MELANCHOLY AND SUBJECTIVITY

THE REPRESENTATION OF MOTHERHOOD IN THE SHORT STORY MONOLOGUE BY SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR

Abstract

The discourse on motherhood is a recurring theme in Simone de Beauvoir's work. In The Second Sex (1949), the author addresses motherhood as more than a biological phenomenon, an act of bringing a child into the world, or the act of being a mother. For Beauvoir, motherhood can be understood as a social and cultural phenomenon, given that the social roles of women and men are constructed discursively. In this context, we analyze the short story Monologue, the second story in the collection The Woman Destroyed, published in 1967, to recognize in feminist literature the forms of representation, imaginaries, and subjectivities of what it means to "be a mother" in a patriarchal society. This story offers a deep dive into the subjectivity and melancholy of the narrator-protagonist, Murielle, who uses an intense and disordered stream of consciousness to recount her story and maternal experience. Through the subjectivity and melancholy in Murielle's narrative, Beauvoir provides a critical reflection on the female experience and motherhood. Thus, we turn to psychoanalytic works such as Freud's Mourning and Melancholia (1917) and Julia Kristeva's Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia (1989) to understand how melancholy is constituted and how discourses are framed in Beauvoir's writing.