57 pages • 1 hour read
Maggie NelsonThe Argonauts
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2015A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Pages 31-55Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Pages 31-55 Summary
Not long after Nelson and Dodge moved in together, they were “startled by some deep shadows” (30). Dodge’s mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, the custody of Nelson’s stepson was in dispute, and Dodge himself increasingly suffered pain as a result of constantly binding his chest. In an effort to make sense of the “hard season” her relationship was going through, Nelson began to research a literary couple—George and Mary Oppen—whose story she had always found romantic: “This wasn’t schadenfreude. It was hope” (34).
Meanwhile, Nelson and Dodge had decided to try to have a baby. Nelson discusses different theories of parenting and childhood development, including D. W. Winnicott’s claim that mothering requires simply “ordinary devotion” (21). The failure to provide such devotion is traumatic for a child, causing a sensation of “going to pieces / falling for ever / dying and dying and dying” (33). Winnicott acknowledges that providing such devotion can cause the mother to feel as though she herself is being “undone” (37). Fortunately, Nelson says, as an “old mom” she “had nearly four decades to become [her]self before experimenting with [her] obliteration” (37).
Nelson also discusses the idea of “cave research,” which attempts to think about mothering from the inside rather than through traditional objective theory. Nelson is suspicious of any suggestion that motherhood and intellectualism can’t go hand in hand. She describes a seminar she once attended where the speaker—Jane Gallop—showed photos of herself with her newborn son while discussing her thoughts on being both a mother and a photographic subject. Nelson was impressed by the messiness and intimacy of Gallop’s talk, and resented the presentation that followed, which accused Gallop’s talk of “mediocrity” and “soft-mindedness” (41).
Jumping ahead to her own experiences of motherhood, Nelson talks about the “delight” (42) she takes in tending to Iggy’s physical needs, and discusses the cultural taboos surrounding this aspect of parenthood.
Finally, Nelson returns to the subject of her relationship with Dodge, this time in the context of her writing, and her worries about “waxing lyrical” (46) in a way that erases the individuality of those closest to her. When she showed Dodge the first draft of The Argonauts, he told her he felt “unbeheld—unheld, even,” but Nelson still struggled to accept that Dodge, as a party to their relationship, ought to have a say in the finished book: “How can a book be both a free expression and a negotiation?” (46). These concerns segue into the concerns Nelson had when Dodge began physically transitioning. Although she now recognizes that this was the decision Dodge needed to make, it’s a difficult topic to explain to others, particularly because Dodge’s inner gender identity remained ambiguous even as he became more physically masculine.
Pages 31-55 Analysis
In this section, Nelson continues to explore questions of conformity and resistance. She quotes an exchange with Dodge in which he accuses her of “writ[ing] about all parts of [her] life except this, except the queer part,” and Nelson responds that she simply “[hasn’t] written about it yet” (32). The implication is that The Argonauts itself is that promised book, but there’s an element of irony at work. Although The Argonauts does focus on a queer relationship, it’s also about the transformation of that relationship into something that outwardly resembles the traditional nuclear family. By the end of the book, Nelson is in a married relationship with someone who typically reads as a man in public, and she has had a child with him. However, none of this necessarily negates the subversiveness of Nelson’s life and choices because part of the claim she makes in The Argonauts is that even the most seemingly conformist words and practices are open to reinterpretation.
Pregnancy is a clear example of this that Nelson provides. In Western societies, pregnancy and childrearing have been tightly associated with female gender norms, which has led some schools of feminism to downplay their importance. Looked at from another perspective, however, this downplaying just repeats a sexist societal tendency to devalue anything traditionally seen as feminine, even if that thing might prove helpful or instructive to people of all genders. Generally speaking, this is the view that Nelson takes in The Argonauts, which is why she reacts so strongly to the criticism of Gallop’s presentation. She sees the dismissal of Gallop’s discussion of maternity as part of academia’s broader refusal to seriously consider conventionally “feminine” realms of experience (emotion, the body, etc.). Implicitly, this is also one reason why Nelson is interested in “cave research” as a way of talking about mother-child relationships; historically, most writing about this relationship has been done by male observers aiming for objectivity, which arguably means they’re misunderstanding the relationship (and its intimacy, subjectivity, etc.) from the start.
Nelson’s interest in motherhood isn’t limited to literal pregnancy, childbirth, and nursing. Her discussion of these experiences reflects her broader understanding of what it means to care about and for someone. This is particularly clear in her use of the motif of “holding,” which she often uses in conjunction with the idea of “feeling real.” Drawing on Winnicott, Nelson suggests that the physical act of holding a baby affirms the child’s sense of himself as a living being. However, she also uses holding in a figurative sense to describe the ways in which we nurture the realities of our friends, family members, and romantic partners, which is why she’s able to claim that “sometimes […] Iggy’s small body holds [her own]” (45). Iggy’s very existence makes Nelson herself feel real. In a sense, then, Nelson suggests that any caring relationship can mirror the mother-child relationship; just as a mother holds her child (first within her body and then outside of it) as it develops into its unique self, we do the same for those around us as they discover and recreate themselves throughout their lives.
Because parenting is such a personal and intimate experience, Nelson’s exploration of motherhood also overlaps with her interest in particularity. In this section, she once again draws attention to language’s tendency to overgeneralize in a way that can undermine a particular person’s sense of self:
Wayne Koestenbaum tells an instructive story on this account: ‘Some psycho girlfriend of mine (decades ago!) Answered a long rhapsodic letter I’d written her with this terse, humiliating rebuff: ‘Next time, write to me.’ (45-46).
