It is rather unusual to see single, solitary women depicted accurately in fiction. It’s as if, unobserved in life, they have also fled the stage of literature, their independence insulating them from narrative force.

I already feel, in some ways, that becoming my fiancé’s betrothed has meant agreeing to manage him, and I feel no little amount of dread when I consider multiplying this management duty by one or more further persons.

Is this, when it comes right down to it, the difference between creating a family and creating a piece of art? Does art rely upon individuality while family-making siphons from it? 

Maybe, in the end, all mothers are monsters. Maybe the only way to avoid becoming monstrous is to forgo motherhood entirely.

Motherhood would make of me someone I don’t know yet. What if she’s the opposite of the woman I’ve come to expect?

If in the future I find myself sometimes lonely and aimless, empty in an undefinable way, will I be able to talk about it without the question of children coming up?

It’s not surprising, I suppose, that I should worry that being a full person is incompatible with being a mother: in the narrative I have of my own mother’s life, her tenure as a person appears to end with me.