The Lost Daughter

The Lost Daughter questions the assumption that motherhood is every woman’s ultimate purpose. Through the experiences of several women who do or do not have children, the novel addresses the taboo of maternal ambivalence and unravels the myth of the so-called natural mother. It explores the multifaceted nature of female identity, which is often crushed by the responsibility of motherhood. Although “[a] woman’s body does a thousand different things” (36), it is relegated to this one absolute purpose.

The women in the novel can be divided into two primary categories: those who believe that motherhood is a woman’s most important role and those who seek fulfillment outside motherhood. Leda and Nina belong to this latter category. Initially, Leda wants children. However, it is difficult to separate her desire from societal expectations in which women are meant to have children, and not wanting one is unthinkable. The romantic image of motherhood is shattered almost immediately upon having her babies. A “crushing weight of responsibility” replaces the optimism of youth (42), and “every other game was over for” Leda, a 25-year-old woman at the time (37). Leda found she could be nothing but a mother, like her embittered female ancestors before her.

Nina at first appears as a foil to Leda: a “perfect mother” who embraces her role contentedly. However, Leda learns that Nina is secretly struggling too. Nina wants to know the details of why Leda left her daughters but approaches the subject cautiously, showing “hostility” when Leda expresses the happiness she felt away from her daughters. The taboo surrounding material ambivalence makes it difficult for the women to connect and help one another. Nina does not dare articulate her restlessness nor ask Leda questions directly. She resorts instead to making “a gesture to indicate a vertigo but also a feeling of nausea” (119). The topic is difficult to address because other women, like Rosaria and Lucilla, cannot imagine womanhood without motherhood. Failing as a mother is akin to failing as a woman.

Leda often defines motherhood as a “shattering” or a “sense of dissolving” (84). She feels that women aren’t allowed to be anything but mothers, and this denies the complexity of female identity. Leda, a creative and educated woman, struggles to exist in a society that doesn’t allow her to inhabit multiple identities. She gives up her daughters because she cannot simultaneously care for them and pursue her career, but she loves and misses them. When she returns, she is “resigned” to the only model of motherhood that has been presented to her: “living very little for [her]self and a great deal for the two children” (118). Slowly she learns how to put her daughters first.

Leda’s story addresses the social narratives surrounding pregnancy and motherhood, which tend to romanticize the experience while obscuring the difficulties. Because these narratives convince all women that motherhood should come naturally, women like Leda and Nina, who struggle with maternal ambivalence, are ostracized and ignored.