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THE PROBLEMATICS OF MOTHERHOOD
IN TWENTIETH CENTURY WOMEN'S FICTION :
A SELECT STUDY
A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE
REQUIREMENTS FOR THE AWARD OF THE DEGREE OF
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
IN ENGLISH
POONAM MINOCHA
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
PONDICHERRY UNIVERSITY
PONDICHERRY
DECEMBER I995

Dr. N. NATARAJAN
Senlor Lecturer
Department of English
Pond~cherry U~vers~iy
PONDICHERRY - 605 014
CERTIFICATE
Thls 1s to certlfy that the d~ssertatlon ent~tled 'THE PROBLEMATICS OF
MOTHERHOOD IN TWENTIETH CENTURY WOMEN'S FICTION :
A SELECT STUDY' submlttcd to the Pond~cherry Un~vers~ty In partlal
fulfilment of the requirements for the award of the degree of DOCTOR
OF PHILOSOPHY IN ENGLISH, IS a record of orlglnal research work
done by MS. POONAM MINOCHA durlng the per~od of her study 1992-
95 m the Department of Engllsh, Pondlcheny Unlvers~ty under my supervlslon
and guidance, and that the dlssertat~on has not formed before the basls for
the award of any Degree, D~ploma, Assoclatcshlp. Fellowsh~p, or any other
51mllar tttles
'L1 .A* .- s T'JC
HEAD OF THE DEPA$dNT
nomma. kU
Deprlnunl Of PnZ1l.b
(.wDICB.WRT C'XWFA9W
-NDEWFPPP-W' -1

POONAM MINOCHA
Research Scholar
Department of Engl~sh
Pond~chemy Unlvers~ty
PONDICHERRY - 605 014
I hereby declare that the dtssertat~on enbtled 'THE PROBLEMATICS OF
MOTHERHOOD IN TWENTIETH CENTURY WOMEN'S FICTION : A
SELECT STUDY' submitted to the Pond~cheny Untverslty tn part181 fulfilment
of the requuernents for the award of the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
IN ENGLISH, la a record of orlg~nal research work done by tne under the super-
vlslon and gu~dance of Dr. N. NATARAJAN, Senlor Lecturer, Department of
Engllsh, Pond~cheny Unlverslty, and that ~t has not formed before the bas~s for the
award of any Degree, D~ploma, Assoc~atesh~p, Fellowsh~p or any other smlar
ntles
Stgnature

PAGE
PREFACE
ABSTRACT
A NOTE ON DOCUMENTATION
I INTRODUCTION PROBLEMATICS OF MOTHERHOOD 001
I1 FEMININE MOTHERHOOD 030
111 FEMINIST MOTHERHOOD 083
IV TECHNOLOGICAL MOTHERHOOD 143
V THE AESTHETICS OF MOTHERHOOD 183
V- CONCLUSION 238
BIBLIOGRAPHY 263

The hand that rocks the cradle does not rule the world
In fact, from my observation of mothers In a soclety llke
that of ours, I have come to the conclusion that it is
precisely rocklng the cradle that prevents the hand from
rullng the world
This set me thinking - Why 1s ~t that
motherhood has become an oppressive rather than a fulflllrng
experience for women'
Why does the choice always have to be
an either/or one - motherhood or career, motherhood or
~ndlvlduality'
To get answers to these questlons, I took
recourse to the literature of various countries, spanning
the twentieth century, that glve their own perspective on
motherhood, and attempted to llnk them to the soclal reallty
of the past and present, whlch deflnltely has ~ ts bearlng on
the future
A few questlons have been answered through thls
study, some have become even more complicated, and many more
are stlll open to d~scusslon
An Issue as delrcate and
sensitive as motherhood - wlth lts blologlcal,
psychological, famlllal, soclal and religious ramlflcatlons
- no doubt, stlrs up varlous controversial debates In thls
thesis, I have attempted to conslder all sldes of the
argument before reachlng a consensus

I would like to thank many intelligent minds and caring
hearts who have facilitated the completion of my thesis My
guide, Dr.N.Natarajan, possessing both of these, has spurred
me on in my work right from its inception tlll the very end
From initiating my interest in feminism during my M A and
M Phil days to sustaining and developing it, his influence
is indelible With his erudition, perceptiveness,
intelligence, tolerance and cordiality, he has been a source
of lnsplration and guidance at every step of my research
TO Prof. P.Marudanayagau, from whom I have been
receiving excellent advice, I am immensely indebted My
thanks are also due to Dr.K.S.Ramamurti. Vislting Professor
to our department, whose valuable coments and suggestions
have Influenced my work
I take this opportunity to thank other members of the
faculty - Dr P Balasamy. Dr P N Ramanl, Dr Sulatha
Vilayaraghavan and the members of the Research Club for
their questions, dlscusslons and constructive criticism on
the occasion of the presentation of my seminar papers
I would llke to place on record my acknowledgement to
the libraries of the following centres and unlversltles
ASRC, Hyderabad, CIEFL, Hyderabad, BCL, Hyderabad, Shastri
Indo-Canadlan Institute, New Delhi, JNLI, New Delhi, Delhi
11

university. New Delhi; Pondicherry University, Pondicherry
I particularly thank the ASRC for selecting me as
participant for the X American Civilization Course and
awarding me a study grant.
I am thankful to the UGC for selecting me as an
eligible candidate for the award of the Junior Research
Fellowship
I thank Mr Vaithianathan, Bright Data Processing, for
having typed this dissertation with great care and patience.
Finally, words seem to fail me when I move on to thank
all dear ones for their love, support and encouragement
Mummy and Papa's affectionate guidance saw me through at
every stage of my work My husband Sivaramakrishna's loving
support sustained me even in times of depression and
loneliness Devika's sincere friendship infused a touch of
warmth to hostel life I will always cherish the invaluable
moments spent with Sharon and Rocky because of whom I could
experience 'a home away from home'

A B S T R A C T
The emergence of feminism has resulted in a heightened
awareness in women, ensued by a questioning of their Status
in society and their familial roles, especially that of
motherhood. The sharp distinction made in the feminist
parlance between woman's 'nature' and 'culture' has had its
impact on the polarisatlon of the old monolith - motherhood
- now split into 'motherhood as biological experience' and
'motherhood as soclal institution' Femlnism Itself 1s
divlded over this issue as motherhood encompasses both the
capacity to free women from bondage and the wlnerabillty to
enslave them further Influenced by these attitudlnal
changes, contemporary women thlnkers have developed
crltlques of long-standing assumptions about motherhood,
highlighting its oppressive rather than its celebratory
aspects It has been perceived however that societal values
have not changed as fast as women are changing In such a
society, how do contemporary women writers react to the
changing attitudes towards motherhood' To examine this
malor question and matters related to lt, a select study of
global women wrlters from America, Black-Amerzca, Britaln,
Canada and India - is undertaken In this dissertation

CEAPTER - 11 INTRODUCTIONS PROBLEMATICS OF MOTBEREOOD makes
a global survey of the changing attitudes towards motherhood
in the context of the feminist movement, highlighting issues
such as the creation of the mystlque of motherhood by
religion / myth, patriarchal expectations of a mother and
her reaction to the role, psychological and social problems
involved In bearing and rearm9 chrldren, all of which point
to the hiatus between the experience of motherhood, and the
institutlonalleation of lt The chapter further provides a
literary backdrop to the authors/texts taken up for study
Afro-American - Alice Walker's Meridian 119771 and Toni
Morrison's Beloved (19871, American - Charlotte Perkins
Gilman's Berland 119151 and Marge Piercy's Woman On The Edge
of Time (19761, Brltlsh - Margaret Drabble's The Millstone
119651 and Dorls Lessing's The Sunrmer Before the Dark
(1973). Canadian - Margaret Laurence's The Diviners (1974)
and Margaret Atwood's The Bandmaid's Tale (19861, and Indian
- Kamala Markandaya's Nectar in a Sieve (1954) and Shashi
Deshpande's The Dark Holda No Terrors 11980)
CBAPTER -11: FEMININE MOTHERHOOD focuses on the manner in
which patriarchal institutions with religious sanctlon have
moulded women into femlnlne mothers as a consequence of
which motherhood becomes synonymous with femininity The
chapter examines how women's capacities for mothering and
v

abilities to get gratification from it are strongly
internalized and psychologically enforced by being built
into the feminine psychic structure
/
The malor points of focus of this chapter are the ways
In which feminlne motherhood socially conditions mothers
through reductive images of motherhood that override a
women's personal Self, ldentlfies women wlth thelr motherrole
and values them only for thelr chlld-bearing
capacities, demands a renunciation of aims, desires and
careers of mothers, inculcating in them the ability to
relate to others only through their familial role, lnstlls
In mothers a deslre for sons rather than daughters so that
the patriarchal rule is perpetuated, confrnes them to the
domestic sphere, creating 'The Angel In the House', asserts
that mother-love is supposed to be unconditional as female
anger threatens the lnstitutlon of motherhood, uses
religion, myth, customs and rltuals to determine famllial
structures that subordinate women
The varying degrees of conformity to feminine
motherhood are also indicated --- while
Rukmani of Nectar
in a Sieve is a meek model of the feminine mother, Saru's
mother in The Dark Bolds No Terrora 1s an assertive,
domineering and vicious one
Kate in The Summer Before the
Dark relinquishes her role when she reallzes lts strategic
v1

manipulation of her self whereas Mrs Hill of Meridian is
unable to do so Though Sethe in ~eloved identifies herself
primarily as a mother, she 1s capable of translating
maternal silence into maternal anger
CBAPTER 111: FEMINIST MOTHERBOOD - The conflict between
women's desires and the domlnant values of feminlne
motherhood, which made women voice their protest, led to a
change in attitude towards motherhood, which one can term
the 'feminist' phase The transition from the 'feminine' to
the 'feminist' - which begins with the realization by women
that the patriarchal institution of motherhood is not the
natural human condition - forms the crux of thrs chapter
Feminlst motherhood signals a revolt of the
protagonists against their mothers which is not so much a
personal attack on the mothers as it 1s agalnst the
institution they represent, a debunking of the maternal
instinct, the myth/mystique of motherhood through the
protagonist's questioning/re]ection of the maternal role
foisted on her, an attempt to break free from the image of
the angel in the house whlch is crucial in placing the women
In a eocietal context beyond the role of a mother, a veering
towards a more personalised mothering that helps the mothers
gain a room of their own, an involvement of fathers too in

the rearing of children, making mothering an 'androgynous'
activity rather than a 'feminine' one
The problematics of motherhood is dealt through the
mother - daughter conflict in Meridian, Beloved, The Dark
Holds NO Terrors and The Diviners. The Summer Before the
Dark portrays Kate's journey from her state of happy
passivity to disillusionment in her roles as wife and
mother, the movement of Rosamund of the The Millstone is
lust the opposlte as she moves from an Initial scepticism
and fear of motherhood to an understanding of its loys
CHAPTER IV: TECENOLOGICAL MOTBKRHOOD discusses the
ideological treatment of technological motherhood promoted
by Hi-tech reproductive strategies and lts relation to
feminlneifeminist motherhood In three utopiasidystoplas
namely Gilman's Herland, Piercy's Woman On The Edge of Time
and htwood's The Handmaid's Tale
Eerland excludes men from
the process of reproduction by attributing to its women
Inhabitants the power of parthenogenetic reproduction
Piercy's utopla, which has ~ t s scientific backlng In
ectogenesis, views technological reproduction as the means
of eliminating sexism, racism and classlsm
htwood's
dystopla, a critique of surrogate motherhood, envrsions what
the drastic effects of a technological revolutlon may be

This chapter explores the major questions Does women's
liberation requlre a biological revolution? Should women
relinquish their reproductive roles and take recourse to
techniques of reproduction such as artificial insemination
by donor, in vitro fertilizat~on and embryo transfer, or
should they retain thelr reproductive powers in order to
gain the actual experience of mothering, at the same time
ensuring that it is not talnted by the politlcs of the
patriarchal institution of motherhood The chapter further
delves Into the repercussions of reproductive techniques -
ellmination of stereotyped roles, disruption of heterosexual
patterns and nuclear Eamlly structures, collectlvlzed
rearing, and the obliteration of sexlsm, raclsm and classlsm
from socrety
CaAPTER V:
TEE AESTHETICS OF MOTEERBOOD shlfts the focus
from the thematlc to aesthetic aspects of motherhood
lndlcatlng how a self-conscious femlnlst narrative point of
view, structure, genre, imagery and myth contribute to
working out the problematlcs of motherhood
Classifying the texts lnto those wrltten from a
daughter's perspective and those narrated from a mother's
viewpoint, the chapter shows how the former mode of
narration in Tho Dark Eolds No Terrors and Meridian ecllpses

the mother, in the process 'otherlng' her
In contrast, the
maternal discourse of Beloved, The Diviners and The
Mills tone evolves a new conception of subjectivity
creating a space in which mothers can articulate their
stories, assume a maternal posltion and speak In a maternal
voice
The double-voiced narration as a result of the woman
speaking both as mother and daughter 1s also studled
by
The
chapter further indicates how the utopian genre, employed In
Herland and W m n On The Edge of Time
facilitates the
femlnlst purport by making the impossible seem plausible
The Randmaid's Tale interestingly illustrates that a man's
utopia can be a woman's dystopla
Finally, Images and
underlying myths are studled to deplct the manner in whlch
thelr lmpllcit lnteractlon reinforces the theme of
femlnlne/feminlst motherhood
CEAPTER VI: CONCLUSION takes up the threads of argument once
agaln to explore the pluralistic attitudes towards
motherhood
It attempts to evolve a definition of feminist
motherhood, emphasizing that ~t is neither a bllnd
acceptance of motherhood nor an outright rejection, rather a
questlon of free, uncoerced and genuine cholces between
motherhood and other llfe-patterns Further, the chapter
discusses the issues arislng from the earl~er chapters -
issues such as shared parenting, integratron of motherhood
X

and career, single parenting, ambivalence in mother -
daughter relations, mother-blame, repercussions of
technological motherhood on family structures, and the
(in)compatability between feminism and motherhood.

