The Baby on the Fire Escape
Creativity, Motherhood, and the Mind-Baby Problem
27 June 2023
Description
An insightful and provocative exploration of the relationship between motherhood and art through the lives of women artists and writers
What does it mean to create, not in “a room of one’s own” but in a domestic space? Do children and genius rule each other out? In The Baby on the Fire Escape, award-winning biographer Julie Phillips traverses the shifting terrain where motherhood and creativity converge.
With fierce empathy and vivid prose, Phillips evokes the intimate struggles of brilliant artists and writers, including Doris Lessing, who had to choose between her motherhood and herself; Ursula K. Le Guin, who found productive stability in family life; Audre Lorde, whose queer, polyamorous union allowed her to raise children on her own terms and Alice Neel, who once, to finish a painting, was said to have left her baby on the fire escape of her New York apartment. A meditation on maternal identity and artistic greatness, The Baby on the Fire Escape illuminates some of the most pressing conflicts in contemporary women’s lives.
Reviews
"For Phillips, the lives she wants to depict are not accounts of maternal self-sacrifice and denial, but instead, narratives that portray the mother as a hero." — Frieda Klotz, Sunday Independent
"The Baby on the Fire Escape looks at the extreme ways some female artists have overcome the restraints of parenthood… The book’s strength lies in Phillips’s nimble talents as a portraitist." — Lucy Scholes, The Sunday Telegraph
"Does motherhood prevent women from having an active creative life, or enhance it? Do babies need to be out of mind as well as out of sight for creative work to be done? […] Julie Phillips has written a spirited and thoughtful account of a handful of figures from mid-20th-century Britain and America who have grappled with these dilemmas." — Lara Feigel, RA Magazine
"The opening section on Alice Neel is a searing account of the complexities of balancing (or not) being a mother and an artist—and the often heavy price women pay… [The Baby on the Fire Escape] explores the difficult issues around the subject with no judgment and or neat conclusions—and is all the richer for it." — José da Silva, The Art Newspaper
"A brilliant, vital text" — Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett, author of The Year of the Cat
