Interrogating Institutionalized Discrimination: Gender, Motherhood, and the Struggle for Agency in The School for Good Mothers

Abstract

This study investigates the systemic oppression and the protagonist’s struggle for autonomy within a dystopian framework. Employing a qualitative descriptive method through the lens of Simone de Beauvoir’s existentialist feminism, the analysis identifies three core mechanisms of gender inequality: the "othering" of women, the enforcement of restrictive social roles, and pervasive social conditioning. The research demonstrates how the protagonist, Frida, is institutionally constructed as an "unfit" mother and subjected to carceral surveillance designed to enforce monolithic, patriarchal ideals of motherhood. It further examines Frida’s fraught attempts to reclaim her agency and identity against a punitive system that pathologizes maternal deviation. Ultimately, the findings posit the novel as a critical allegory for how institutionalized gender biases violently constrain women’s freedom, while Frida’s resilient, though imperfect, resistance underscores the enduring necessity of the fight for existential self-determination and genuine equality.