Maternal eroticism and female desire in Sue Miller's The good mother

The Good Mother portrays a new kind of conflict for the growing number of single mothers in the Western world in the late twentieth century; tracking the fall from grace of newly divorced "good mother", Anna Dunlap. The struggles and adversities that Anna faces expose the persistent disavowal of mothers as sexual beings in the late twentieth century, despite the alleged freedoms won for women in the wake of the feminist and sexual liberation movements. In this essay, I argue that The Good Mother has continued relevance for modern readers, as it broadens the debates around the persistent ideology of asexual motherhood in its presentation of mothering as an erotic experience, one that shares a number of parallels with sexual eroticism and desire. I reveal how Miller’s novel provides a provocative disruption of the borders between mothering and sexuality in a way that brings to light the issues that silently sustain many of the cultural anxieties surrounding both of these aspects of female experience. I argue that in challenging the cultural requirement of suppressing the component of eroticism in the mothering role, Miller’s novel calls for an alternative, expanded understanding of both sexuality and motherhood—one that considers the difference in construction, representation, and experience that may occur if sexuality, eroticism, and motherhood were considered through a maternal lens.