A NOTE ON DOCUMENTATION
For quotations from the primary sources, the following
editions are used and references to pages have been
incorporated parenthetically with the abbreviations against
the titles
Atwood, Margaret 1986 The Handmaid's Tale Boston
Houghton Mifflin
HT
Deshpande, Shashl 1980 The Dark Holds No Terrors
Delhi Vikas Publishers
Drabble, Margaret 1965 The Millstone
and Nicolson, 1978
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins 1915 Herland
Books, 1979
Laurence, Margaret 1974 The Diviners
and Stewart-Bantam Ltd , 1985
New
DH
London Weidenfeld
MS
New York Pantheon
H
Toronto McClelland
D
Lessing, Dons 1973 The Summer Before the Dark Great
Britain Penguin Books, 1982
SBD
Markandaya, Kamala 1954 Nectar in a Sieve Bombay Jaico
Publishing House, 1980
NS
Morrison, Toni 1987 Beloved New York New American
Llbrary
B
Plercy, Marge 1976 Woman On The Edge of Time
Alfred A Knopf
New York
WET
Walker. Alice 1976 Meridian New York Harcourt M
Reference- to secondary sources are also glven
parenthetically in the body of the text

INTRODUCTION : PROBLEllATICS OP XOTEERBOOD
I' m not queetionlng maternal love.. . I'm
questioning maternal instlnct
- Elisabeth Badinter
1.1.0. The women's movement has touched the llves of many
women, radically transfomlng the nature of thelr everyday
experiences
Insplred by these changes, femlnlst theorists
and creatlve wrlters are developing crltlques of established
lnstltutlons and old social orders, challenging long-
standlng assumptlons about social structures and women's
positlon In them
Especlally durlny the second half of the
twentieth century, women have been strivlng to contest these
systems of power developed by patriarchy
They seek to
explaln why women contlnue to be marglnallsed and reveal how
flxed assumptlons about an essential female nature have
hlstorlcally shaped all aspects of women's lives,
lnfluenclng thelr psychological, physical and soclal well-
being
1.1.1. AS a result of the emerglng femlnlst awareness,
women's famlllal roles were the flrst to be questioned - a
revlslon/re-vlslon of femlnlne stereotypes being the logical
outcome of such an awareness
The patriarchally-dictated.
long-exlstlng stereotypes of woman as a passive, docile and

2
voiceless being gave way to a redefinition of women by
themselves No longer willing to slip into slots alloted to
them by a male-dominated society, women wake up amidst
problems and travails, seeklng to define themselves in terms
of what they really are, rather than what society wants them
to be - a mere wife, mother or home-maker
1.1.2. The institution of motherhood has undergone
enormous changes in the wake of the fernlnist movement With
various psychological and societal complexltles Involved and
wlth centuries of myth folsted on motherhood, the
dismantling of this patriarchal institution rendered the
task a complicated and problematic one Even if changes
could be effected at the psychological and cultural levels,
women's blologlcal potential, thelr reproductive capacity.
among all the differences between men and women, was the
most unllkely to undergo a change Chained both by biology
and society to the mother-role, women realize that this
role, thrust upon them, erased the actual experlence of
mothering Socletal expectations of the 'ideal' mother
marred the actual personal experlence of givlng birth to
and nurturing the child
1.1.3. This strange discrepancy between the reallty of
their lives and the mother-role to which they were trying to
conform led feminists such as Adrienne Rlch to question the

3
institution of motherhood In her book Of W a u n Born, Rich
distinguishes between motherhood as "the potential
relationship of any woman to her powers of reproduction and
to children" and motherhood as "the znstitutlon whlch arms
at ensuring that that potentlal - and all women - shall
remain under male control" (1976 131 Rich's distlnction
can be expressed as the dlfference between the experience of
mothering and the instltutlon of motherhood, or as the
dlfference between women decldlng who, when, how and where
to mother and men making these decisions for women
1.1.4. Wlthin the constraints posed by the lnstltutlon of
motherhood, equality appeared elusive As the institutlon
of motherhood was belng naturallsed and universalised by a
patriarchal society, denylng the optional character of
motherhood, motherhood began to be promoted as the only
optlon, as a compulsory social institutlon Women began to
experience an ambivalent situation when they reallzed that
thelr reproductlve capacities both shackled them wlthln
patriarchy and also placed them beyond it Havlng children
provlded growth and opened new perspectives, but the soclal
construction of motherhood could be restrlctrve
1.1.5. The instltutlon has both constrained and degraded
women's potentialities It has used mothers as a means to
an end As it was necessary for the economy that ch~ldren

e produced, patriarchal thought has ordered women to
restrlct themselves to motherhood
4
Hartmann's defrnltion of
'patrrarchy' includes such a systematic manlpulat~on of
women's reproduction
Accord~ng to Hartmann, patriarchy 1s
"a hierarchical set of soclal relations among men, whlcn has
a materlal base In men's control of women's labor power and
restrlctlon of women's sexuality, either cowards
reproductive purposes or towards satrsfylng the needs of
men" lclted In Gordon 1990 91
Nancy Chodorow, In her book.
The Reproductzon of Mothering, argues char motherrng was
reproduced, both at the level of soclal organlzatlon and at
the level of lnd~vlduai development by a complex system that
depended upon the famlly for ~ rs contmulty
She polncs to
the family as the lnstltutzon wlthln whlch the economlc and
social requirements of the whole soclety are met by meacs of
the creatlon of approprzare personality structures for the
roles to be played wlthin 1t
1.1.6. Such an ~nstltutlonailzat~on of famliy strucr\lres
and the role of women In them prompted Slmone de Beauvolr to
state In her book, The Second Sex, that one is not born, but
rather, one becomes a woman - thus formulating the
dlstlnctlon between sex and gender, and suggesting that
gender is an aspect of ldentrty gradually acqulred
Thls
distinction further discredits the notlon that anatomy 1s
destlny, 'sex' being the zw~arlant, anatomically disanct

5
aspect of the female body and 'gender' the cultural meanrng
and form that that body acqulres Also, the sex/gender
dichotomy brings out the difference between belng a female
and belng a woman, and one therefore may be born a female,
but becomes a woman
1.1.7. Slmllarly, one 1s not born, but becomes a mother
Motherhood 1s more than the blologlcal process of
reproduction
As an lnstltutlon. ~t conslsts of customs,
traditions, conventions, bellefs, attitudes, mores, laws,
rules, precepts, and a host of other ratlonal and non-
ratlonal norms whlch deal wlth the care and rearmg of
chlldren
Thls dlssertatlon 1s concerned wrth both the ways
by whlch soclety lnstltutlonallzes one of lts important
functions, namely, the bearlng and rearlng of chlldren, and
the forces - cultural, eth~cal, economic, polltlcal and
technological - that shape its operation It 1s an
exploration of the problematlsatlon of motherhood In a
soclal context, embedded ln a polltlcal lnstltutlon, In
femlnlst terms - through the study of selecc lrterary texts
1.2.0. The changlng attlrudes towards motherhood have
been lnscrlbed In llterary texts of varlous
countries/cultures, for now nc llterary text 1s Ignorant /
Innocent of ~deology
Thls dlssertatlon focuses on the
transltlon ln the concept of motherhood as enshrlnecl In

twentreth century llterary texts by women wrlters of
different countries and cultures ---- hfro-Arner~can,
Amerlcan, Britlsh, Canadlan and Indian
~SSU~S, the texts selected for study are
Afro-American Allce Walker's Meridian (1977)
Amerlcan
Brltlsh
Canadlan
Ton1 Morrison's ~eloved (19871
To examlne these
Charlotte Perklns Gllrnan's Herland
119151
Marge Plercy's Woman On The Edge of T me
(1976)
Margaret Dranble's The Millstone I19651
Dorls Lesslng's The Smer Before the
Dark I19731
Margaret Laurence's The Dlvlners 119741
Margaret Atwood's The Handmaad's
119861
Tale
Karnala Markandaya's Nectar in a Sieve
119541
Shashl Deshpande's The Dark Holds No
Terrors 11980)
Although a hosc of other fernlnlst wrlters have wrltten on
thls sensltlve yet challenging Issue, thls drssertatlon
restricts ltself to one text each by the above authors,
taklng them as representatrves of thelr mllleu.

1.2.1. The dissertation takes for ~ t s base the three
phases In the evolution of women's literature - femlnlne,
femlnlst and female - as formulated by Elalne Showalter the
femlnlne phase belng one where women wrote In an effort to
equal the literature by men, the femlnlst phase, a conscious
revolt aga~nst patrlarchal norms, and the female phase
relectlng both lmitatlon and revolt In favour of an
autonomous l~terature (Showalter 1989 405) Allce Walker's
dellneatlon of the three phases In her women characters -
the suspended women, the assimilated women, and the emergent
women - has a strlklng correspondence to Showalter's
dlvlslons
Extending both Showalter and Walker's dlvls~ons
to the concept of motherhood, and uszng these dlvls~ons
ldeologlcally as well as hlstorlcally, one can discern these
phases In the concept of motherhood also
femlrlne
motherhood sponsored by the patrlarchal cultures /
rellglons, femlnlst motherhood sponsored by femxrlst
z!.eorlsts In general, and female motherhood sponsored ty a
Seczion of recent Franco-Amerlcan theorists
Added to tkese
1s the advent of technological motherhood sponsored by HI-
tech reproductlve strategies adopted In recent femlrlst
utopian / dystoplan texts
Wlth these changlng attltcdes
and approaches to lt, the lnstltutlon of motherhood 1s so
polarized and problematlzed that lt becomes an area of smdy
- a dlsclpllne by ltself - whlch 1s termed here as

8
'Problematics of Motherhood' Thls chapter provides a global
perspective of motherhood - a historical, cultural and
llterary backdrop - tracing the existence of motherhood
patterns as enshrined In Eastern and Western rellglons,
myths and literatures down the centuries and across varlous
mllleus, rndlcating how these factors play on the fenale
psyche, naturalislng and lngralnlng both the terrlble and
benevolent aspects of motherhood
1.3.0. The role of rellglon In structuring the
lnscltutlon of motherhood cannot be overlooked Over the
centuries, cultural practices have been 3ustlf1ed on
rellglous grounds Even customs whlch prove detrimental to
the soclety or the individual have been ]ustlfled on acccunt
of havlng relrglous / mytholoylcal precedents Wtere
motherhood 1s concerned, rellglon provldes models of rhe
ldeal mother, taklng lt for granted that women follow them
In all respects The flgure of the Vlrgln Mary stands at
ttle helm as a model of Christian vlrtues, both pagan and
Chrlstlan Images of the mother domlnate Afro-Amerllan
belleis, and in Indla, the concept of the ideal Hlndu wcmn
1s based on mother-goddesses and mythlc models from the
Rsmayana, Mahabharata and other Puranas
1.3.1. The worshlp of the mother has become an intecral
part of the Hmdu psyche that the Hlndu often merges the

9
goddess with the human mother, imposlng the virtues of the
goddess on the human mother, and thus idolislng her. Indla
has a long hrstory of mother worshrp In the form of Aditi,
the mother of gods, Prichvi, the mother-earth, Slta, the
daughter of Mother-Earth, Durga, Saraswathi. Ganga, Yamuna,
Godavarr, Cauvery, Gayatli, Devl, Amblka Mythologically,
there are varlous shades to the mother-image - Kuntl, who
abandoned her ~llegitimate chlld, Gandharl, who cared for a
thousand Kauravas. Ka~keyi, who exlled her stepson for her
son's beneflt, Yashoda, one of the earllest surrogate
mothers The Hlndu woman In Indian l~terature 1s usually
based on mythic models from the Ramayana and Puranas, S~ta.
the silent sufferer - the archetme of Indlan womanhood, the
Earch-Mother, forbearance personlfled, the playmatze and
beloved Radha. the devotee Meera Of these, the Image of
the woman as Mother Earth, symbolrs1ng forbearance and
endurance, is the most persistent (Allad1 1989 11
1.3.2. Llke thelr Indlan counterparts, the Black mothers
have to contend wlth prevalllng stereotypes of Black
Motherhood In Afrlcan religlon and myth The Afrlcan Yomba
proverb says 'Mother 1s gold', ideallsing the mother-f:gure
ln African myth The women are deplcted as guardians of
traditions, and the strong Earch-Mother stands for
forbearance, stability and security It 1s generally
assumed that the black mother, more than the white mother,

has a natural aptitude for motherhood, and thrs assumption
has resulted in the Mammy stereotype
1.3.3. Whlle polytheistic literature provldes evldence of
10
the ~nclus~on of women as well as men In almost every aspect
of temple llfe and popular cult as lnltlants, celebrants and
prlests, parts of the Blble represent men In a speclal and
closer relation to God than women
Many Brblical passages
express amblvalence towards women, and fear of thelr
sexuality and normal bodily functions
In comparison to
men, women are shown as less capable of moral 2udgement and
more tied to the materlal than the moral or splrrtual
aspects of exlstence
reflected ln then roles as mothers too
Thls amblvalence towards women 1s
The vlrtue of
women as wlves 2s deflned In terms of thelr roles as
economlc producers rather than mothers
Even when a woman
physically glves birth to Jesus, and thereby enables his
redemptive mlssion, she 1s shown as of relatively slight
account In that mission In early cult
It was only
centurles later that the central role of the Vlrgln blrth
was attested In both =he Western and Eastern churches
Gradually thls recognltlon of V~rg~n Mary attalned dlvrne
magnitude, and Mother Mary became the model of fem~nlne
Christian vlrtues
1.4.0. For centurles. the sugary cult of motherhood has
been ldealised by writers and thlnkers
Rousseau, for

11
example, portrays Sophie, the 'ideal' woman In bile
(discussed in Badlnter 1981 208-121 While Emlle is strong
and domlneerlnq, Sophle is weak, tlmld and submissive Such
a woman would soon be fully prepared for her role as a
mother, living through and for her child According to
Rousseau, the future mother wlll not be wlllful, proud,
energetic or self-centered In no event should she become
angry or show the slightest impatience Rousseau also
conflnes the mother to the home as all her concerns are to
be family-centered The analogles Rousseau makes between
mother and nun, home and convent, reveal much about h ~ s
feminlne Ideal Outslde that model, according to him, no
salvation exlsts for women
1.4.1. Ideas about the 'correct' maternal role have
changed over the years Not untll the nineteenth century,
for example, dld a chlld's development and well-belng come
to be vlewed as the malor, IE not the sole responslbillty of
ner or hls mother, who was then urged to devote herself
full-time to her maternal dury In contrast, durlng the
elgh~eenth century, chlld-rearlng was neither a dlscrete
nor an exclusively female task There was llttle emphasis
on motherhood per se, and both parents were advlsed to ralse
their children together

12
1.4.2. In the twentieth century, under the sway of
behavlourlsm, the mother became the focus of 'experts' on
chlldcare A corollary of the focus on mothers was the
disappearance of fathers It was assumed that chlldren
spent most of thelr time with then mothers, not thelr
fathers. even though by law and custom, flnal authority was
patrrarchal The advlce offered durlng the flrst decades of
the twentleth century was of two types Prlor to about
1915, women were urged to be moral and lovrng, perhaps even
Indulgent toward thelr chlldren, although the experts
continued to Insist that trarning and study were necessary
to do the lob well But by the early 1920s, wlth the advent
of psychoanalysls, women were warned agalnst 'smother love'
and were told to Stress dlsclpllne and regularity Erther
way, psychoanalysls has greatly contributed to making the
mother the central character In the famlly After havlng
discovered the existence of the unconscious, and shown that
1; takes form throughout childhood, psychoanalysts formed
the hablt of questlonlng the mother, even challeng~ng her.
over the chlld's slightest psychologrcal problem
L4.3. Dr Benlamln Spock's Baby and Child Care 1s a clear
case of the changlng attitudes towards motherhood In the
twentleth century Although the book championed full-tlme
motherhood when ~t was flrst released In the 1940s, the 1976
edltlon relects Spock's earller clalm that worklng mothers

harm children
13
It argues instead that women should feel
free to work and that men make good parents too
In thrs
connection, Gerson qulps that Spock has been as much
influenced by women as he has influenced them (1985 183) .
1.5.0. Literature reflects these changlng attitudes
towards motherhood As in llfe, so In llterature. there is
no gradual evolution rn the perspective towards motherhood -
the pattern is erratic Exalted to helghts in one era.
suppressed ln the next, domlnatlng In another, sllent or
Ignored In the succeedlng age - the 'real' mother st111
remalns eluslve Nevertheless, the succeedzng literary
resume attempcs to brlng out the myriad shades of the mother
flqure as reflected In the works of wrlters In different
ages and milleus
1.5.1. Much of Western llterature looks back to the
Demeter-Persephone myth as an archetype of the mother-
duughter relationship
According to thls myth. Persephone
iKore1 1s abducted and raped lln one verslon by Poseidon,
lcrd of the underworld, In another by Hades or Pluto, K ~ng
of death1
Demeter seeks revenge for the loss of her
daughter by forbidding the gram - of whlch she is queen -
to grow
When her daughter 1s restored to her - for nlne
months of the year only - she restores fruitfulness and llfe
to the land for those months
In thls myth, the separation

