Effectiveness, popularity, and The Motherhood Statement.

[elfs]

The Motherhood Statement: SF story which posits some profoundly unsettling threat to the human condition, explores the implications briefly, then hastily retreats to affirm the conventional social and humanistic pieties, ie apple pie and motherhood. Greg Egan once stated that the secret of truly effective SF was to deliberately "burn the motherhood statement."

I was thinking about this the other day in the context of Caprice Starr, and realized that Egan may have meant "effective," but he surely didn't mean "popular." A quick look at the most popular SF on the market shows that embracing the Motherhood Statement is a far quicker route to popularity and high sales numbers than burning it.

I mean, think about it. What are the two best selling characters in the past decade? Miles Vorkosigan: great family backing him, one that would never think twice about helping him. Hell, Lois coined the aphorism that "Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in." Honor Harrington's parents are rock solid supporters of her career despite her ongoing disabilities and tribulations, and like Miles' parents they're both major players in the sociopolitical fabric of Honor's existence.

Heck, The Iron Sunrise leaned toward the Motherhood Statement. The Kushiel series leaned on it. Even the Queng-Ho series succeeded by either refusing to threaten or otherwise supporting the Motherhood Statement.

Looking through my own work, I realized that I've done a terrible job of this. Caprice: orphan. Cheillène & Sarre: orphans, both of them. Aimee: orphan. Janae: orphan. Bloody Beth: orphan. Toby: mother alive, but separated by slavery. Kasserine: orphan. Kaede's parents are separated and driven further apart by her choice of spouse. Misuko's parents still love her dearly, but don't understand her lifestyle choice.

I'm starting to see a pattern here...

Comments

Motherhood statment isn't literal

[(Anonymous)]

The Kushiel series very much "burns the Motherhood statement", simply by positing a world where free love is an overriding social virtue and the main character is a masochistic courtesan.

How does that affirm conventional social and humanistic pieties? Humanistic, maybe, for a wide enough definition, but definitely not conventional social pieties.

If you mean that in each book, the end reestablishes the status quo pro ante, then with all due respect, you've missed the point of Egan's statement.

-Malthus

Re: Motherhood statment isn't literal

[elfs.livejournal.com]

The Kushiel series very much "burns the Motherhood statement."

I disagree. What's the final point of the books? After all these monstrous, threatening issues with respect to the City, then the Nation, then the World, what's the final, overriding lesson of the Kushiel series?

"The most significant thing a woman can do is find a mate and raise a child." That's it. After all that, Phedre' settles down with Joscelin and Imriel, gives up both her masochism and her courteseanship, and takes on the duty of nursing back to hale a small boy.

It is, as befits the books themselves, a bit perverse, but in the end it is absolutely an embrace of the motherhood statement.