It can mean that the woman has chosen not the have children. If the barren woman is someone who has chosen not to have children, Rich contends that she may regret not have children and such a regret is a luxurious one to have. Again Rich is reiterating the idea that motherhood is not necessarily the ideal situation for all women and that some women even regret choosing motherhood.
This regret is present because motherhood robs the woman of self. Although a woman with no children has regrets about her actions she still has her privacy and freedom. Rich seems to place privacy and freedom strictly in the domain of women who are not mothers. Motherhood is therefore viewed as a weight or a burden to a woman.
In this passage Rich is again rejecting commonly held beliefs about motherhood. Rich explains that motherhood is something that some women regret and that not having children allows the woman both privacy and freedom. This is particularly interesting because it reiterates the individual though process and how that process is not necessarily consistent with commonly held beliefs about how women feel about motherhood.
Although in this particular instance motherhood is presented as a chioce, there are also passages throughout the book that suggest that women d not really have much of a choice as it pertains to motherhood. This lack of choice is due to the fact that women who are not married and do not have children are sunned by society. Traditionally and even in contemporary times this is a very true concept. Society seems to question a woman's legitimacy if she decides not to become a mother. With this understood, many women may "choose" to have children because they are conditioned to believe that it is the correct and acceptable thing to do as opposed to what they may desire to do.
In this instance, Rich is questioning the social norms which posit that a woman's worth is defined by motherhood. Instead she asserts that for some it is regretful. Not all women want to be mothers and although they may have some regret on such a decision, their regret pales in comparison to living without the privacy and freedom which is taken by motherhood.
As mentioned previously in the discussion, there is a dichotomous thought process that Rich presents concerning motherhood. Rich discusses how this dichotomy leads to female anger and the supposed consequences of such anger. Rich explains "Mother-Love is supposed to be continuous, unconditional. Love and anger cannot coexist. Female anger threatens the institution of motherhood (Rich, 46)"
Although Rich admits that she is sometimes angry about motherhood and all it entails she also display a type of rationality about the relationship between the coexistence between love and anger. In some ways she is questioning the idea that love and anger is not allowed to coexist inside the sphere of motherhood in the western world. Then in some ways she answers her own question by stating the female anger threatens the institution of motherhood. The institution of motherhood is threatened by female anger because it completely rejects the idea that women are always content and happy as mothers. If it was known or became generally accepted that not all women are content and happy, many women might "choose" not to become mothers. Therefore threatening the institution of motherhood, at least in the context of the western archetype.
In the book, Rich also laments about the idea that all women can be is mothers. Rich explains that
"Not only have women been told to stick to motherhood, but we have been told
that our intellectual or aesthetic creations were inappropriate, inconsequential, or scandalous, an attempt to become "like men," or to escape from the real tasks of adult womanhood: marriage and childbearing. No wonder that many intellectual and creative women have insisted that they were "human beings" first and women only incidentally…The body has been made so problematic for women that it has often seemed easier to shrug it off and travel as a disembodied spirit
(Rich 40) "
This idea that women shouldn't think or pursue intellectual endeavors is the opposite of the ideas espoused by feminism. Feminism takes an egalitarian approach to the rights of men and women. Furthermore feminism asserts that these equal rights should be both social and political. That is women should have equal rights in all spheres of life. This passage also explains that within society a woman's only two purposes are often seen as marriage and childbearing. Women...
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