14
of Demeter and Persephone is an unwilling one, it is neither
a question of the daughter's rebellion against the mother,
nor the mother's relection of the daughter The myth
lndlcates that each daughter, even in the millznia before
Chrlst, must have longed for a mother whose love for her and
whose power were so great as to undo rape and bring her back
from death And every mother must have longed for the power
of Demeter, the efflcacy of her anger, the reconciliation
wlth her lost self
1.5.2. One comes across such strong mothers In the
Germanic folk epic Das Nibelungenlied and ln the figure of
Clytemnestra in the Greek eplc trad~tlon In the former
eplc, although Krlemhild's relatlonshlp to her mother Uta 1s
a close one, Krlemhild does not refrarn from relectlng her
mother's advlce and chooslng her own course of actlon, she
relects the maternal role to whlch she was expected to
crnflne herself Similarly, in the Greek epic, Clytemnestra
becomes the antlchesis of the nurturing mother figure,
turnlng her back on the maternal role as she seeks vengeance
on her husband Agamemnon
1.5.3. In Medleval literature, mothers are conspicuous by
thelr absence From Chaucer and hls contemporaries, nothlng
1s known of the work and actlvltles of medleval women, nor
1s there any clue concerning the relatlonshlp between a

15
fourteenth-century mother and her children In Shakespeare,
Demeter 1s separated from Persephone. As Myra Glazer Schotz
points out, nothlng is known of the mothers of Jesslca,
Desdemona, Ophelia, Regan, Goner11 or Cordelia (Davidson and
Broner 1980 45) In Shakespeare's works, the mother's role
is dimlnzshed whlle the father becomes important In
Perlclea, it 1s the father-flyure who searches out the
daughter and brlngs about the unlon wrth the mother In The
Twest, mother and daughter are forever Isolated The
Winter's Tale remains the most maternal of all of
Shakespeare's plays, In no other play do we experience with
such lntensrty that every mother concalns her daughter
wrthln herself and every daughter her mother
1.5.4. The Vlctorlan era emphasizes the redemptive or
salvatory potential of the mother Works extollzng woman's
special role as the moral regenerator of manklnd - Sarah
Lewis' Woman's Xasslon 118391, Coventry Patmore's The -gel
in the House (1854-62), and John Rusk~n's Of Queens' Gardens
11865) - articulate the differences between femlnlne and
masculrne nature, creatlng a myth of womanhood / motherhood,
which postulates woman's moral efficacy in the world, at the
same trme llmiting her sphere of action Covencry Patmore's
The Angel in the House particularly has become the most
famous stereotype, one that Virginia Woolf in 'Professions
for Women' vehemently attacked Though motherhood in the

16
vlctorian age has been ideallsed and glorified by male
novelists, female novellsts, even those who were not
themselves mothers, had a more realistic, if not an outrlght
pessimistic outlook on the business of motherhood It 1s
hard to flnd in the works of George Ellot or Elizabeth
Gaskell a slngle strong mother who influences her daughter's
life for good, a fact that 1s surely a refutation of the
slmpllstic and sentimental vlew of motherhood found rn many
male essayists and novellsts The novels of Jane Ausren,
Fanny Burney and the Brontes reveal a tradltlon of the
absent mother malnly because the herorne had to act
Independently for the plot to unfold Hence mothers in
nineteenth century fictlon are dead, absent, weak or In need
of help themselves
1.5.5 Of the Brltlsh novelists taken up for st~dy,
Margaret Drabble sees motherhood In posltive terms wnile
Doris Lessing deplcts the tenslons and conflicts arlslng out
of th1s role Often referred to as a 'cautious fernlnlst'.
Drabble In her flctlon deplcts woman In the role of a good
mother wlfe, who at the same tlme remalns true to herself
as a person In her llfe or flctlon, she does not advccate
a femlnlst overthrow of the patriarchal order whlch has
earned her the title of a llberal femlnlst Her novels. A
Summer Bird Cage, The Garrick Year. The Millstone, Jerusalem
the Golden, The Waterfall, The Needle'e Eye, The Realms of

17
Gold, The Ice Age and The Middle Ground exemplify thls fact
Her themes Include children, pregnancy, maternlty and
famlly "One's relatlonshzps wlth one's slblings and
parents 1s something that you're golng to wrlte about agaln
and agaln, In different forms" (clted In Crelghton 1985 20),
admits Drabble, and, no doubt, the central generating
tenslon In many of her novels resides in mother - daughter
relationships Drabble's repeated delineations of the
mother-chlld bond In her novels and feature artlcles have
earned her the tltles 'women's novellst' and 'novellst of
maternlty', not always positively meant For most of Dorls
Lesslng's women, motherhood proves to be a suffocat~ng
experlence Molly, in The Golden Notebook, after divorcing
Rlchard, brlngs up her son Tommy as a slngle parent,
sacrif~clng her ambltlons and deslres, but flnds hlm
revolting For Anne however, motherhood 1s a soothlng and
satlsfylng experlence In her moments of turmoil, tenslon
ax3 dislntegratlon, Anne flnds comfort and stab~llty xn the
thoughts of Janet The novel further reflects on the stlgma
of the unwed mother - Anne, who had been livlng wlth Max
Wulf without marriage, marrles hlm when she conceives so
that thelr chlld 1s not ~llegltlmate, but dlvorces hlm after
the blrth of thelr daughter In the Children of Violence
serles, the gruelling experience of childbirth, the
dlsflgurement of her body, and the uncontrollable flow of

18
mllk from her body leave Martha dlsquleted In Shikasta,
Lesslng's stance 1s more posltive as she stresses the vltal
role of parental affectron In brlnglng up chlldren
1.6.0. The Amerlcan poet Emlly Dlckinson's poetry reveals
a mocklng and even contemptuous tone of the daughter towards
her mother The pallties that her mother embodles are the
Chrlstlan vlrtues of meekness, patlence and submlsslon, and
these attributes, Dlcklnson feels, deserve only contempt
She extends her relectlon of her mother and the maternal
world to any convention whlch she, as a woman, 1s expected
to submit to courtship, marriage, chrldren
1.6.1. In the novels of Ellen Glasgow, the mother exlsts
only as a shadow cast over her daughter's promlse In Edrth
Wharton's novels, the stralned relat~onshlp between mochers
and daughters 1s one of the persistent themes Kllla
Cather, Colette and Vzrglnla Woolf, as Jane Lllienfeld
lndlcatea !Davldson and Broner 1980 150-751, were born Into
fam~lles of strong women Unllke nineteenth cenzury
mothers, the mothers of these early twentieth cenzury
wrlters were neither obsessive nor felt a need to dom-nate
thelr daughter's llves Not surprlslngly, all three wrlrers
wrote about strong women, and also malntalned close
relationships with women

19
1.6.2 The two American novelists selected for study here
are Charlotte Perkins Gllman and Marge Plercy, the former
belonging to the early part of the twentieth century and the
latter to the second half of the century "Charlotte Perkins
G~lman marks an early part of the tradition In whlch such
wrlters as Marge Plercy, Margaret Ptwood, Ton1 Morrlson.
Margaret Drabble. Allce Walker, Adrienne Rlch, Sylvla Plath,
and countless others now stand" observes Sheryl L Meyerlng
(1989 91 True to thls statement, Gilman was one of the
early precursors of the fem~nlst movement In the period
before the Flrst World War, when most femlnlsts were
preoccupied wlth the struggle to garn the vote, Charlotte
Perk~ns G~lman addressed Instead the soclal and economlc
roots of women's oppression What Gllman depicts In her
utopia Herland, she had already explalned In Women and
Economics 118981, The Home: Its Work and Influence (1903)
and Euman Work (19041 She claims that the relegation of
women to roles associated with then sexual or reproductlve
actlvlty 1s disadvantageous to our progress as lndlvlduals
and as a race Though not a misanthropic femlnlst, G~lman
was against androcentric culture which treated women as
merely extraneous, chlld-bear~ng females The worklng girl.
the working wife and mother, became the ldeal which she
preached Gllman was wllllng to accept matrimony and
motherhood provlded women were released from thelr

20
conventionally defined and lrmlted roles Gllman's views
were much more vehemently vorced years later by the radlcal
femlnlst Marge Plercy who believed that the patriarchal
system cannot be reformed, only overturned Plercy asserted
that male power was at the root of the soclal construction
of gender She attacks men's control over women's role as
chlld bearers and childrearers In W m n on the Edge of Time
Her novel Vida evokes the turmolls of the years whlch P~ercy
experienced as one of the organizers of the 'Students for A
Democratic Socrety' Her Braaded Lives is called a
'narrative of surv~val' rather than a blldungsrornan because
the herolne does not succeed, but merely survlves In Small
Changes, she lmaglnes an alternative world ln whlck the
power pol~tlcs of sexual relationships are replaced sy a
concern for each person as an lndlvldual and a respecz for
nutual needs Flercy's formulation of the fernlnlst przblem
acqulres valldlty through her recognltlon of the need for
rerolutronaly change In soclety and through her careful
attention to the detalls of the Intricate relatlor-ship
between sexuality and cultural role playlng
1.7.0. Mov~ng over to the Indlan scene, lt 1s observed
that the old order does not easily yleld to the new, ant the
Indlan mother flnds herself caught ~nextrlcably beryeen
tradltlon and modernity Restricted both blologlcally and
culturally, the Indlan woman's predicament 1s such that she

21
finds herself at crossroads - she is unable to shake off her
conventional roles of being a wlfe and mother, nor is she
able to completely assert her ldentity as a woman, In terms
of what she really is
1.7.1. In early Indian llterature, one comes across
mother-Elqures equated to goddesses Virtuous, caring,
self-effaclng and self-sacrificing, these women seem to
conform to the Ideal of womanhood / motherhood But in
reality, one wonders - are these mothers real women7 Are
they not eraslng a part of thelr personality, cuttlng
fragments off themselves that refuse to conform to thls
Ideal? Isn't the picture we see of the perfect mother
actually a stunted, distorted one where the real woman never
emerges3 Yet it 1s into thzs 'safe' hole that mllllons of
women creep into m order to avold complexities and stralns
in relationships
1.7.2. Contemporary Indlan wrltlng continues to portray
the stmggle between what 1s expected of a woman and what 1s
innate ln her Anlta Desal's women question and somezlmes
rebel agalnst thelr maternal role, but are not able to
relect it outright Nanda Kaul In Fire On The Mountain, Blm
In Clear Laght of Day and Sita in Where Shall We Go This
Sumuer? at some point in their lives deny motherhood and
attempt finding escape routes, but eventually understand

22
that this is one role which is most difficult to relinqursh
In Nayantara Sahgal's The Day in Shadow, Storm in Chandigarh
and A Situation in New Delhi, the female protagonists are
self-assert~ve women, who rellnqursh therr marltal role when
marriage threatens to become a burden, but wllllngly see
motherhood as the key to happmess and fulfilment Tara
Parameswaran's Once Bittan Twice Married portrays an over
protective mother whose daughter succumbs to her overbearing
attitude In Rail Naraslmhan's Forever Free, the herome
flghts agalnst her mother's interference but returns later
to her widowed mother
1.7.3. Among the Indlan novelists taken up for study here
- Kamala Markandaya and Shashl Deshpande - the former
portrays mothers who are completely defined by their
maternal role while the latter deplcts women against a
tradltlonal backdrop, struggl~ng to shrug off the roles
folsted on them In A Eandful of Rice, we come across a
Markandaya herolne, Nallnl, ~dentlfled solely through her
mother-role, whose need to love. to possess and to wield
power are ail carrled out through her maternal ldentlty
alone In Markandaya's Some Inner Fury, Mira's mother who
personlfles the 'Ma' Image, looks upon her sons as power
symbols In Possession, Anasuya acts as a mother-surrogate,
to whom both Caroline and Valmrkr turn for advice and
guldance Only Lalitha of Two Virgins 1s not totally

enmeshed in the femlnine motherhood that the other
Markandaya heroines who, blissfully unaware, are caught
Deshpande's herolnes however refuse to flt into these
stereotyped moulds
mother belng a paragon of all virtues
2 3
Her novels explode the myth of the
In The Dark Holds NO
Terrors, Roota and Shadows, That Long Silence and The
Binding Vine the oppressive effect of motherhood 1s
lncreaslngly felt by the women protagonists
1.8.0. In Engllsh-Canadlan flctlon, notably In the navels
of women wrlters lrke Margaret Atwood. Margaret Laurence,
Allce Munro, Beatrlce Culleton. Margaret Clarke (Helen
M Buss1 and Gabrlelle Roy, the struggle between mothers and
daughters emerges dynarnlcally through varlous stages of lts
development
These wrlters recognrze the pervasive
Influence of the mother and tend to represent it through the
daughter's gradually emerglng discovery of her own female
Identity
In the~r works, there 1s an emphasls on the past
that, for women, is bound wlth the mother
The
psychological lourney that appears so much rn Canadlan
flCtlOn reveals the arnblvalence that characterizes the
daughter's feellngs about the mother
The dynam~cs of the
mother - daughter relatlonshlp and the theme of motherhood
are brought out In Margaret Laurence's The Stone Angel, A
Jest of God, The Fire Dwellers. A Bird in the House and The
~ivlners , Margaret Atwood's Lady Oracle, The Haadmaid's

24
Tale. Surfacing and The Edible Woman, Beatrice Culleton's In
Search of April Raintree, Margaret Clarke's The Cutting
Season and Gabrielle Roy's The Windflower
1.9.0. In Afro-Amerlcan literature, the image of the
black woman as mammy persisted beyond the Clvil War into the
lrterature of the 1890s The black woman's tendency to see
maternal dutles as natural and sacred must have reinforced
the Southern planters' notlon that black women were
perfectly sulted to be mammles Even as the planters
pralsed the black woman as the 'contented mammy', they
inSrSte3 that she neglect her own children. Qulte
paradoxlcally, the whxte planters relegated the dutles of
motherhood to a belng whom they considered 'subhuman', thus
creating a llne of demarcation between the spiritual and
physlcal aspects of motherhood
1.9.1. In contemporary Afro-Amerlcan women's flctlon, the
black mother is no longer seen as a breeder, concubme,
sapphire, mammy or mule, nor 1s she exalted to the status of
the saviour or madonna As Marl Evans points out, the black
women "braved the ideological strictures of the slxtles and
freed themselves from the roies assigned to them rn the
wrltlngs of thelr male counterparts, where, deplcted as
queens and princesses, or as Earth mo~hers andJideallzed Big
Mommas of super human wlsdom and strength, they were

25
unrecognizable as individuals" (clted in Alladl 1986 101)
The change in outlook 1s vlslble when writers lrke Margaret
Walker and Louse Merrlwether are compared to Ton1 Morrlson
or Allce Walker Margaret Walker's Jubilee 1s an exaltation
of motherhood, deplcted through Vyry, a mother at seventeen.
whose llfe 1s a repetltlon of her mother's Loulse
Merrlwether's Daddy was a Nwnbcr Runner portrays Henrletta,
another example of a self-sacrlfrclng mother Allce
Walker's short storles portray mothers who undergo
degradation and self-annihilation, tolerate violence. In
order to save thelr chlldren In her storres, 'Roselily',
'The Revenge of Hannah Kemhuff' and 'Strong Horse Tea', from
In Love and Trouble and In The Thard Life of Grange
Copeland, we come across such self-sacrlflclng mothers In
Ton1 Morrison's The Bluest Eye, Paullne Breedlove 1s unlrke
the stereotyped image of the black matriarch who holds the
iamlly together Dlssatlsfled wlth the role of motherhood.
Paulrne carrles it wlth reslgnatlon In Sula. Eva Peace 1s
lnltlally portrayed as a sacr~flclng mother but soon the
stereotype 1s broken and the rest of the portralt as a
mother 1s less posltlve Of the other mothers In the novel,
Hannah 1s not ~nterested In carlng for her chlldren. Helena
IS a stern parent who smothers all natural lnstlncts of her
chlld, Nel 1s the over-protect~ve mother who chokes her
chlldren wlth too much love, and Sula herself is Interested

