Motherself: A Mythic Analysis of Motherhood

by Kathryn Allen Rabuzzi

In Western cultures, the central image of the spiritual quest for selfhood is that of the mythic, male, hero. A male hero, however, represents the quest for selfhood incompletely and awkwardly for women. In this provocative work, Kathryn Rabuzzi focuses on a different image -- that of the mother. For women seeking spiritual fulfillment of self, Rabuzzi points out the way of the mother, replacing the androcentric myths of the West with gynocentric myths based on the archetypal model of the Goddess.

In contrast to the selfhood for which the hero quests, "motherself" is the name for what women achieve when they follow the way of the mother. Rabuzzi defines that way with imagination and lucidity; her work provides an invaluable guide to all women struggling to articulate their religious experience in new terms.

248 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1988

About the author

Kathryn Rabuzzi, a retired academic in Syracuse, New York, is the author of three academic books, The Sacred and the Feminine, Motherself, Mother with Child, as well as being a founding editor of the journal, Literature and Medicine. Now fulfilling a lifetime dream, she is launching her first memoir, Rotting Floorboards and Debut Dreams: Tripping through Childhood before LSD.

Reviews

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some really interesting things in here about what it means, mythically, to be a mother. However, I think it's a bit dated. The anti-patriarchal and gynocentric messages feel a bit overblown more than 30 years after the publication of this book. I'm sure this was a groundbreaking text in the 80s, but I do feel that we've made some progress, thankfully! Nonetheless, the central issue of what it means to become a mother, what it is to connect with the mythical figure of the Goddess, and how the way of the mother differs from the way of the (predominantly male) hero was interesting.