Love my chicken tenders

Tender… Chicken Tender… Mmmm… I am hungry….

Off to a hambre start, I think that Debré’s novel encompasses so much with its fierce challenging on what it means to be a mother. Constance’s experience with a non-traditional motherhood being stripped of her son from her vindictive and upset ex-husband speaks to societal norms as does it to sacrifice. Constance deciding to pursue herself and her ambitions clashes with society’s script of a how a mother should act. A mother is not the same as the next mother, just as no two things are the same. She is deemed unfit to be a mother just because she refuses to follow the societal script of what a mother should appear like and behave like.

Though, due to Constance’s wants and needs, her ex-husband Laurent is able to manipulate the courts to remove her custody of Paul. This is quite interesting as he’s using uncomfortable accusations in order to ostracize Constance as well as create a divide between their son Paul and her. He’s framing her actions in a way that’s falsely narrating that she’s not fit to look after Paul nor wanting to. Society is quite readily up to back up Paul,  as we see when Debré writes of Constance’s experience “Laurent has been granted sole custody. I have only limited, supervised visitation rights, according to the ruling.” pg. 20. As we see here, Constance lost custody of Paul, hurting her immensely. Later on in the book, we see that she just wanted to have the right to see her son and have him stay. Later, Paul says “Paul told the judge he didn’t want to see me, that he never misses me.” pg. 158, which is important since this was a good day for her, as he mostly ignored her and wasn’t bothered about Constance. In the end of the book, Constance feels guilty but suddenly the guilt of her strained relationship with her son is absolved and washed away. She faces a point of acceptance, with or without her son’s love, as she’s come to realize that theres nothing more she can do which would remedy the situation; what will be, will be.

At some point, it’s that they’ve become so estranged that they’ve truly become strangers from one another. Constance’s memories of her son fade and she knows that nothing is really even working. Maybe in a more accepting and understanding culture, her life and Paul’s would have been different. My questions to the class is: do you think that Constance could have loved her child as she focused on herself? Also, What do you think of her choices to disregard societal approval, granted she understood the risks associated with her decisions?