2 6
neither ln matrimony nor ln motherhood Ondlne of Tar Baby
and Ruth of Song of Solomon take to motherhood more easlly
1.10.0. Wlth the change In gender stereotypes, what 1s the
zmage of the mother today' Is she st111 the sllent, self-
SacKlflCln? and unassuming person she once was or has she
transgressed these llnes to become an educated entrty who
holds her own oplnlons and has set her own goals7 Does the
onus of brlnging up a well adlusted chlld, wzth the
'correct' set of morals and values lle only on her, or 1s lt
a socletal responslblllty? The ensulng chapters attempt to
explore these questions, traclng the d-evolution of
motherhood from an unquestlonlng conformity to patrlarchal
norms, through a scepticism regarding thelr valldlty, to a
remouldlng or total relectlon of motherhood and rts Imposed
ldeals
1.10.1. The second chapter. 'Famanine Motherhood' examlnes
how women's capacltles for rnocherlng and the ablllty to get
gratlflcatlon from ~t are strongly Internallzed and
psychologically enforced by belng bullt 1nt3 the femlnrne
psychrc structure Thls chapter focuses on the manner In
whlch patrrarchal Instltutlons wlth relrglous sanctlon mould
women ;nto femlnlne mothers as a consequence of whlch
motherhood becomes synonymous wlth femlnlnlty By confining
mothers to the domestlc clrcle and by extending thelr role

from the blologlcal to the psycho-soclal, the lnstltution
converts mothers Into reproductive and chrld-rearlng
2 7
machines
Asserting that self-reallzatlon and self
underscandlng are Irrelevant for the mother, feminine
motherhood demands of women a renunciation of personal alms
rn favour of famll~al ones
Moreover, soclety breeds guilt
Into the very fabrlc of a woman's character, holdlng her
responsible for anythlng that goes wrong In the famlly
Anger 1s regarded the antlthesxs of the maternal, and the
mother 1s expected to suppress it The subtle differences
In conformity to the rnstltutlon - meek acceptance,
burdensome acceptance or a waverlng between acceptance and
questlonlng - is also lndlcated
1.10.2. The transltlon from the 'fernmlne' to the
'femrnlst' phase of motherhood - whlch beglns wxth the
reallzatlon by women that the patriarchal lnstltution of
-1otherhood 1s not the natural human condltlon - forms the
crux ?f the rhlrd chapter, 'Puninlst Motherhood'
Fernlnlst
mothers oppose those aspects of motherhood thac make
chlldbearlng and chlldrearing stressful rather than
fulfllllng experiences
Polnting out the hlatus between the
lnstitutlcn and experience of motherhood or the
contradlctrons between ldeology and reallty, thls chapter
poses and explores the alternatives to femlnlne motherhood
The seeds of thrs 'new' motherhood are sown wlth the

stlrrlng of a revolt of the protagonists agalnst therr
mothers whlch is not so much a personal attack on the
mothers as lt 1s against the rnstltutlon they represent
The maternal rnsclnct and the mystlque of motherhood no
longer hold good as the emerglng femlnist mother questrons
or rejects the roles folsted on her
1.10.3. Chapter IV: Technological Motherhood discusses the
ldeologlcal trea-ment of technologrcal motherhood promoted
by HI-tech reproductlve strategies and ~ t s relatron to
femlnine / fernlnlst motherhood In three utoplas / dystoplas
namely Gllman's Eerland, Prercy's Woman On The Edge of Tlme
and Atwood's The Eandmald's Tale
2 8
The chapter explores the
malor questlon Does women's l~beratlon requlre a blologrcal
revolution?
Should women rellnqulsh the~r reproductlve
roles and take recourse to techniques of reproductlon. or
should they reLa;n
galn the ac'uai
thelr reproductLve powers In order to
experience of mothering, at the same tlme
ensurlng that ~t 15 not ta~nted by the polltlcs of the
patriarchal Lnstltutlon of motherhood
The far-reachlng
effects of technological reproductron - on chlld-rearlng,
farnlly structures, heterosexual relatlans, raclsm. classlsm
and sexlsm - are also explored
1.10.4. Chapter V : The Aesthetics of Motherhood shrfts
the focus from the themat~c to aesthetic aspects of
motherhood, lndlcating how a self-conscious femlnlst

narrative point of view, structure, genre, Imagery and myth
contribute to workzng out the problematlcs of motherhood
The texts studled are classlfled Into those wrltten from the
daughter's polnt of view, and those wrltten from a mother's
perspective
2 9
Texts wrltten from a 'daughterly' perspective
can be said to ally wlth patriarchal discourse In the
process of 'otherlng' the mother
It 1s only when the
maternal voice makes itself heard that the space for
maternal narrative 1s opened, and the mother becomes the
sublect of her own story
The double-voiced narrative, as a
result of the protagonist speaklng simultaneously as
daughter and mother, rs also discussed
Further, the
chapter delineates the manner by whlch the utoplan mode and
the employment of fanrasy / allegory serve the purport of
radlcal femlnlsm by maklng the impossible seem plausible
Flnally, the metaphors, symbols and images that rerterate
and re~nforce the femlnlne, feminlst or technologlcal phases
of motherhood are culled out and discussed
1.10.5. The conclud~ng chapter plcks up the threads of
argument once agaln, movlng from the spec~f~c predicament of
the frctlonal mothers to wlder, unlversal lssues
Balanclng
the clalms of femlnlne, femlnls~, blologlcal and
technologlcal motherhood, ~t 1s concluded that the
lnstitutlon of motherhood 1s not totally abol~shed bur only
amended glving way to a more tolerant acceptance of the
pluralrstlc attitudes towards motherhood

IEKININE MOTHERHOOD
*Let her attend to a mother's and housewife's
dutres" that, In Victorian oplnion was the
proper job for a woman
- Duncan Crow
2.1.0. Patriarchal thought has imposed a nocion about
women that unless they are mothers, they remain unfulfilled
as women In addltlon, patriarchy also dlctates cercaln
norms that a woman should adhere to In he:
telllng her even what to feel and what not to
mother-role,
A vlctim to
such an androcentrlc soclety, a woman unconsciously lmbrbes
these ideals and starts conforming to what 1s expected of
her as a mother
Thus moulded by the lnsc~cutlon of
motherhood, mothers begln to adhere to the 'femlnlne' ldeal
o'
motherhood
2.1.1. The word 'fem~nlne' therefore has becsme
synonymous wlth wantlng to be a mother
The woman srho
chooses not to become a mother cannot be a femlnlne womn
along wlth motherhood, she re3ects womanhood
comments
As Oakley
The cholce 1s cast as a cholce between alternative
gender roles to be feminlne means to be, or to
wanc to be, a mother to reject motherhood means
to be masculine (1976 1881

3 1
By emphasizing the primacy of motherhood, society closes
other alternatives for women -- motherhood has to take
precedence over everything else Maternlty, therefore,
becomes woman's destlny, and a childless woman is
emotionally suspect If her childlessness 1s wllled, she 1s
consldered deviant and abnormal, or self-centered and
unwomanly To have chlldren but turn over thelr rearing to
someone else brlngs soclal disapproval a woman who does
thls is consldered hard, unlovlng and 'unfemlnlne' It was
flnnly belleved that chrld-rearlng practices too stem from
women's nature
2.1.2. Femlnlne motherhood inslsts that a woman can know
fulfilment only at the moment of givlng birth to a child
It denles the woman her feminlnlty when she can no longer
look forward to glvlng blrth According to Theodore Lltz,
an Amerlcan psychlatrlst.
unless her womb has been fllled, her breasts
suckled The woman's creatlvlty as a mother
becomes a central matter that provldes meanlng and
balance to her life lclted In Oakley 1976 1871
Motherhood, therefore, has a blologlcal substrate
Bearlng
chlldren becomes the flrst lmperatlve for women, while the
second ~mperatlve is assumlng soclal and psychological
responslblllty for them
A mother 1s not lust the woman who

ings a chlld into the world, but also who faithfully
discharges her maternal role, her chief concern being the
welfare of the infant
3 2
The mother's physlcal care of the
chlldren is a minor task compared to the psychological
responsibility of sociallslng them
2.1.3. Ann Dally wrltes "There have always been mochers,
but motherhood was invented" (cited In Hlrsch 1989 14) She
cites 1597 as the flrst entry for 'motherhood' in the Oxford
English Dictionary, and then only as fact rather than
ideology
The enstitutionallsation of motherhood came much
later, creatrng the mystlque of motherhood, whlch
presupposes the maternal Instinct and along with it,
lifelong, unfllnchlng devotlon to the chlld, reiterating
that mothers and mothers alone have the power to transform
malleable Infants into moral, productive adults
This
mystique deflnes a woman as 'wife' or mother, relegating her
real ldentlty, her real self, to the background
Frledan remarks
In the feminlne mystlque, there is no other way
for a woman to dream of creation or of the
future There 1s no way she can even dream about
herself, except as her children's mother, her
husband's wife (1371 62)
Betty
By suppressing the 'real self' or the 'woman w~thin', the
woman becomes her soclal role
Willy-nilly, she absorbs
patriarchal ideals and 1s moulded into the 'ideal mother'

TO bear a child, preferably a son, and rear it according to
these norms and Ideals, becomes her sole purpose in lrfe
There 1s no questlon of cholce and nexther does she have a
say In matters of bearlng and rearlng her chlld
Adrlenne Rlch says of her early experlence as a mother
I had no idea of what I wanted, what I could or
could not choose I only knew that to have a
chlld was to assume adult womanhood to the full.
to prove myself,to be 'llke other women' 11976 25)
2.1.4. When every woman deslres to be 'llke other women'.
ultimately shaprng herself In the patriarchal mould, the
actual experlence of motherlng 1s negated, resulting In the
creatlon of an inauthentic self, a mystique
As
Betty Frledan
In The Peminlne Mystique states "When a mystlque 1s strong,
lt makes lts own flctlon of fact" (1971 601 She explains
~t thus
Facts are swallowed by a mystlque ln much the same
way as the strange phenomenon by which
hamburger eaten by a dog becomes dog, and
hamburger eaten by a human becomes human
(1971 1921
Fernlnlne motherhood does preclsely this -- by creatlng a
rnystlpe cf motherhood so that the needs of patriarchy would
be served
It 1s thls femlnlne rnystlque that creases
dlvlslons between the authentic experlence of motherlng and
the soclal expectations of motherhood or the difference
between women decidlng who, when, how and where to motP.er,
and men maklng these decislons for women

34
2.1.5. Who, how, when and where to mother is almost never
a woman's deczsron Even the questlon of whether to mother
or not 1s not a matter of a woman's cholce Untll recently,
patriarchy has kept women convinced that motherlng 1s thelr
one and only job Thls new also restricts women to the
prlvate / domestlc sphere, denying them access tc the publlc
realm Women are considered innately nurturant, domestlc
and selfless -- qualltles that makes them 'naturals' at
chlld-rearlng 'Good mothers' are not supposed to have
personal frlends or plans unrelated to those of thelr
farnllles They are supposed co be on the lob cwenty-four
hours a day and love every minuce of ~t According to
Oakley, the myth of motherhood contalns three popular
assertlons "all women need to be mothers, all mothers need
thelr chlldren, all chlldren need thelr mothers" (1976 186)
The assertlon that chlldren need thelr mothers only tles
women to the mother-role These assertlons are faithfully
pronounced as facts rather than unevldenced assumptlons
2.1.6. The enforcement of blologlcal and socletal roles
on a woman denles her the actual experience of motherlng
Wlth several dutles added to it, mornerhood extends beyond
nlne-months to Include responslblllty for the children's
proper upbrlnglng and intellectual development Whlle
fatherhood meant just provldlng the sperm to fertlllze the
ovum, the mother's functlon went beyond the blologlcal to

35
the moral, transf0m:ng the biological mother to a psychosoclal
one The mother was considered the person in the
best possible posltlon to take on these dutles, as lt was
"naturen that assigned them to her
2.1.7. Social conditlonlng plays a ma3or role In creating
feminlne mothers The soclal constructzon of motherhood
runs very deep, and is embedded in our psycho-social make
up Feminlne gender-role socialrzation stresses maternity
as all women's destlny, pressurlslng women to conform to
structural constraints and cultural llmltatlons Young
girls Walt for llfe to begin with a more circumscribed
frar.ework of control than boys, ~n a more domestically
orlenta-ed environment, the insuiarlty of whlch prepares
them for thelr future llfe of marriage, motherhood and
domestlc responslblilty As grrls were golng to be wlves
and mothers, they were brought up to be sweet, gencle.
submrsslve and subservient to males, hence afflrmlng
quallcles of love, nurturance and self-sacrlflce, and mutlng
self-assertion and aggression Anythlng that encouraged
lndependexce was seen as a threat to thelr future 'careers'
as bearers of chlldren Infused wrth the 'do's' and
'don't's' of an androcentrlc culture they ultimately lmbibed
these Ideals Vlctims to the feminine ideal of motherhood,
they no longer have a prlvare Image to tell themselves who
they are, or can be, or want to be A11 thelr deslres are

sacrificed at the altar of motherhood
As the publlc images
overrzde their personal selves, they become wllling victims
to patriarchal expectations
As Frledan remarks
the women I ~ntervlewed fltted the new image
of femlnlne fulflllrnent - - four, five or SIX
chlldren, baked their own bread, helped burld the
house wlth thelr own hands, sewed all their
chxldren's clothe= These women had no dreams of
career, no vlsions of a world larger than the
home all enersv was centered on thelr lives as
housewives and mothers, their only ambition, thelr
ocly dream already reallzed But were they
fulfllled women7 I1971 234)
Frledan's pertinent questlon
"But were they fulfllled
women?" 1s a pointer to the fact that these women. in thelr
ignorance, flnd fulfilment In their domestic chores, in the
dornestlc sphere, In their role as wife and mother, unmindful
of what 1s happening In the world around them
they attaln 'fulfilment' -- but at what cost'
No doubt,
-- sacrlflce
of thelr deslres, interests and maybe even a potentlal
career
VictlrnS of the perpetuation of a pro-natallst sex
role, women are processed in such a way that they want
chlldren, they are expected not oniy to want bables, but
also love motherhood
2.2.0. Thls chapter proceeds to examme how women's
capacities for mothering and ab1llt:es
to get gratlflcatlon
from it are strongly lnternallzed and psycholog~cally
enforced by being bullt into the femlnlne psychlc structure

37
2.2.1. Before the summer of her awakenlng, Kate Brown of
The S W I Before the Dark, 1s one such woman who languishes
ln her domestlc role, servlng the needs of her husband and
children Like the women Frledan describes, Kate too
unknowlngly destroys the woman withln and unquestioningly
conforms to her soclll role Confined to her home and
domestic dutles. Kate plays her part of the model wife and
mother The flrst sentence of the novel '(A woman stood on
her back step, arms folded, waltlngu ISBD 5) speaks
volumes about the femlnlne woman who, standlng on the brlnk
of a male-centered soclety, lust walts and watches Culte
slgnlflcantly, Lesslng refers to her protagonist at the
beginning of the novel as slmply 'a woman', emphaslzlna, as
lt were, her typlcal, femlnine role -- a 'woman' not lust
slgnlfylng Kate, but Everywoman, imparting an archetypal
dlmensron to the woman's predicament Only in her innernost
reflections at thls ~uncture 1s she referred to as 'Kace'
This blfurcatlon between her 'self' and her 'r3le'
reiterates the dichotomy between tne 'femlnlne' and the
about - to - emerge 'fernlnlst' In her Further, In order to
Stress Kate's domestlc, marltal and maternal roles, Less~ng
wlth lronlcal overtones, employs various epithets to
descrlbe her protagonist "a beautiful woman", "a wonderful
mother", "a cook for the angels", a marvellous belng, all
warmth and kindness, wlth not a fault In her" (SBD 17)

