Body of Glass
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Mothering
Mothering is a complex issue in Body of Glass. The traditional role of mothering has changed. Mothers are no longer the unchanging figure of support. Child care is more a social process. A positive one in the utopian settings and a negative one in the dystopian worlds. In one way or another all of the mothers in the text are lost or disappear; some disappear, having more pressing political concerns, others die or are separated from their child by the law.. Shira is abandoned by her mother and brought up by her grandmother. She is led to believe that this is traditional in her family. Shira's mother is unknown to her as she lives mainly in hiding as a 'data pirate'. Later Shira herself loses custody of her infant son Ari. Gadi, Shira's first lover and childhood friend, loses his mother to a terrible mutated bone disease. Arguably it is the absence of mothers which makes possible Gadi and Shira's adolescent affair. Reproduction is seldom 'natural'. Because heroic interventions are often necessary to produce a pregnancy it is joked that all children now have three parents, mother, father (often a sperm donor) and the doctor who makes it possible. The jurisdiction of the multi takes over from the family structure as it rules on divorce, custody and the very status of the mother. Ari is given his father's family name even though Shira had registered him in hers. First Malkah and then Shira act as mother/lover/teacher to the cyborg, Yod. Yod is both less than and more than a person. He has no mother or father. He could theoretically be castrated since he does have a penis. He calls Avram 'father' - just to annoy him. |
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