideas without errors. She was able to effectively back her opinions using direct and concise details not only from her personal experience, but from other people’s experiences as well. This was emphasized when she stated her reasons behind why society should stop having a basis for a happy life, “As it happens, there are many reasons why I do not have children: I am very good at birth control; though I love children and adore aunthood, I also love solitude; I was raised by unhappy, unkind people, and I wanted neither to replicate their form of parenting nor create human beings who might feel about me the way I felt about my begetters.” and “I know a woman who was lovingly married for seventy years. She has had a long and meaningful life that she has lived according to her principles. But I would not call her happy; her compassion for the vulnerable and concern for the future have given her a despondent world view. What she has had instead of happiness requires better language to describe. There are entirely different criteria for a good life that might matter more to a person.” Other than this, the author cited the work of Christina Lupton, a writer, in which she described the things she relinquished when motherhood’s consuming tasks had her in its grasp. Additionally, she also cited Jeffrey Toobin, The New Yorker’s legal expert on his commentary directed Edward Snowden regarding this matter. These references further support the writer’s claim.

Overall, the article was well-written and well-structured. It was able to effectively relay its proposed message to the readers through strong supporting details to back its main theme.

 To read the full article, please click here.

To lead you to the page of the references used in this critique, please click here.