2.2.1.1. Among her varlous feminlne roles, it 1s the
maternal wrth whlch Kate 1s identlfled throughout the novel
For Kate, anythrng that was not a chlld seemed a horzzon too
distant to be reached
3 8
It is the maternal role In wh~ch she
1s inextricably caught and is unable to evade
her wherever she goes
it pursues
At her home in South London, at her
lob at Global Foods, in her relatlonshlp to Jeffrey, or ln
the company of Maureen, Kate cannot avold playing thls role
2.2.1.2. At home, Kate provldes a klnd of statlc base for
her husband and chlldren whose vocations entall mobrlity
She 1s always ava~lable, "at everyone's d~sposal" (SBD 13)
Her movements always f ~ t in wlth those of her chlldren. "as
of course they had to do" (SBD
an lronlc touch
121, Lesslng comments wlth
Flexlblllty, passlvlty and adaptablllty to
others become the characterlstlcs of her llfe
She allows
berself only "a dozen or so" mental attitudes whlch again.
are stereotyped, llke "garmenes taken down off a rack" (SBD
23) She has never known whac 1t means to choose
"Choose7 When do I ever choose9 Have I ever chosen'"
ISBD
10) Even In matters of dress, she wears only what 1s
appropriate ~n the mlddie-class suburb and "her posltlon ln
it as her husband's wrfe
And, of course, as the mother
of her children" (SBD 10) She does not allow her
appearance to bloom as her chlldren dlsllke her givrng reln
to her nature

2.2.1.3. Kate trles to Inculcate in herself the values
essential for a 'model mother' though she beglns to
lncreaslngiy feel the burden of motherhood wrth the b~rth of
every subsequent chlld
Her flrst chlld does not create any
sharp change In her lifestyle, but she beglns to experlence
the pressures of motherhood wlth the blrth of her second,
thlrd and fourth chlldren
With mountlng dlfflcultres, she
tries to flt Into the mould of the femlnlne mother and
remaln there
Wlth three small chlldren, and then four, she had
to f:aht for aualltles that had not been even In
her vocabularj Patience, self-dlsclpllne, self -
control, self-abnegation chastlty Adaptability
to others -- this above all This always (SBD 89)
As In Lesslng's The Golden Notebook, here too, the mother-
chlld tension manifests ltseif -- the mother 1s depxcted as
self-effacing, lovlng and generous whlle the ch~ld 1s
Jsualiy selflsh, callous and demanding
In The Sunnner
Before the Dark, Kate reallzes the futlllty of her
'sacrlf~ce' when Tlm bursts out that she 1s suffocating hlm,
'mother' becomes the scapegoat of her children's complaints,
a "sponge" (SBD 89) for all thelr needs, regardless of
hers
She beglns to experlence a schlzophrenla, a
Eragmentatlon of identity, a dlvlslon of self, as a
consequence of conforming to the feminlne ldeal of
motherhood

lt seems to me as I£ llttle bzts of me are
dlstrlbuted among my family, Tlm's bit, Michael's
blt, Erleen's plece -- and so on ISBD 231)
In thls role-playing, the actual Kate behlnd these myrlad
masks becomes lnvislble
She sometimes has to subordinate
her husband's needs to those of the chlldren, but always has
to subordmate her needs to both
2.2.1.4. At Global Foods toc. Kate's role as a
clrcumscrlbed nurturer 1s utlllzed, though In a different
context Here, she becomes a 'tgroup-mother"(SBD 41) ---
her maternal role comes to the fore agaln
Her role as
translator is that of "an exceedingly lntelllgent and fluent
parrot vlrh maternal lnclrnaclons (SaD 33) Here, she
does what she dld at home, only on a larger scale ---
organlzxng, spendlng tlme on the telephone, seelng that
people and places and thlngs, colnclded at the rlght tlme
Though she adopts cerraln changes ln her manner of dresslng
and halr st:~le whlch make her look more glamorous, she 1s
glad ttat her chlldren could not see her, for "no young
person likes to see dear Mother all g:ossy
and gleamlng and
s11k.j (SBD 39) AS at home, here, too, Kate assumes the
iuncr:ons
of provldlng consolation, warmth and sympathy
2.2.1.5. Furthermore. Kate's ~nvolvernent wlth a younger
man. Jeffrey, agaln brlngs out she maternal rn her
She
plays two maln roles wlth Jeffrey
she 1s the smlllng,

sexually knowledgeable woman of the world, and she is also
the heallng mother
4 1
Although Kate more readlly accepts the
flrst role, she finds that Jeffrey's illness brings out the
maternal rather than the sexual in her
hard not to be motherly to hlm,
"love-woman" (SBD
Though she trles
she 1s unable to be a
96) to a man young enough to be her son
Playing mother to a slck man not her son enables Kate to
assess her role as mother to her own children, she comes to
the conclusion that motherhood becomes an obsessive fusslng
rather than a lovlng concern when lt 1s carrled beyond the
needs of those who are mothered
2.2.1.6. The 'feminine' slde of Kate, however, Lesslng
sketches with an ironlc tlnge
character 1s portrayed as a soclal caricature
Kate's shallowness of
Kate Brown glves the reader llttle to care about,
her life, house and family are cardboard cutouts,llke
illustrations from an advert~sement --
stereotypes so banal they are satirlc (Cederscrom
1990 1351
Even her lob at Global Foods, which could mean a meaningful
move from the restricted conflnes of the home to a wlder
soclal circle, 1s satlrlsed, sketched In bold, farclcal
outlines
Easlly manipulated here as she was at home, she
falls into whatever role the organizers expect from her --
in addltlon to her role as translator, she plays mother to
the guests, Unlike Martha Quest of Children of Violence

series and Anna Wulf of The Golden Notebook,
42
Kate 1s a
completely predictable character, incapable of developing
beyond socletal confines Compared to the frall Kate, Anna
and Martha are more substantial characters
2.2.2. Like Kate Brown of The S-er Before the Dark.
Rukmanl of Nectar in a Sieve is another example of the
feminlne mother, whose thoughts and actlons, even as a young
glrl, revolve around the eventuality of motherhood
Her
mother 1s prlmarlly responsible for groomlng her Into the
'perfect' mother of the future.
She does not belleve In
educatlng her daughter as lt would In no way contribute to
her future role as mother
What use that a glrl should be learned
Look at me, am I any worse that I cannot spell my
name, so long as I know 1t7 Is not my house clean
and sweet and are not my chlldren well fed and
cared for' (NS 11)
For Rukmanl's mother, a woman's ultlmate dutles are domest~c
and maternal and as being illiterate In no way affected
these, she sees no polnt in educatlng her daughter
Rukmanl, however, durlng her flrst pregnancy, attempts
learnlng to write but qulte slgnlfzcantly, she does nor do
SO for herself, but to teach the chlld yet to be born
2.2.2.1. Whlle Kate Brown experiences the trauma of
motherhood after the blrth of every subsequent chlld though
she does not confess it even to herself, Rukmanl, on the

other hand, completely convinced by pacrlarchy, feels
fulfilled in her role as mother after havlng borne flve
sons
Markandaya's Rukmani easlly flts Into one of the
mother archetypes described by Jung, where there 1s an
overdevelopment of the femlnlne Instinct, an lntenslflcatlon
of most of all, the maternal instlnct
the negative slde of thls complex 1s seen
According to Jung,
ln the woman whose only goal 1s chlldblrth To
her the husband is of secondary lmporcance, he 1s
flrst and foremost the Instrument of procreatxon,
and she regards him merely as an oblect to be
looked after Even her own personality 1s of
secondary importance, she often remalns entlrely
unconscious of lt, for her lzfe 1s llved in and
through others iJung 1972 21-22)
2.2.2.2. In Nectar in a S~eve, all women ha,:e a
relacronshlp to motherhood, even lf a negaclve one
Through
Rukmani's daughter Ira, Markandaya hlghllghts the plrgt: of
a barren woman ln a soclety whlch str~ctly deflnes a wcman
-n terms of her capaclty to reproduce In the terns of the
novel. to be a fallure 1s to be a woman who cannot even bear
a chlld, to be a success 1s to mother a ch~ld, preferacly a
male chlld, and through it achleve a sense of pleasure.
prlde and power If the woman's womb falls her, s h ~ 1s
denled her rnd~vlduallty and discarded as a worthless
oblect
As Adrlenne Rlch opines
Woman's status as childbearer has been made into a
malo* fact of her life Terms llke 'barren' or
'childless' have been used to negate any further
ldentlty The term 'nonfather' does not exlst In
any realm of soclal categories (Rlch 1976 11)

Childless women have always been haunted by the costs of
permanent chlldlessness
44
Soclal disapproval, consignment to
a lonely and desolate old age and the loss of a major life
experience
The fear of these costs have powerful
psychological ramlfzcatlons for childless women, such as
Ira, facing pressures to parent
On her failure to
concelve. Ira's husband brlngs her back to her parents'
house
Desplte Rukmanl's efforts to convince hlm that Ira
mlght concelve later, he 1s adamant
I have walted five years She has not borne in
her first blooming, who can say she wlll concelve
later' I need sons (NS 501
It 1s only another patriarchal volce, that of Nathan's.
whlch sympachises wrth hlm and ~ustlfies his abandonment of
the barren Ira
Ira 1s thus branded "a fallure, a woman who
cannot even bear a chrld" (NS 50) Rukmanl does all she
can to rectlfy Ira's 'defect', but lt is too late, for by
the tlme Ira 1s treated, her husband remarries
2.2.2.3. Ira however channels her urge to mother by acting
as a surrogate mother to her newly-born brother, Kutl, whose
blrth causes a transformation In her Although she is
unable to bear a ch~ld, she fmds great contentment in
rearlng one, whom she regards as her own Durlng adverse
circumstances, she goes to the extent of prostltutlon In
order to acquire food for hlm, but Kutl dres, leavrng her
heart broken

2.2.2.4. Ira retalns some of her mother's cherrshed rdeais
and relects others
45
She emulates certaln ldeals of a
femlnrne mother rlght from her childhood, playlng the role
of a surrogate - mother to her younger brothers Rukmani's
motherly advice to Ira on the eve of her weddlng. "Thls
home, your brothers, are all you have known so far, but when
you have your own home and your own chlldren, you w ~ll not
m1ss these" (NS 361 remalns wrth her long after her
marriage, but when she 1s shunned by her husband, she 1s
forced to recurn to her parents' home
2.2.2.5. The trauma of an Illegltlmate mother In a
patriarchal society 1s also explored by Markandaya
Though
barren durlng her marital l~fe, ~ronrcally, Ira becomes the
mother of a child as a result of prostltutlng herself, the
~dentlty of whose father 1s unknown
The hope and
txpectatlon wlth whlch the birth of Rukmanl's chlldren was
awalted 1s now replaced by an unknown fear, the rlsk of
bearlng an ~liegrtimate chlld
reconcile herself to the fact
Rukmanl crles hard to
"perhaps her love for
chlldren swamped every other feellng She was meant to have
chlldren I had always known that
It was a cruel twlst of
Fate that gave them to her thls way" INS 1151 Although
the chrld 1s an alblno, Ira 1s overwhelmed at hls arrlval
At this, Nathan comments "She has lost her reason She
does not see her child as he IS, but as she would have hlm

4 6
be To her, he is only falr, whereas it 1s clear he
resembles nothlnq so much as a white mouse" (NS 117-18 1
Both Rukmanl and Ira look upon sons as power s).mbols, as the
sole reason for their existence, llttle reallslng that the
sons are in fact wresrlng away from them the llttle power
they had left In this connection Adrienne Rlch coments
that power relations between mother and chlid are often
slmply a reflection of power relations In patriarchal
soclety Powerless women have always used mothering as a
channel for thelr own human wlll to power (Rlch 1976 38)
2.2.2.6 AS In Ira's case, unmarrled mothers are outlawed
by pacrlarchal culture In Margaret Laurence's The Diviners
and Margaret Drabbie's The IiIlstonc, where the lnltlai 'U'
at the end of Rosamund's bed at the hospital, standlng for
'Unmarried' marks her as a devrant mother The predlcanent
of these mothers lndlcates that to bear a chlld out of
wedlock means to vlolate the property laws that say a woman
and her child must legally belong to d man Slnce the 'sin'
of the chlld's father 1s more dlffxr~lt to prove, lt 1s on
the unmarrled mother that the full penalty of llleglt=nacy
falls (the ~lleqltlmacy of the mothers of these two nc.Iels
1s a matter of personal cholce, ln contrast to Ira's who
succumbs as a victlm of circumstances and wlll be hence
discussed in the next chapter 'Feminist Motherhood')

47
2.2.2.7. Apart from Rukmani and Ira, other women In the
novel are also described In terms of thelr motherhood
Janakl has a sagglng flgure because she had borne her
husband three chlldren Kunthl moves gracefully desplte her
burden, though her earller pregnancy had almost brought
about her death
2.2.2.8. TO the femlnlst, Nectar in a Sieve ralses a
pertinent questlon Is a woman's prlmary ldentlflcatlon
based merely on her functlonal roles' Does she not have any
worth beyond bearlng and rearlng chlldren' Whlle Rukmanl
completely erases herself to brlng up her sons, Ira to some
extent rebels agalns: exlstlng norms by bearlng an
lllegltlmate son She attempts to transcend the conflnes of
patrlarchal tradition by maklng an lnd~vldual cholce But
even though she does so, 1t 1s only as a vlctlm of
circumstances, not as a woman wlth an optlon open to her
Ira, therefore, 1s "a rebel, but a mother nevertheless"
(Allad1 1989 411 She st111 is unable to break open the
conf~nes of a male-dom~nated culture, she does not reach
over to the femlnls: zone as she cannot shatter the shackles
of patrlarchal rules that have seeped into her psyche
Nevertheless, the sllght changes that one dlscerns In the
three generations of women -- Rukmanl's mother, Rukmanl and
Ira -- foretell the advent of a new motherhood, whrch 1s

ound to be deflned by the mother herself, instead of the
femlnlne, patrlarchal deflnltion described so far
2.2.3. Llke the Britlsh and the Indian, the Afro-American
Toni Morrlson' s Beloved polgnantly reveals how the
patrrarchal eye viewed women as noth~ng more than
reproductlve machlnes
Interweavrng her femznlst and ethnlc
concerns, Morrlson here deals wlth the psychologrcal effects
of Slavery on motherhood
Sethe's story painfully rnd~cates
how slave-women were ruthlessly exploited by thelr owners
for breedlng purposes
Slave-owners wanted the enslaved
women to breed because every chrld born meant for them an
asset In thelr property
prospects for more slaves
observes
Female slaves therefore provlded
As Patrrcla Hz11 Colllns
Durlng slavery the breeder woman lmage portrayed
Black women as more sultable for havrng chrldren
than whlte women By cla~mlng that Black women
were able to produce chlldren as easlly as
anlrnals. thls obiectiflcation of Black women as
the other provideh ]ustlflcat~on for interference
In the reproductlve rlghts of enslaved Afrlcans
(Colllns 1990 761
Such a reduction of women to breedlng anlmals further
denigrates thelr positlon as "mules of the world"
The fact
that Sethe 1s milked llke a cow and has her mllk stolen by
Schoolteacher's nephews further rezterates the fact that
slave-women were nothlng more than mere animals.
Morrlson herself remarks, her alm 1n Beloved was to show the
As

