Maternal Künstlerroman

The term maternal Künstlerroman alludes to the tradition of the Künstlerroman (artist novel), which depicts an artist's growth to maturity. Traditionally, the artist portrayed is a man. However, since the mid-20th century, women have created fiction featuring mothers who are also artists. This genre is the subject of Portrait of the Mother-Artist: Class and Creativity in Contemporary Fiction by Nancy Gerber. She notes that all her examples features heroines who are outsiders to white, middle-class culture and are thus less affected by the motherhood/creative work dichotomy that has traditionally been imposed, in fiction as in reality, for women of that background.

The expectation on women to bear children in domesticity has historically dimmed their chances of artistic creation, thus their failure to create becomes a feature of their writing. This dilemma is reflected in Robert Southey's discouragement of Charlotte Brontë from writing seriously, although she ignored his advice. An early groundbreaking exception is the first-known author to write in the first person and identify herself in her writings, Enheduanna of ancient Sumerian literature, whose The Exaltation of Inanna used personal appeals and praise to the powerful surrogate mother goddess Inanna. In contrast, Virginia Woolf's imaginary Judith Shakespeare in A Room of One's Own explains the more common tragic failure of the artistically talented when trapped in a female body.

George Eliot's Daniel Deronda condemns Princess Alcharisi's preference of her singing career over nurturing her son Daniel, confining her to a domestic fate as she loses her talent. Elizabeth Barrett Browning in Aurora Leigh outlines the eponymous poet's development of her poetic skill in the face of opposition, evading marriage to the end of the poem, although she nurtures her “fallen” friend. Kate Chopin in The Awakening shows her protagonist Edna Pontellier divided between the lonely life of the artist and the sacrifice demanded by mothering, the dilemma she finally evades by committing suicide.

The aspiring writer in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's “The Yellow Wallpaper” descends into madness in her postpartum depression when prevented from writing. Doris Lessing's To Room Nineteen shows the competent commercial artist and mother of four descending into madness and suicide when unable to determine her role as simply wife and mother. Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse posits Mrs. Ramsay's creative manipulation of her circle in contrast to the prohibition on women's painting and writing, which Lily Briscoe breaks through by successfully completing her own painting.

Contemporary writing showing the traumas of artistic mothers includes Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye, which presents Elaine Risley's life journey illustrated through her artistic retrospective of sensitive paintings. A.S. Byatt in The Virgin in the Garden, Still Life, Babel Tower, and A Whistling Woman analyzes the artistic ambitions of women like Frederica Potter, who writes and works creatively in television; a strong story in Potter's The Matisse Stories called Art Work presents Mrs Brown, a cleaning lady who exhibits her imaginative work more successfully than the artistic family she works for.