I'm Jean Sorabella, and I'm a lecturer here at the Museum. I'm going to talk about motherhood
a subject very dear to my heart. It's a definition of a major part of my time right now.
As I have returned to some of the objects that I liked best as a child, like the Degas
dancers, I see that in addition to all of the dancers there are, concealed in the back, these
mothers. So the mothers were sitting there almost like anticipations
of the future that I've only really come to discover now.
In art, when you depict a mother, it seems she'd better be
doing her job well, and she's almost an ideal for mothers.
She makes it look so easy, and she's never, you know, punishing the Christ child, or giving him
a time-out, or you know, off exasperated in the corner. And in a way it's really nice to see
those images, because they give me, anyway, this chance to be still
with the things that are the most peculiar to motherhood. And then
when I had my little son, in particular, I thought about these pictures all the time
as though I were, in a way, living them in a way I had never imagined that I might.
Only from time to time do I see an image where it really seems to suggest
that a mother has any work to do. And I think when I come to the museum
it's lovely to see all of these children that are in a way cared
for by themselves. You know, little, little children who are without
runny noses, without whining, without trying to keep their bedtimes far away, where you have
two siblings relating to one another so harmoniously. I have, at the moment, two
children. If I could see them together like that every day I would feel so happy, and
the times when I actually do see them looking like that are sadly few at the moment.
One image I remember looking at a lot before I had any children is the Sleeping
Eros. And something I loved about it was how lifelike a portrayal of a sleeping
child it is. I'm sorry to report that my daughter would never go to sleep on a rock
and my son would never sleep on a rock. They need their blankey, they need their crib. So, in
a way, I feel like this statue is a weird kind of wish fulfillment. On the other side, though
it's Eros. It's not just a baby. And the genius of the Greeks in
imagining desire as a baby shows very clearly where desire leads.
One of my favorite mothers is the wonderful Venus. And I think that
there are lots of Venuses that don't show any trace of that physical
aspect of motherhood, but this Venus does and I love that about her.
In all of her voluptuous perfection, she is in no way a maidenly figure, and
she's here nude. And Rubens is so good at making the mother look desirable.
I just reread the biblical story of Ishmael, and it is so incredibly moving. I guess Hagar, the mother,
and her only, and it seems very beloved son, Ishmael, have been chased out into the wilderness.
And in the biblical story, Hagar places him under a bush, she goes a long way
away, she's run out of water and thinks he's going to die and says, “I don't
want to see this child die.” And that's every mother's worst nightmare, really
that your child won't survive you, or that your child will suffer.
And when I put myself into these scenarios and try to imagine
what these mothers must be suffering, then all the
little concerns of everyday motherhood really pale.
To me, motherhood is a tremendous chance to have a wonderful relationship with one's child
actually to produce children, to shape children for the
future. That's a huge responsibility and a great pleasure
on the other hand, terribly scary.