malevolence of the instltutlon itself through a famlly that
was devastated by slavery Marlanne Hlrsch hlghlrghts the
connection between slavery and ~ ts effect on motherhood
The economy of slavery clrcumscrlbes not only the
process of lndiv~duat~on and sub, ect-f omatlon,
but also heightens and intensifies the experlence
of motherhood -- of connection and separatlon It
raises quest;ons about what ~t means to have a
self, and to glve that self away It ralses
questlons about what famlly means If mothers
cannot own thelr chlldren or themselves, they
experlence separatlon and loss all the more
intensely IHlrsch 1989 2711
2.2.3.1. Morrlson's accurate portrayal of the experlence of
the black slave woman as a machlne for the production of
more slaves 1s confirmed by Deborah Gray Whlte, who
descrrbes the slave woman between the ages of slxteen and
thlrty-flve "A woman of thls age was elther pregnant,
nurslng an ~nfant, or had at least one small chrld to care
for "iclted in Samuels 1990 101) Sethe's predicament 1s
exactly so at Sweet Home where the Garners belleve that the
most Important puqose of the slave woman 1s chlldbearxng
In fact, Sethe 1s brought to Sweet Home to replace aaby
Suggs, her mother-ln-law, who was coo old to work or
reproduce At Sweet Home, Lherefore, Sethe ~s valued only
for her chl1dbear;ng capacltres and the capltal lt entalls,
she 1s "property that reproduced ltself wlthout cost"
2.2.3.2. Deeply ingrained In Sethe's psyche are these
Concepts and she beglns to feel that she has no self, except

in the role of the mother. IrnageS of nurturance pervade the
novel in association with Sethe, whose children are the
meaning of her existence and by nurturing whom she derives
Immense satlsfaction in her otherwise meaningless life. She
braves all odds to reach her chlldren at any cost, leaving
even her husband behind:
All I knew was I had to get my milk to my baby
glrl. Nobody was golng to nurse her like me.
Nobody was golng to get 1t to her fast enough or
take 1t away when she had enough and dldn't know
lt. Nobody knew that she couldn't pass air if you
held her up on your shoulder, oily zf she was
lylng on my knees Nobody knew that but me and
nobody had her milk but me (B 20)
When Sethe tells the story of her escape, she stresses that
she dld it alone, out of love for her children.
5 0
Nobody
could take care, nurse and mother them llke she could, she
loses herself In the mother-role
By casting Sethe in the
role of nurturer, Morrlson lndlcates the lmage of the great
mother as an embod~ment of the femlnlne prlnclple
2.2.3.3. The flercely maternal protective lnstinct in Sethe
1s revealed In her conversation wlth Paul D
"I don't care
what she [Beloved] is Grown don't mean nothing to a mother
k chlld is a chlld.
They get blgger, older, but grown?
What's that suppose to mean? In my heart it don't mean a
thing (B . 56) Sethe firmly asserts that she wlll protect
her "when I'm live and 1'11 protect her when I aln't (B.56).
Possessive though Sethe's love for her daughters may sound,

for her it involves both a give and take. "When I tell you
you mine, I also mean I'm yours. I wouldn't draw breath
wlthout my children" (B.250). When Paul D accusingly says
that her love for her children is "too thick" (B:250), she
retorts saylng "thin love" is not love at all.
51
He is
however quick to understand that for a slave woman it was
dangerous to love anything too much, especially her
ct.;ldren.
In this conversation the tension between the
Institution of slavery and the maternal ~nstlncts of the
slave-mother are starkly brought out. Whlle slavery clalmed
ownersh~p of the mother and her ch~ldren, the mocher fought
an emot~onal battle, trying to hold on t3 her chzldren
2.2.3.4. Set ln the nineteenth century, mainly ln the pre
and post- Clvll war era, the story of Beloved 1s based on
fact
Morrlson came across the story of Margaret Garner
whlle gathering materlal for the text A fuglt~ve from
Kentucky, Garner attempted to k ~ll her children rather than
havlng them enslaved agaln, when they were all captured ln
Ohio in 1850
She succeeded In k~lling only one, however,
Wt-CSe throat she slashed (clted in Samuels 6 Hudson -
Weems 1990.95), Morrison retells thls inc~dent In the story
of Sethe which serves as a grlm reminder of the brutalislng
repercussions thac slavery had on the psyche of slaves
Sethe kllls her chlld by slashlng her throac with a handsaw.
She considers IC a mercy-killing, preferlng her death rather

than enslavement at the hands of the brutal slave-owners
Sethe argues that by killing her baby, she kept her safe
5 2
from the dehumanization of slavery
The children are her
only self, her "best thingsu - she clalms she wouldn't draw
breath without her children and she wlll destroy rather than
surrender them.
that allows her
Sethe's 'thick-love" is an excessive love
to destroy what she has created, to deny
lrfe to her own chlld.
Even Paul D, who knows Sethe's
reasons, finds them hard to accept
He is so horrlfled when
he flnally learns about her crime that he leaves her for a
tlme, telllng her that she has two legs, not four
lmplies that she was beastly xn kllllng the baby,
When he
Sethe
asks, who was the beast? Her alm 1s only to keep Beloved out
of the hands of an owner who would see her only as an
an~mal
Paul D however 1s incapable of understanding
maternal loss, and how the potentlal for loss could compel a
slave woman to become both vlctlm and an agent of a daemonlc
desire for famlllal survival. Beloved, however, understands
her mother's mot:ve when she returns as a ghost elghteen
years later What she could not see as a "crawling -
already?" baby, she is now able to see as an adult, that her
mother's action was lndeed one of love
2.2.3.5. This sllent and acquiescent yet potentially
destructive mother is able to see beyond her mother - role
Only towards the end of the novel when she loses her

5 3
daughter Beloved the second time To her self-effacing "she
was my best thing " (B. 335) Paul D insists : "You your best
thlng Sethe You are" (B.335) enabllng her to see herself
for the first time as subject, and allowing her to finally
qllest1on her motherhood on which her life had rested.
2.2.3.6. The problematics of the novel consists in an
exploratlon of the question. Is Sethe's actlon of kllling
her Infant lustified' Does a mother who glves birth to a
child possess the right to take its llfe? Does the
]ustlflcatlon of the act as mercy-kllllng redeem the killer?
Sethe, although intending to kill all her chlldren, succeeds
In kllllng only one, her obvious motlve in the 'murder' is
to save them from the clutches of slavery, she prefers death
to a shackled existence Sethe's act of infantlclde has
several predecessors including her own mother, who, raped by
slave traders and owners, aborted all resulting pregnancies
Sethe's alm is to prevent her chzldren from gertlng
psychologically wounded as she had been rlght from her
chzldhood She also wants to avold their belnc separated
from thelr mother, as she herself had been According to
her, a woman should do everything In her capaclty to protect
her children. The fact however remalns that she does so by
taklng one of her infant's lives. One can even conclude
that her attitude to her chlldren is proprietary, Morrlson
Frobes into the question of parental ownership as much as

54
she does 1ntO ownership of humans by slave-owners. She
however underscores the difference between the two -- the
former meant for betterment whlle the latter a degradation
of the owned. Seen in thls light, the question is rendered
even more complex.
2.2.3.7. Beloved is in a way reminiscent of Harriet Beecher
Stowe's Uncle Tom'a Cabin written more than a century
earller Both these slave narratives underscore that while
the male slaves' search for freedom meant reclaiming therr
manhood, women's main concern was to save thelr children and
retaln control over thelr reproductive power Morrlson
szlrs a delzcate lssue -- that of the rlght of possession of
a mother over her chlld, but does not provlde any clear cut
solutlon Unlike her other novels, in Beloved, the lssue is
not closed Morrlson however accornpllshes what she had set
Out ta do- makxng tte sllenced black woman speak out her /
story which hls / story had neglected By focussing on what
earller slave-narratives had ornltted, Toni Morrlson writes a
maternal hlstory of the Afro-Amerlcan woman, she wrlces
"what has been stolen and cannot be wrltten -- mother's
mllk .. She becomes an agent of ~nvlslbllity, what Clxous
Calls wrltlng in white ink" (Llsclo 1992 45)
2.2.4. In Shashi Deshpande and Allce Walker, the image of
the 'feminlne' mother emerges through confrontation with her

'feminist' daughter.
5 5
What one sees in The Dark Holds No
Terrors is a mother, herself a victim to patriarchy,
expecting the same from her daughter. She is unaware of her
vlctimlzation at the hands of patriarchy whereas her Black-
American counterpart in Meridian is an educated, well
informed mother who makes compromises, sacrlfzcing her
publlc role so that she fulflls the domestic role required
of her. No doubt, she, too, 1s a vlctrm to the moral voice
of the institution of motherhood -- existing slnce slavery
when mothers even gave up therr llves for thelr chridren --
which demands that Afro-Amerlcan mothers, whatever the
changed circumstances of thelr llves, take on the sole
responslblllty of then chlldren (Nadel 1988 59)
Both the
femlnlne mothers of the earller generation -- Saru's mother
wlll~ngly and Meridian's mother unwllilngly, pass on the
legacy of the patriarchal system to their daughters
2.2.4.1 In Allce Walker's Meridran. Mrs Hlll fl-s intc the
category of 'suspended women' that Allce Walker herself
describes
As an independeni, slngle, career woman, she
enioys freedom. But somewhere deep inslde her she craves
~CT the ernotlonal securlty that she thinks the 'happly
marrled' women around her have In abundance
Although she
does not want to marry or to have chlldren, cultural
expectations condition her thlnking and she considers the
role of a mother essential in the life of a woman

2.2.4.2 This 'feminine' streak ~rs.~ill irnblbes from the
long generation of mothers before her.
5 6
Her family history
is one of mothers who sacrificed their life for their
children. Her great-great-grand mother was a slave whose
two chlldren were sold
The third time she stole them back,
her master agreed that she could keep them if she would take
full responsibility of feeding them.
She manages to feed
them but herself dies of slow starvation, after whlch her
chlldren are sold back
Mrs.Hill's mother herself made a
bargaln with her hard-hearted husband for allowing her
daughter to go to school
2.2.4.3. Mrs Hl11 1s depicted as Black femlnlne motherhood
person~fled Walker deplcts Merldlan, the emerglng femlnlst
mother, agalnst the backdrop of femxnlne motherhood typlfled
by Mrs Hlll
Mrs H111, a bllndly religious woman,
apparently happy rn her passivity and zn the dull chores of
everyday llfe, expects her daughter to follow her footsteps
Merldlan hates her mother for imblblng the values of
lnstltutlnal motherhood
Meridian thcught of her IMrs Hllll as Black
Motherhood personified, and of that great
institution she was In terrlble awe,
comprehendidng as she did the horror, the
narrowing of perpspectlve, for mother and chlld lt
had invariably meant (M . 931
Despite other autobiographical parallels, Merld~an's
Stralned relationship with her mother is a far cry from the

57
nurturing relationship Walker herself had with her mother
and of which she gives a moving account in In Search of Our
~others' Gardens Meridian as a daughter is afraid of the
Black Motherhood personified in her mother. Steeped in the
lnstltutlon of motherhood, Mrs Hill's life is a "sacrifice",
a "blind, enduring, stumbling" IM 71) through life. She
does not take extreme positions on anything, unless
urreasonably provoked over a long period. It is clear that
she has reached this State of passlve feminlne motherhood by
k-lllng the femlnist in her Although Merldian hates the
lnstitutlon of motherhood personif led by her mother, though
she feels that her mother cannot understand her llfe and
prays only for her soul, Merldian is unable to dlssoclate
from her mother as is seen In her preservation of her
letters
2.2.4.4. "My mother, you know, was a great femlnist. She
brought me up to be equal She made there be no questions,
no d-fference" (MS 321, says Rosamund Stacey of Drabble's
The Millstone In contrast to Walker's Heridian and
Deshpande's The Dark Holds No Terrors, where the mothers of
:he prevlous generation are representatives of femlnlne
motherhood, ~osamund's mother is an avowed femlnlst
Drabble's protagonists, being intelligent, Independent and
successful are no doubt, examples of true feminists,.but the
actual espousal of the feminist cause is often pushed back

to the earlier generation, as observed in her other works
too such as The Realms of Gold and The Waterfall
cunnzngham observes.
This is a conscious desire of the author's, a
deslre 'to give credit where credrt is due' to the
feminlst tradition, and to counter the faclle
assumption she finds partlcularly among Americans
that the woman's movement is something which
sprang from nowhere in the mid-sixfies (1982 133).
As Gall
The clarity of the femlnlst lssues faced by the women of the
earlrer generatron become blurred for Drabble's contemporary
women who find it dlfflcult to get stralghtforward answers
to then dilemma
2.3.0. A deslre for sons rather than daughters 1s
ingrained in the psyche of the feminine mother Such a
preference is actually a construct of patriarchy, used to
perpetuate its rule While daughters are consldered
unwanted burdens, sons are regarded as power-symcols,
perpetuatcrs of the famlly This 1s partlcularly tr;e in
the case of Indlan soclety where female foet~clde 1s
practised even today A glance at ancient Indlan :exts
reveals that while sons were elevated to helghts, daugsrers
barely exlsted, belng nullifled elther by sllence cr by
lcfantlcide Among Indlan cornunities such as the Ra;puts
ar,d Brahmins, where sons are consldered more desirable,
there is nevertheless a special attachment of mothers to
their daughters. But this kind of female bonding, though

59
far preferable to rejection or indifference, arises from
,dentification wlth the daughter's future victimization.
There 1s no attempt on the mothers' part to change the cycle
,f repetitions Into which the daughters' lives are being
oven Leaving psychoanalytic interpretation aside that
zhrough the male chlld the mother compensates for the one
great lack of her life, the lack of a penis, feminists arque
that it is the patriarchal society which systematically
practised female foeticide that makes women wish for sons.
Such a preference for sons over daughters, observed in
Nectar in a Sieve, becomes a nagging obsession in The Dark
Hold8 NO Terrors
2.3.1. Rukmani in Nectar in a Sieve 1s dlsappolnted that
her flrst born is a glrl because "what woman wants a girl
far her first-born3" (NS 14) Her husband Nathan is also
deiected because he too had wanted a son to "continue hls
?In€" (NS 15) Added to this failure is her ensulng
barrenness and the fear that she might never be able to glve
blrth to a son. Her mother, equally ahulous, makes Rukrani
acccmpany her to temples to pray for a son, places a llnsam,
Sjmbol of fer-llity, in her hands, saying: "You will yet
bear many sons" (NS 18)
Their joy knows no bounds when a
son is born to them seven years after Ira's blrth In
another seven years, Rukmani bears four more sons and she

exclaims in joy: "It was as if all the pent up desires of my
childless days were now bearing fruit" (NS:22).
6 0
2.3.2. In Shashi Deshpande's The Dark Holds No Terrors,
Saru's mother's discriminatory attitude towards her son and
daughter is a reflection of her asslrnllation of patriarchal
values. While undue concern and importance is accorded to
Dhruva. Sam is exposed only to her mother's open hostility
and unconcern
Her mother's accusation against her. "Why
are you alive when he is dead? (DH 35) makes her feel
unwanted --- "that to her mother, compared to Dhruva, she
hereself was nothlng" (DH 7 5)
That 1s why she bltterly
ccmpares her mother to the heroic mother, Jllabal, who
moulded her son, Shlvaji.
2.3.3. Both Sam's mother and Rukmanl share a sense of
dlsappolntrnent towards thelr daughters but the lntenslvf of
then disapproval varles
While Saru's mother has nothing
but resentment and antagonism for her t~ll her death,
Ruknanl cannot deny her affection, while she ~s unmarried or
even after she returns abandoned by her husband
At the
Cost of her own reputation, Rukmani vlslts the docror,
Kenny, In hope of curing Ira of her barrenness and later too
she stoically accepts Ira's illegitimate child
2.4.0. Feminine motherhood demands of women renunciatlon
of their alms, interests, desires and careers, and the

