What Are The Feelings Of Love In Lydia Sigourney's Letters To Mothers

Great Essays
As a preface to her Letters to Mothers (1838), well-known writer Lydia Sigourney exclaimed, “Does not the whole heart blossom thick with perpetual dew-drops? What a loss, had we passed through the world, without tasting this purest, most exquisite front of love.” In her wondering, Sigourney described the overwhelming feelings elicited in women as they became mothers. Though she explains the new role of love in child rearing of the 19th century, Sigourney’s excerpt is just one example of the feelings experienced by mothers of her time. While she boasts of her new affection which “seems to spread a soft, fresh green over the soul”, later mothers such as Adrienne Rich (1976) and Anne Lamott (1993) complain of heart-wrenching feelings of anger, …show more content…
With the industrialization of society, the removal of men’s work from the home, and the increased reliance on child care manuals in the 20th century, women became responsible for the moral and physical upbringing of their children. This newfound power, however, came at a price and impacted mothers’ experience of childrearing. Women were supposed to be constantly calm, happy, and loving and had to reject their maternal instincts for those of the experts; they had to be the “perfect mother”. As the mother tried to force herself into the glass mold of the unrealistic mother, she nicked herself on the edges, leaving parts of herself behind and gaining a monstrous anger towards her child. The mother’s experience was scarred by the maleficent emotions she tried to hide; however, through all the resentment and frustration, the mother loved her child. She did not love her child because the manuals and experts instructed her. She loved her child because she was a mother, and nothing could take that life-altering experience away from

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