Chaison, Nicole. Hausfrau Muthuh-Zine.
--. The Passion of the Hausfrau. New York: Villard Books, 2009.
The Passion of the Hausfrau is a text-heavy, collected comic book that grew out of the Hausfrau Muthuh-Zine, a tri-annual half-size zine that began in 2003. Hausfrau focuses on the demands of motherhood including childbirth, breastfeeding, exhaustion, and perpetual multi-tasking. It is presented with Gothic-lettered headings, with black and white, side-panel illustrations in a loose cartoonish style. Instead of square panels, Chaison tends to use circles. The Passion of the Hausfrau has also been adapted into a one-woman play. Chaison’s current work is a comic book blog, Resurgam.
Hausfrau is part-comic and part-prose, employing the classic hero journey structure, and borrowing heavily from Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces--Hausfrau uses quotations from Campbell throughout. The Passion of the Hausfrau uses the hero narrative as a frame for the un-glamourous daily life of the average North American housewife and stay-at-home mother. Hausfrau is presented in four parts: The Departure, The Initiation, Transition, and The Return.
In her article “The Mother as Epic Hero,” Kari Volkmann-Carlsen describes Hausfrau as presenting daily mothering as “only one trial in a very long odyssey” and that Chaison’s recurring challenge is “to balance the proverbial self, B.C. (before children) and the unfamiliar self, A.D. (after dilation)” (1). In a review of Hausfrau, Vanessa Bush suggests that women who “likewise feel unheralded for all they do will enjoy this hilarious look at the housewife and mother” adding that men might learn something too (55-56).
Each page of text is bordered with cartoon illustrations and dialogue. The illustrations often repeat the text rather than illuminate the narrative. The illustrations are often sequential and flesh out the story. It makes good use of run-ons, ample footnotes, and myriad pop culture references, making it a rather dense textual work.
Hausfrau is recommended for parents and zine fans alike. It can be found in various library graphic novel collections including the collection at Columbia University. It would be well-suited to a public library setting.
--. The Passion of the Hausfrau. New York: Villard Books, 2009.
The Passion of the Hausfrau is a text-heavy, collected comic book that grew out of the Hausfrau Muthuh-Zine, a tri-annual half-size zine that began in 2003. Hausfrau focuses on the demands of motherhood including childbirth, breastfeeding, exhaustion, and perpetual multi-tasking. It is presented with Gothic-lettered headings, with black and white, side-panel illustrations in a loose cartoonish style. Instead of square panels, Chaison tends to use circles. The Passion of the Hausfrau has also been adapted into a one-woman play. Chaison’s current work is a comic book blog, Resurgam.
Hausfrau is part-comic and part-prose, employing the classic hero journey structure, and borrowing heavily from Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces--Hausfrau uses quotations from Campbell throughout. The Passion of the Hausfrau uses the hero narrative as a frame for the un-glamourous daily life of the average North American housewife and stay-at-home mother. Hausfrau is presented in four parts: The Departure, The Initiation, Transition, and The Return.
In her article “The Mother as Epic Hero,” Kari Volkmann-Carlsen describes Hausfrau as presenting daily mothering as “only one trial in a very long odyssey” and that Chaison’s recurring challenge is “to balance the proverbial self, B.C. (before children) and the unfamiliar self, A.D. (after dilation)” (1). In a review of Hausfrau, Vanessa Bush suggests that women who “likewise feel unheralded for all they do will enjoy this hilarious look at the housewife and mother” adding that men might learn something too (55-56).
Each page of text is bordered with cartoon illustrations and dialogue. The illustrations often repeat the text rather than illuminate the narrative. The illustrations are often sequential and flesh out the story. It makes good use of run-ons, ample footnotes, and myriad pop culture references, making it a rather dense textual work.
Hausfrau is recommended for parents and zine fans alike. It can be found in various library graphic novel collections including the collection at Columbia University. It would be well-suited to a public library setting.