lnwlcation of the ability to relate to others, to live and
thlnk through others. A mother is expected to negate her
individuality; self-realization and self understanding are
irrelevant for the mother. Women have been told that thelr
~ntellectual or creative aspirations are inappropriate,
~nconsequential or scandalous, an attempt to become llke men
or to escape from the tasks of childbearing and rearing
Career women are considered the "bad guys", "castrating
females" and "deviants"
6 1
The dependent, femln~ne, home-
centered housewife 1s the one who receives the accolade, the
women who insist on pursuing thelr rnterests, who leave the
home to take up jobs are severely criticized
The mother 1s
not supposed to have interests of her own -- the interests
of the mother and child are supposed to be den tical. She,
therefore, has to develop extreme willingness to sacrlflce.
El~sabeth Badlnter indicates that 'feminine nature',
synonymous with all the characterlstics of the 'model
mother' or 'feminlne mother' presupposes certaln 'qualltles'
ln the mother. passlvlty, a weak ego or sense of self,
renunclatlon of active alms, interests of one's own to live
through others, and incapac~ty for abstract thought.
Adrlenne Rlch puts forth a serles of "unexamlned
assumptions" that femlnlne motherhood encompasses.
A "nat,Jralv mother is a person without further
identity, one who can flnd her chief gratification
In being all day with small children, living at a
pace zuned to theirs, that the isolatlon of

mothers and children together In the home must be
taken for granted; that maternal love is, and
should be, quite literally selfless; that chlldren
and mothers are the "causes" of each others'
suffering (1976:22-23).
Denylng mothers access to the publlc sphere, feminine
motherhood confines them to the home which is considered a
sacred place, a place for social altruism. Idealislng both
the home and the mother in lt, instltutionallsed motherhood
1zs1sts that the isolated home, protected from the outslde
world, is the mother's responsibrlity to maintaln as a
sanctuary
In the Victorian era, John Ruskln gave a
glor~fled plcture of the woman's place in her home rn hls
'Cueen's Gardens' wh~le Coventry Patmore created hls 'Angel
ln the House'
Protected, sheltered, isolated, safe wlthln
the walls of thelr gardens, women as mothers become the
reposltorles of all humane vlrtues
made of home a school of vlrtue
It was the mother who
Patriarchy not only
llmlted a woman to the domestlc sphere, it also devalued her
work at home
The woman at home wlth chlldren was not
bel~eved to be dolng serlous work, she was just supposed to
be actzng out of maternal ~nstlnct, domg chores a man would
never take on. The claustrophobia of the home added to her
powerlessness, creating boredom, lethargy, loneliness and
loss of competence.
2.4.1. Placing her chlldren' s needs before hers. Rukmani
of Nectar in a Sieve becomes the legendary self-sacriflcang

63
mother After a long bout of famine, when her family
flnally gets food, she feels more happy for her children
than for herself: "... at the sight of their faces, still
plnched but content, a great weight lifted from me" (NS.45)
Even after the death of two of her sons and the desertion of
the others, Rukmani accepts everything as her 'karma'. Tlll
the end, she is a picture of serenity, calmness, acceptance
and endurance -- in a word, the 'femlnine mother' Although
her sons belie her expectatlons, she accepts her fate with
stolc calmness Wlth her husband dead, whom also she
mothered to some extent, she now needs a new power-symbol
ar.d therefore adopts Puli, a boy strlcken wlth leprosy,
hoplng that he would sustain her through the remalnlng years
of her llfe
2.4.2. In Meridian, Mrs. Hill renounces her career and
wlth lt her Independence after her marriage The feminist
streak In her is suppressed by the feminine expectatlons of
a mother. An independent teacher before marrlage, she
understands that she has to compromise with her freedom
after marrlage She rs unable to cope wlth the pressures of
motherhood, but the revolt brewlng ln her turns Into a stolc
acceptance of patriarchal nonns.
2.4.2.1, In fro-~merlcan women's flction, many oppressed
black women find outlets for thear suppression by expressing

themselves through art.
64
For example, Celie In Allce
walker's The Color Purple indulges in writlng, quilt-making
and sewing -- activities which reinforce bondlng between
women. But Mrs Hill's few artistlc efforts are failures
She never learned to cook well, she never learned
to brald hair prettlly or to be in any other way
creatlve in her home She could have done so, ~f
she had wanted to Creativity was in her, but 1t
was refused expresslon. It was all deliberate. A
war agalnst those to whom she could not express
her anger or shout, "It's not fair" (M . 411
Instead of channeling her pent-up desires into art, she
lnstead expends all her energy Into domestic dutles, kncwlng
well that she 1s unsulted for them
2.4.2.2. Although Mrs Hi;l reallzes that dternal
f'Jlflllmenc is only a myth created by patriarchy to serve
the demands of the instltut~on and the "mysterrous lnner
1;fe" she had lmaglned ln other mothers was slrnply a full
knowledge of the fact :hat
they were dead, llving lust
encugh for thelr chlldren -- she succumbs to patriarchal
demands and brlngs up her chlldren dutifully as expectei of
her, although they were "burdens to her always" (M 411
Even before she becomes a silent adherer to scclal
motherhood, Mrs. Hill remalns a passlve sufferer even tc the
physrcal angulsh of pregnancy and chlldblrth
Durlng her
flrst pregnancy, she experiences a blologlcal and
Psychological spl~t within herself:

Her frail independence gave way to the pressures
of motherhood and she learned that she was not
even allowed to be resentful that she was
"caught". That her personal llfe was over There
was no one she could cry out to and say "It's not
falr' (M : 41)
She feels that pregnancy has "distracted her from who she
was" (M . 40)
Llke Kate she experiences a fragmentation of
self and feels she is "being buried alive, walled away from
her own llfe, brrck by brlck" (M : 411
2.4.3. In The Dark Holds No Terrors, Smita and Padmakar's
wlfe are two women who llve at a pace tuned to thelr husband
and famlly, totally oblivious of their own sense of
~dentlty Sam's conflicting 'femlnlne' and 'femlnlst' self
1s ~uxtaposed wlth the staunch feminist Nalu or. one hand,
and the 'fem~nine' Smlta on the other
We could very well be symbols of three totally
different attitudes Nalu, the spinster,
dedicated to her lob Smlta, wholly wlfe, mother
and housekeeper And Saru, who comblned so well a
career and a family (DH 106)
Deliberate lrony 1s Implied in the delineation of Smlta,
"the happy wife and mother" (DH
107) who wllllngly accepts
a change of name after her marriage; though apparently
fulfilled in her roles, she has to borrow money behlnd her
husband's back Another such "good wife and mother" (DH.120)
is Padmakar's wlfe, who, as the dissatisfied Padmakar
hlmself confesses to Saru, does not "talk about anything but

6 6
servants and the children. And prices" (DH. 1201, who never
has her food till he reaches home, who never calls him by
his name.
2.4.4. In order to fulfil obligations and expectations of
motherhood and the rigour of brlnging up three small
children, Beatrice, Rosamund's sister in The Millstone,
forsakes even the prospect of taklng up a career, regretting
"not using her degree to its best advantage" (MS 88)
Though Beatrice had always sung to Rosamund the praises of
motherhood and domesticity, she 1s not sympathetic towards
Rosamund's pregnant state
Havlng imbibed the patrlarchal
concept of motherhood Beatrlce 1s unable to accept
motherhood outslde marital bounds
Advising Rosamund to
have the baby adopted, Beatrice warns her agalnst the
responslbllity and problems ln brlnglng lt up
2.5.0. The lnstltutlon of motherhood gains sanction and
1s reinforced by a rellglon that is essentially patrlarchal
The lmage of the benevolent mother in both Western and
Eastern tradltlon 1s an additional burden the woman has to
carry
Any devlance from these images is deemed abnormal or
lmmoral by the lnstltutlon
The famllial / social,
.ldeolog~cal and political system of patriarchy uses rellgion
i ritual / tradition / customs to determine what part women
shall or shall not play, thus subsurnlng the female under the

male. Rich interprets Yahweh's command in the Old Testament
"Be fruitful and multiply" as essentially a patriarchal one.
According to her, Yahweh "is not lnvoking the Great Mother
but blddlng his sons beget st111 more sons" (Rich 1976:119)
2.5.1. Patriarchal religion imposes its control on
mothers not only where child rearing is concerned, but also
with regard to child bearlng
In Judeo-Chrlstlan theology,
woman's paln in childbirth 1s considered punishment from
God
The "courage" of passlve sufferlng 1s the hlghest
pralse accorded to the mother
Since the curse lald on Eve in Geneszs was taken
literally well Into the nineteenth century, the
mother In labour had to expect to suffer, but what
was even more slgniflcant, 1t was assumed until
the last three decades that she must suffer
passively (Rlch 1976 . 128)
Thls paSSITJe sufferlng has become accepted as unlversal,
natural female destiny
Similarly, the passlve sufferlng
has been extended to every sphere of woman's existence
Patriarchal rellgion has also created images of the
archetypal mother whlch reinforce the conservatism of
motherhood and convert lt to an energy for the renewal of
male power
Moreover, the assertlon by femlnlsts In recent
tlmes regarding the right of women not to mother has stlrred
up religious reactions among conservatives -
the Roman
Catholic Church views abortlon and artificial means of
contraception as against God's laws

68
2.5.2. In Hindu mythology and religion, one comes across
conflicting models of womanhood / motherhood. Idolized one
moment and degraded the next, placed on a pedestal and
trodden over at the same time, the Indian woman's real
ldentity is in jeopardy. Whether glorified or ill-treated,
the real woman in her is suppressed, the 'I' withrn her
never emerges. Even when she is exalted as a goddess, she
is expected to conform to certain ideals, whlch, needless to
mentlon, have a patriarchal intent Her real self is at
odds with the role-models she has to emulate As Uma Alladi
points out, since centuries the Hindu woman ln literature
has been based on the mythic models from the Ramayana and
the Puranas Slta the sllent sufferer -- the archetype of
Indlan womanhood, the Earth - Mother, forbearance
personlfled, the playmate and beloved Radha, the devotee
Meera (Allad1 1989 1) The codes of Manu are the most
glaring example of the ambiguous status accorded to women.
Replete with contradlctlons, certaln sectlon of Manu Smrlthl
honour women whlle others emphasize her submlsslve role.
One of the sections says that a woman should be llke a slave
whlle worklng, a rnlnlster when counselling, Goddess Lakshmi
in personality, the Earth in her endurance, a mother whlle
feeding, and like the celestial prostitute, Rambha, in bed.
Even great thlnkers like Swami Vivekananda have glorified
motherhood as a woman's highest and noblest duty.

2.5.3. Nectar in a Sieve reiterates the analogy of the
mother to the Earth-Goddess through a constant association
of the protagonist Rukmani wlth images of fertility and with
the qualities of forbearance, patience and endurance
Everywhere in Hindu religion, legend and mythology, one
dlscerns that the endurance power of the mother is
underscored.
6 9
India, being primarily an agrarian society,
rests much importance on the Earth as Mother, forbearance
personlfled. Imbued with the mythological story of Mother
Earth, who, unable to see her daughter Sita suffer, swallows
her up, the Indlan 'feminine' woman aspires to have such an
enduring temperament, Even today the image of the mother -
earth as endurer persists. Thls is most vlvidly portrayed
in the person of ilukmani.
2.5.4. Shashl Deshpande however refutes the myth of the
mother as goddess or as a paragon of all vlrtues
Sam is
repulsed by the nage of the mother-goddess at the temple
She [the godless1 looked a dreadful cursing klnd
of Devl, an:-day The women sometimes called her
"Mother" I rmagine, I thought, havlng a mother
llke that, with a brass head and staring,
frightful brassy eyes as well IDH : 91)
2.5.5. In Morrlsonrs Sethe, both the benlgn and terr~ble
aspects of the morher-goddess converge
Fiercely protectlve
and devotedly concerned about her children. Sethe can also
transform into the fearsome mother-goddess when provoked

In killing Beloved, Sethe becomes the destructive and
authoritative mother-goddess, who Trudier Harris views as a
patriarchal manifestation,
Beloved's war against Sethe . . . can be read from
one perspective as a further attack against
masculine privilege, against the power over life
and death that is stereotypically identlfled with
males or wlth those masculine rnother/qoddesses
(Harris 1991 : 158)
Sethe's act may be centered in mother-love, but it is also
centered In the patrlarchal authority as a mother-goddess
she assumes in herself.
2.5.6. In Herland, an exaltation of motherhood leads to
~ts deiflcatlon
7 0
The Herlanders developed their central
theory of a lovlnq power, and assume that its relation to
them is motherly -- that it deslres thelr welfare and
development
Their maternal rellglon and worshlp of the
mother - goddess leads to a klnd of Maternal Pantheism.
Here was Mother Earth, bearino fruit All that
they ate was frult of motherhood, from seed or egg
or thelr product By motherhood they llved --
life was, :o them, lust the long cycle of
motherhood (H . 59)
The idea of God to them is a magniflcatlon of human
motherhood
nothlng bu:
The bellef In a 'Mother - Spirlt' whlch is
their own 'Mother - love' accumulated to be a
'Power' (H . 111 - 12) and now 'a great tender llmltless
upllftlng force' (H : 112) works in practlce as the

.
71
internalization of a 'code of conduct' based on love,
patience and courtesy (H : 114) . Motherhood -- 'the power
of mother love' or the maternal instinct is here raised to
its highest power and 1s highly venerated. Endowed wxth the
abstract force of an idea, motherhood is not "a brute
passion", a mere instinct, a wholly personal feeling but a
"religion" (H . 68) whlch includes the "limbless feeling of
sisterhood", "that wide unity in service" (H : 59)
Motherhood was thelr one great contrlbutlon to natlonal
All mothers In that land were holy To them for
long ages, the approach to motherhood has been by
the most intense and exauislte lonuins, - bv the
2.
Supreme Deslre. the oveziasterlng demand for a
chlld Every thought they held In conneczion with
the process of maternity was open to the day,
simple yet sacred. Every woman of them placed
motherhood not only higher than other dutles, one
mlsht almost sav All their wide mutual love. all
the subtle 1n

child, operating in a world of violence as the divine
principle of love, union and peace (Sangari 1983 : 15).
2.5.6.1. Charlotte Perkins Gllman makes several contrasts
between the Maternal Pantheism of Herland and the
Christianity of Western civil~zation, as practised
72
In The
uan-Made World or Our Androcentric Culture, she flnds that
the Christian religion "requires a fuller 'change of heart'
and change of life than any preceding it, which may account
at once for its wlde appeal to enlighten peoples, and to lts
scarcity of appl~cation" iclted in Hall 1989 62) The
Goddess of Motherhood in the Temple of Moaia, set in
deliberate contras; to the Image of Mother Mary of the
Cathollc Church, is seen as the representative of the values
of motherhood, beliefs which fan the very foundation of
thexr llves, but does not exlst because of her part in
brrthlng a male chlld or because of her suffering in hls
sacrifice. There 1s also no association of the goddess w:th
subservience to a god or dominant power, nor is there any
lndlcatlon that Moala
ever represented the passlve
'femlnlne' vlrtues attributed to Marl, often held up as a
model in the Catholic Church
Susan Gubar points out.
Gilman's garden of parthenogenesls replaces the
Judeo - Christian garden of Genesls by clalming
that the authority of the father -- biological or
spiritual -- is a myth fast degenerating to the
status of a fiction iGubar 1989 : 196 - 97)

