Wilpert’s novel “The Beared Woman” – Children in times of crisis

“She didn’t like children, she only liked a child herself.” That should be one of the most formative sentences from Bettina Wilpert’s new novel. After “nothing that happens to us” and “drivers”, in which she addressed patriarchal societies earlier and today, Wilpert deals with “the bearded woman” with being a mother and being a mother in the present.

The main character Alex goes to her home to Bavaria to help her mother after an accident, so she was separated from her one -year -old daughter for the first time. The child lacks her like an amputated part of the body. At the same time, Alex enjoys being a person outside the mother role. And again as long as she wants to sleep or shower without having to do the tasks of everyday life with a baby on your arms. But despite all efforts, she does not regret her decision to have received a child.

The expectations that are placed on Alex are shaped on the one hand by their Christian dominated home and on the other hand by modern feminism. Is it even justifiable to invite herself to Frausein as a feminist woman – in a world characterized by crises? What is resolved, what is your own wish? Which relationships are lost on the way, what do you get? When did Alex become the person who is annoyed by the demos on the doorstep because they wake the child instead of standing on the street themselves?

The modern woman doesn’t just have to be a mother and housewife. It must be facing and is best not too dependent in romantic relationships. It has to be emancipated and strong, but should not become repellent and cold. As a mother, she should love her children, she should educate her for independent, but also obedient children. These ambivalent expectations are the product of a modern society in which women and queers have largely fought for economic independence from men in Germany.

Wilpert tries to fathom this balancing act between love, fatigue, fear and joy. Being a mother is a highly intimate and at the same time highly visible area. Mothers are a projection surface. Developing individuality is – regardless of the fact that you depend on your own body and later a child – a big task. It is constantly evaluated in public how you have the child under control or whether you are too controlling. “She doesn’t need to explain her desire to have children rationally,” Alex finally concludes. “He does not require any explanation and no reason. She wanted children, others don’t want. It is her desire, society or not. “

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It is of course not that easy. Alex, like from all childless friends, has removed from her childless sister last year, Alex has to recognize. There is also a crisis in other friendships because Alex has little time and because so little can be spoken so little about whether the children’s wars are something worthwhile or not. For this she met mothers with whom she has little in common. There is hardly any friendships about the exchange about wound breasts from breastfeeding.

Already her pregnancy makes Alex Anders think about her body and gender identity. “She always wanted to be like a man and rejected everything female. (…) Only when she started pulling clothes again for the first time in over ten years because she found it more pleasant than squeezing the round belly into pregnancy pants, the further time, she still tasted that she understood that she rejected a certain form of socialized femininity. It is difficult to get it out. “

Wilpert summarizes what warrant, breastfeeding, caring people do not at all or only discuss with close friends or other mothers – and what men don’t even think about. She wanted to “describe the physical in detail because it is the reality of the life of many people,” she said on DLF culture.

In the middle of an anti -feminist backlash, a time of upgrading and social cuts, this book is like a small island, optionally for escape from everyday life or for escape to everyday life. As with her first books, the plot of “Die Bärtige Woman” is based on Wilpert’s own experience. In a sober language, not floral or pathetic, but clear, yet contradictory, she writes about one of the central questions of our time: Can we create a society for all people?

Bettina Wilpert: The bearded woman. Criminal publisher, 192 pages, born, € 22