Mothering Molloy, or Beckett and Cutlery

When a child steals, what is sought (by the total child, i.e. the unconscious included) is not the object stolen; what is sought is the person, the mother, from whom the child has the right to steal because she is the mother. In fact, every infant at the start can truly claim the right to steal from the mother because the infant invented the mother, thought her up, created her out of an innate capacity to love. By being there the mother gave her infant, gradually, bit by bit, the person of herself as material for the infant to create into, so that in the end his live self-created mother was quite a lot like the mother we can agree about. (2006, 199). © Journal of Beckett Studies, 2019.