Toxic Maternity in Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects A B I G A I L DAV I S
Most sows are repeatedly inseminated,
pressure to have kids and are simultaneously
brood after brood, till their bodies give
inundated with constant ridicule and judgment
way and they go to slaughter. But while
on what it means to be a “good” mother
they’re still useful, they’re made to nurse—
(Badinter 123). In a culture obsessed with
strapped to their sides in a farrowing crate,
motherhood, contemporary American fiction
legs apart, nipples exposed. Pigs are
has presented the trope of toxic maternity.
extremely smart, sociable creatures and
Toxic mothers are mothers who kill their
this forced assembly-line intimacy makes
children; raise children who kill themselves; or
the nursing sows want to die. Which, as
worse, raise children who kill others—mothers
soon as they dry up, they do.
like Casey Anthony, Augusta Gein, and Medea
—GILLIAN FLYNN, SHARP OBJECTS
(Seidel 3, Doyle 186, Rozmarin 321). The trope makes me wonder: are all women suited for
THE PERVERSE IMAGE of forced maternity
the mom-job? Flynn’s answer is no; she creates
acts as the backdrop for Gillian Flynn’s Sharp
a town plagued with death and the mother is
Objects, a story that puts the ideology of
responsible. Critics claim Flynn undermines
motherhood into question. The twenty-first
her sex with a negative depiction of women.
century has presented a lot of ambivalence
I’d like to offer an opposing viewpoint: Flynn
towards the topic of motherhood in America.
potentiates the toxic maternity trope to force
Women have more ability to choose than ever
readers to re-examine a collective bias about
before but continue to be bombarded with the
women’s societal roles and suggests that a
A B I G A I L DAV I S is a M.A. candidate in the English graduate program at Loyola Marymount University. Her scholarship explores the ideology of motherhood as represented in contemporary American fiction. This essay was written for Dr. Dermot Ryan’s Critical Methodology class. Abigail lives in Los Angeles with her husband and a lot
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of books. When she isn’t reading literature, she’s attempting to write it. Right now, she’s working on a lyrical novel that explores similar topics of motherhood and cyclical trauma.
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