Making Babies: Infants in Canadian Fiction

Elisabeth Anne MacDonald-Murray is a private scholar, writing and
editing in Souris, Manitoba.

As Sandra Sabatini points out in her introduction, while babies
frequently appear in literary works, there has been no serious literary
study of the presence of infants in Canadian literature. Although a few
studies have considered the many and various literary representations of
children and mothers (with or without their children), there has been no
attempt to explore the consistent and powerful role that babies
themselves play in fiction. Contrary to Margaret Atwood’s assertion
that infants merely function as a deus ex machina, a devise that appears
at the end of a story to solve a narrative problem, Sabatini argues that
the function and role of the infant is much more complex and diverse,
figuring as a tension between desire and rejection, and exploring a
paradigm of the conjunction between power and desire. Tracing the
development of and changing attitudes towards the role of the baby in
fiction, Sabatini notes the impact that social, historical, and
scientific contexts have had on the representation of infants, and
observes the difference between male and female writers’ portrayal of
babies.

Sabatini’s study specifically focuses on infants before they achieve
any mobility or language skills, and thus have the capability to further
the plot. Beginning with late 19th- and early 20th-century fictional
infants, the text follows the movement of the figure of the baby from
the periphery of the fictional world to a more central role as the baby
itself becomes invested with a degree of agency and personal value apart
from relational considerations. Yet, while Sabatini demonstrates that
the late 20th-century literary infant consciousness has taken on a new
importance in Canadian fiction, she notes the gendered nature of this
changing representation in both the family and society. She also
examines how the fictional depiction of the infant informs the
author’s representation of such social issues as maternal idealization
and rejection, maternal empowerment, paternal involvement, and
illegitimacy.

This provocative and thoughtful volume is sure to spark further
critical consideration of a hitherto overlooked literary figure.
Sabatini’s conclusion that the study of infant representation leads to
a deeper understanding of ourselves is a statement that calls for
further discussion.