Motherhood, Disability, and Rebellion: Constructing the Mother in Hobb’s Liveship Traders Trilogy

Abstract

Like many fantasy works, Robin Hobb’s Liveship Traders trilogy is set in a patriarchal society, and the author, among other topics, portrays a variety of women characters and different ways they deal with it. There is limited research on Hobb’s literary opus and feminist readings of the Liveship Traders trilogy are confined to student theses. Therefore, this paper aims to expand and add to the existing corpus of feminist and feminist disability readings by focusing on a character whose portrayal serves as a critique of the patriarchal system and the subordination of women through the intersectionality of gender and disability. The paper portrays how Mother’s disability and gender role intersect to create specific conditions of othering and subordination that lead to her internalization of the role and attempts at rebellion against imposed constraints. Firstly, based on the research of Nancy J. Chodorow, Andrea O’Reilly, Catherine Rottenberg, and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, a short overview of feminist approaches to motherhood and feminist disability theory is provided. The paper then examines the role of violence, trauma, and naming as elements of identity construction. The chapter dealing with the mother–son relationship shows how Kennit others Mother, and the final chapter talks about Mother’s internalization of motherhood and rebellion against Kennit. The paper concludes that Mother is othered by Kennit due to his perception of her failure as a mother and her disability that allows him to ascertain his power over her and serves as a cautionary tale of the effects patriarchal motherhood and disability can have on women.