Does a Woman Have to Be a Mother 

to be Fulfilled?

Coincidentally, recently I have read two books and seen a movie (based on a book I have also read) about women who desperately want but cannot have children.  First, the film – The Light Between Oceans staring Alicia Vikander (Isabel) and Michael Fassbender (Tom) as a married couple living on an island 100 miles off the coast of Australia where Tom is the lighthouse keeper.  Tom is content with the isolation after returning physically whole but psychologically damaged from WW1.  Isabel, at first, reveling in her newfound love soon desires a family. After a second miscarriage, this one very late term, she is devastated and broken.  When a rowboat washes up on the island 4 days later with a dead man and a live newborn baby, Isabel sees her salvation.  Tom’s first instinct is to notify the mainland, insisting that there must be someone missing the child, but Isabel’s sorrow and newfound joy are both so great that he relents.  If you haven’t read the book by M.L. Steadman or seen the gorgeous movie, I won’t spoil it for you, but an agonizing moral dilemma presents itself two years later when Tom and Isabel return to the mainland to introduce her parents to their grandchild. 

Mary Gaitskill’s The Mare is told in alternating voices, mainly those of Velvet Vargas, a disadvantaged Dominican Brooklyn teen, and Ginger, a white and affluent sometimes artist living in a small, bucolic town in upstate New York.  Both have their demons.  Ginger is 47, childless and a bit adrift, married to Paul, a college professor whom she met through AA.  Past the child-bearing age, she nevertheless desperately wants her own offspring and is continually affronted by Paul’s ex-wife and teenage daughter who reside in the same town.  She eagerly (and Paul reluctantly) agree to take a child through NYC’s Fresh Air Fund, thus bringing Velvet to their home for two weeks the summer she is eleven.  Velvet is angry, combative, picked on at school for her Salvation Army clothes and wild hair, and often the brunt of her single mother’s own anger and frustration. 

The story takes on greater complexity as Ginger bonds with Velvet.  Her desperate need to be maternal drives her to turn herself over to Velvet heart and soul.  They go to movies, take walks.  Ginger reads to her at night.  At the end of the two weeks, she cannot bear for Velvet to leave and they work through the Fresh Air Fund to get a fortnight extension.  The relationship continues over several years as Velvet comes up for weekends, holidays and more summers.  Ginger even communicates with Velvet’s teachers.  Paul watches with increasing alarm at what he considers to be Ginger’s over-involvement with Velvet, reminding her at one point that Velvet already has a mother, and as Ginger’s bond with Velvet grows, her marriage becomes increasingly strained.

Yet another story about a woman longing desperately for a child, The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey also takes place in the early part of the 20^th century as 40ish Mabel and Jack have left New England to homestead in Alaska.  Mabel welcomes the impending solitude, seeing it as an opportunity to leave behind the grief of having lost babies and what she perceives as the judgment of others because she is childless.  It is a sadness that never leaves her, however, and the miles of cold, snowy uninhabited land and the harsh, lonely challenges of life there seem to only make things worse.  One evening, after the first heavy snowfall, Jack and Mabel build a snow girl, decorating her with some of Mabel’s mittens and a scarf.  The next day, the clothing is gone, the snow figure fallen, and tiny shoe prints lead away from where the figure stood.  Soon after, they begin to glimpse a little blond-haired girl in a bright blue coat, wearing Mabel’s clothes, darting through the trees.  Over the coming winter months, they see her more often, and lure her to them by leaving her gifts.  Finally, she comes close and introduces herself as Faina.  She refuses to ever stay with them, however, preferring to hunt and trap and generally fending for herself.  When the snows finally melt and springtime arrives, Faina disappears.  Mabel’s heart has been lifted by the presence of the child and she returns to a sense of despair.  When another couple who live ten miles down the road befriend Jack and Mabel, Mabel tries to tell them about Faina, but Jack pretends not to have seen her, causing both the new friends (Esther and George) and the reader to wonder about Mabel’s sanity.  When Faina returns with the first snow, Mabel recalls a childhood book which she asks her sister to send to her.  The story of the snow child is about an old childless couple who fashion a girl out of snow; the snow child comes alive, becoming a surrogate daughter, but disappearing into the mountains when warm weather comes to the farm.  Mabel has noticed that Faina’s skin is quite cold to the touch and she sweats profusely when she is in the warm cabin too long.  Faina seems to be able to conjure up snow and one day, catches a snowflake and asks Mabel, who keeps a sketchpad, to draw it.  The snowflake does not melt in Faina’s hand.  Could they be living the story?  Is Mabel’s longing for a child so great that she has wished this child into being?

Does a woman have to be a mother to be fulfilled?  Two of these books are set in the second decade of the 20^th century, a time, perhaps, when roles for women were significantly more limited. I suspect that most modern women with a wider range of choices would respond in the negative; there’s also no guarantee that having children will, in and of itself, lead to self-actualization.  While The Light Between Oceans and The Mare raise other questions in addition to this one, The Snow Child’s focus is squarely on the despondent Mabel who, in the opening scene of the book, purposely walks out on ice she thinks is not solid. But even Mabel, who has to become stronger and more active due to the challenges of the unforgiving environment, begins to find self-worth in discovering that there are multiple ways that women can be validated – through friendship, through hard work, and yes, through being a mother.