Andrea O'Reilly Andrea O'Reilly i(A142194 works by)
Gender: Female
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

Works By

Preview all
1 Breaking the Rules of Normative Motherhood and Family : Matrifocality, Motherlines, and the Mask of Motherhood in Sally Hepworth's The Secrets of Midwives and The Family Next Door Andrea O'Reilly , 2019 single work criticism
— Appears in: Hecate , vol. 45 no. 1/2 2019; (p. 56-76, 310)

'What is of interest to me about Sally Hepworth is how she, as a commercial writer using the popular literary genre of women's fiction- and who told Terri Barnes that "the goal of writing for me has always been to entertain-takes up the central concepts of contemporary maternal theory to trouble normative meanings and practices of motherhood and family. This article explores how Hepworth breaks these normative rules in her use of the theoretical concepts of matrifocality, motherlines, and the mask of motherhood. The two novels upon which I focus both employ an emphatic matrifocal perspective. In The Secrets of Midwives (2015), the motherline repositions women from a heterosexual allegiance to a matrifocal one and rescripts family as a relation of choice and commitment rather than one of biology. In The Family Next Door (2018), the unmasking of motherhood excavates the lived realities of mothering to counter normative motherhood and make possible an empowered maternal authenticity.' (Publication abstract)
1 y separately published work icon Textual Mothers / Maternal Texts : Motherhood in Contemporary Women's Literatures Elizabeth Podnieks (editor), Andrea O'Reilly (editor), Waterloo : Wilfrid Laurier University Press , 2010 Z1807227 2010 anthology criticism Comprises four sections: Maternal absence; Maternal ambivalence; Maternal agency; Maternal communication.
X