73
Gilman's concept, therefore, is a reworking, not a rejection
of Christianity.
2.6.0. Society's way of institutionalizing motherhood
breeds gullt into the very fabric of a woman's character
Women work hard to achleve the virtues prescribed for them
as women, and, if they fail they feel terribly guilty of not
llvrng up to the standards of motherhood. Psychoanalytic
thlnk~ng blames the mother for anything that goes wrong zn
the famlly Her very character is called Into questlon I£
she 'falls' her chlldren The physlcal and psychic welght
of responsibility is the heaviest of social burdens on her,
though it 1s a powerless responsibllity, it brlngs about
feelings of inadequacy and gullt zn the mother At the
mercy of both her child and of soclety, the mother
constantly assesses her performance in terms of the Ideal
standard propagated by patriarchy Women are caught In a
dilemma as to how much love they should impart to thelr
children -- on one hand, they feel that lnfmlte love and
attent~on 1s due to thelr children, and on the other feel
that too much of affection would be to thelr detriment
Especially when women trled to integrate career wlth
motherhood, they suffered the gullt of neglecting thelr
chlldren.
2.6.1. "Feeling guilty seems almost a definition of
motherhood in this enlightened time" (SBD . 95) admlts Kate

Brown Whose experience tells her that the mother is
invariably targetted for any mishap that occurs in the
family
74
Particularly, Tim's outburst that she is
suffocating him leaves a guilty scar in her psyche
contrast, the narrative voice says about Mary:
She hasn't any sense of guilt -- that's the
point. We are all ln invisible chains, guilt, we
should do this, we mustn't do that, ~t's bad for
the children, lt's unfair on the husband. (SBD :
212-13)
Kate, however, 1s shackled by these "invlslble chams" of
g-xlt, perpetually haunted by the question whether she was
glvlng too llttle or too much to her children.
2.6.2. Gullt becomes a part of Saru's psyche since her
glrlhcod when she is accused of 'kllllng' her brother Dhruva
by passively watchlng him drown
In
Thls gullt remalns wlth
her throughout her adolescence, and is only reinforced by
her mother's constant reproaches
As a wlfe, Sam is made
tc feel gullty by vlrtue of belng more quallfled than her
husband, and henceforth earnlng not only the butter, but
also the bread for the family. As a mother, her children's
lndlfference or angry comments against her are constant
rern~nders of the fact that she is not playing the maternal
role satisfactorily.
2.6.3. A sense of gullt haunts Merldian right from her
childhood. At thirteen, she feels guilty for not responding

to the Church in the same way as her mother did. Her mother
withdraws her love as Merldlan is not able to meet her
conditions. As a daughter, Meridian spends years trying to
expiate the guilt she felt for having failed her mother.
Her family history is one of mothers who even sacrificed
thelr lives for their children. Mrs Hill's great - great
grandmother was
75
a slave who steals back her children and
does all she can to feed them, herself meeting death due to
stamatlon.
Mrs Hlll's own mother washes other people's
laundry in order to get her daughter educated. As a mother
herself, Meridlan feels guilty of being unable to keep up to
the standards of maternal history Ln her family
She loves
her son in an 'Impersonal' way and knows that she cannot
offer him unlimited sacrifice as the mothers before her did.
Even though she glves away her son to a couple who she feels
will look after h ~ m better than she can, she suffers a
llngerlng sense of guilt throughout her life
2.6.4. The theme of gullt is rnextrlcably woven with that
of maternal love In Toni Morrison's Beloved
Sethe's sense
of gullt, as a consequence of the act of murdering her
daughter, is compounded by the baby ghost's hauntlng of the
house.
The invisible ghost, and its physical presence
elghteen years later in the form of Beloved, are external
manifestations of Sethe's guilty conscience. Seen from one
Perspective, the dominant theme of Beloved seems to be guilt

for which only otherworldly punishment is appropriate, while
from another viewpoint, love appears to be the chief motive
that spurs the mother to kill her child rather than remand
her to slavery
2.7.0. The cultural separation between care and anger,
care and self-interest, makes lt lmpossible for mothers to
integrate anger Into thelr act~vity of mothering. In Greek
mythology, Medea and Clytemnestra were consldered non-
maternal because of thelr anger.
7 6
The mother's anger is
consldered lllegltlmate, anger is the antithesis of the
maternal.
Belng angry creates breaks and dlsruptlons in
relationships that challenge soclal structures. Mother-love
is therefore supposed to be cont~nuous and unconditional.
As Rich expresses lt, "Love and anger cannot coexlst
Female anger
threatens the lnstltutlon of motherhood"
(1976 46) Marrlane Hlrsch shares thls vlew
A mother cannot articulate anger as a mother, to
do so she must step out of a culturally
clrcumscrlbed role which commands mothers to be
carlng and nurturrng to others, even at the
expense of themselves. (1989 170)
Should she rebel and express her anger, she would cease to
be maternal, for the essence of the 'maternal' according to
Soclal strictures and psychoanalytic dogma lies in the
service to the interests of the child. Hence, to be angry
2s to assert one's own self, not to subordinate it to the
development of another's self

77
2.7.1. Rukmani of Nectar in a Sieve so faithfully imbibes
this Concept that anger is a feeling that does not exist in
her psychological vocabulary at all. A plcture of patlence
and selfless devotion, she does not experience anger at all,
so the question of suppressing it does not arise. Ira's
abandonment by her husband, her sons' desertion, even the
harrowing knowledge of her husband's adultery does not
unnerve her Though angry sparks are kindled in Ira after
she 1s relected and abandoned as 'barren', silence is the
grlm mask under which she conceals her anger, she lnherlts
her mother's stoic resignation to physical and emotional
turbulances Mrs Hlll of Yeridian does the same though she
feels angry at givlng up her career, angry at glving blrth
to and bringrng up chzldren she does not want, angry at
loslng her Indepecdent identlty In The Summer Before the
Dark, Kate's pent-up anger surfaces after her son Tlm's
outburst that she 1s suffocating hlm, and also when she
learns of her husband's casual sexual flings wrth other
women, but she defuses her anger In order to malntaln the
facade of a happy famlly As wxll be evldent from the next
chapter, Saru, Mcrag and Merldlan, the 'femlnlst' mothers,
succeed In givlng volce to thelr anger, and later channeling
thelr anger to more creatlve forms of expression -- Morag,
through her writing, Saru, through her profession as doctor,
and Meridian, by her lnvolvernent in the Civil Rlghts
Movement.

2.8.0. The irony of feminine motherhood lies in the fact
that women are trained in dependency for a role demanding
strength. Independence and autonomy are considered dangerous
for mothers At the end of the eighteenth century, Mary
wallstonecraft pointed out the paradox of preparing women
for the most demanding of all roles, that of a mother, by
fostering weakness in them rather than strength. The double
standards of the ideal of femlnine motherhood are qulte
obvlous
In the fourteenth century, for example, Vlrgin
Mary could be worshipped, whlle living women were brutallsed
and burnt as wltches
7 8
The dark or the negative aspect of
the Great Mother -- as the goddess Kall, the klller-mother
Medea, the lewd and malign witch, the castrating mother --
exlStS along with the benign, life-glving aspect. According
to Dorothy Dlnnerstein, the mother was sometimes the source
of pleasure and at other tlmes the source of discomfort or
paln (Eissensteln 1984
of patrlarchal motherhood
81). Rich indicates the hypocrisy
Throughout patr~archal mythology, dream -
syrnbollsm, theology, language, two ideas flow slde
by side. one, tha: the female body is impure.
corrupt, the slte of discharges, bleedlngs,
dangerous to masculinity, a source of moral and
physlcal contamination, "the devil's gatewayu. On
the otherhand, as mother the woman is beneflcient,
sacred, pure, asexual, nourishing; and the
~hvsical Dotentzal for motherhood -- that same
boiy with-its bleedings and mysteries -- is her
slngle destiny and justification in llfe. These
two ideas have become deeply internalized in
women, even in the most independent of us, those
who seem to lead the freest lives (Rich 1976:34).

79
The mother therefore serves as both Monster and Muse. She
IS, to quote Rich again, "both more and less as a person;
she is something terribly necessary and necessarily
terrible" (Rlch 1976 : 112).
2.9.0. The varying degrees of acceptance of the
patriarchal definition of motherhood by the mothers
described so far indicates that not all mothers are srlent
conformists to fem~nlne motherhood. The level of adherence
varies in degree and kind In Rukmanl, Saru's mother, Mrs
Hl11, Sethe and Kate.
2.9.1. In Markandaya's Rukmani, we see a stoic acceptance
of the role wlthout any iota of protest -- she 1s the model
femlnlne mother, an archetype of the Earth-Mother,
possessing an unendlng reservoir of wlfely devotion and
motherly love. Job-llke in her unlimited forbearance, she
takes all trlals and tribulations In her strlde, ascrlhlng
her suffering to her 'Karma' or fate, all the whlle
obllvlous of the fact that she 1s no more than her role
2.9.2. Where Rukmanl 1s a meek model of the femlnlne
mother, Saru's mcther 1s an assertive, domlnatlng and even
viclous one.
On the surface level, there is hardly any
ground of comparison between the self-sacrlf~clng and humble
Rukmani and the domineeringly malicious mother in
Deshpande's novel.
But what makes one classify both as

80
feminine mothers is that both have imbibed patriarchal
motherhood and its cherished ideals --- while the former
follows them mutely, the latter voices them fiercely.
Ironical overtones and a narrative tone of censure ring loud
In Deshpande's presentation of Saru's mother whereas
Markandaya's portrayal of Rukmanl 1s absolutely free from
lronic touches
2.9.3. Alice Walker's Mrs Hill, sketched wlth quiet
lrony by the wrlter, differs from the feminine mothers of
Markandaya and Deshpande In that she is not a wllllng
ccnfomist to the patriarchal concept of motherhood. She is
fully aware that motherhood distracts her from who she
really IS, resulting in a reconstitution of her entlre
personality Hers is not a wllllng or unconscious surrender
at the glorlous altar of motherhood Knowlng well that she
1s rellnqulshlng a part of herself. Mrs Hill succumbs to
soc~al pressures and the call glven by femlnlne motherhood.
Ur.1Lke Rukmanl and Saru's mother, she considers motherhood a
burden but passes on the legacy of femlnlne motherhood to
her daughter for fear of social disapproval
2.9.4. One cannot overlook the irony in Lesslnq's
treatment of her character, Kate Brown. Kate had been
llving the lie of the feminine mystique for the sake of her
family and society. It is only in her middle age that she

81
comprehends that Michael's wife or Tim's mother are not the
real Kate. As soon as this realization strlkes her, she
unmasks her face in search of the real person beneath the
assorted masks. Unlike Mrs. Hill, Kate becomes wary at thls
stage and probes rnto the depths of her psyche In an attempt
to explore her hidden self.
2.9.5. Though Sethe in Beloved ldentlfies herself
prlmarlly as a mother, she is capable of trensmuclng
maternal sllence lnto maternal anger It is the v1ola:lon
of her motherhood that spurs her into taklng lndeperdent
declslons -- the first is displayed In her courage In
fleelng Sweet Home and the next in her slaylng of her lrfant
daughter, preferring her qulck death to a llfe ter, of
slavery
2.9.6. The mlnor characters -- representatlons of
fernlnlne morherhood -- are used for purposes of contrast to
the emerglng fernlnlst mothers Many of them -- Smita and
Padmakar's wlfe In The Dark Holds No Terrors, Brldle and
Susan Trevor rn The Diviners, Beatrlce in The Millstone --
are flat characters, perfectly fittlng Into the femlllne
mould without any compunction. Sarcasm and irony undcrlle
thelr portrayal.
2.10.0. Although all the femlnine mothers discussed here
Participate in the 'sacred calling' of feminlne motherhood,

not everyone does so willingly. For example, R umni suits
her temperament to the ideals of feminine motherhood --
there 1s no dichotomy between the woman and mother In her;
whereas Mrs Klll and Kate conform to the norms laid down
though they consider the role a burden.
8 2
Even among the
latter two, Kate relinquishes her role when she realizes its
strategic manipulation of her self whereas Mrs
Hl11 is
unable to do so These subtle differences in conformity --
meek acceptance, burdensome acceptance or a waverlng between
acceptance and questioning -- slgnal the light at the end of
the tllsnel towards wh~ch women have already embarked on
thelr ;ourcey
The dissatlsfaction with femlnlne motherhood
lndlcates that the seeds of feminist motherhood are already
sown, the transltlon to whlch wzll form the focus of the
subsequent chapter, 'Femlnlst Motherhood'

BEKINIST MOTBEICBOOD
To be a good mother, a woman must have sense, and
that independence of mind which few women possess
who are taught to depend entirely on thelr
husbands. Meek wlves are, In general, foollsh
mothers Unless the understand~ng of women be
enlarged, and her character rendered more flrm, by
belng allowed to govern her own conduct, she will
never have sufficient sense or command of temper
to govern her children properly
- Mary Wollstonecraft
3.1.0. The strange discrepancy between the reallty of
then llves as women and the image to which they were trylng
to conform led women to questlon the femlnlne ideal of
rtotherhood
Women had to speak out and protest agalnst the
exlsting patriarchal norms when it became dlfflcult for them
LO sustaln a spllt wlthln themselves - conforming outwardly
to one reallty, whlle trylng to malntaln inwardly the values
lt denies
The conflict between women's deslres and the
dornlnant values of feminine motherhood which made women
.:o:ce
their protest led to a change In attitude towards
motherhood, which one can term the 'feminist' phase
3.1.1. The transition from the 'feminlne' to the
'feminist' phase of motherhood begins with the realization
by women that the patriarchal institution of motherhood is
not the natural 'human condition'
In the feminlne Stage,

84
motherhood was the main preoccupation of women, their one
and only job; they were moulded all their life for this job.
In their movement to the feminlst stage, women comprehend
that motherhood 1s only one part of the female process, not
an identlty for all time While the feminine mystique
teaches women to seek fulfilment as mothers, in the feminist
phase women understand that thelr existence as 'wife' or
'mother' is inadequate. As they experience a need to grow
and expand their mrnds, their entlre being begrns to rebel
agalnst a role that does not permit thls growth. The
questlon - "Who am I? Am I merely my husband's wlfe and
chrldren's nother'" - begins to haunt them
3.12 AS femlnist mothers begln to examlne the generally
urexamlned assumptions of motherhood, they unve-1 the false
aura of romantlclsm wlth whlch motP.erhood was t111 then
endowed The sent~mental vlew of motherhood as the ever
holy, ever infallible power is abandoned Femlnlst mothers
call on wonen to fight those aspects that make chlld bearlng
and chlld-rearing stressful rather than fulfllllng
experiences, suggesting other alternatives whlch can be more
fulfilling
Pointlng out the hiatus between the experience
and institution of motherhood, the contradlctlons between
ldeology and reallty, this chapter poses and explores the
alternatives to feminine motherhood.

85
3.2.0. In the novels under study, the revolt agalnst
t3eir mothers 1s one of the first indications of the women
protagonists' dissatisfaction with the exlsting =deals of
motherhood. Thls revolt 1s not so much a personal attack on
thelr mothers as it is agalnst the institution that the
women of the previous generation represent Thls attltude
of rebel agalnst everything the mother represents is what
Adrienne Rlch 1n her book Of Woman Born calls 'matrophobla'
- "not the fear of one's mother or of motherhood, but of
becomlng one's mccher" (1976 235). Jung too refers to the
'Resistance to the Mother' archetype, "a supreme example of
the negatlve mother complex" whose motto 1s "Anything, so
long as it 1s not like Mother" (1974:24) Femlnlsts down
:he years have attempted to explain matrophobla Fran
Scoble expresses Ehe femlnist daughter's anger at the mother
who has accepted her powerlessness, who 1s unable to protect
her from a submission to society's gender arrangements
Mothers In our c,slture, Scoble says, deny the truth of thelr
own experzence of bondage and frustration and lle to then
daughters whose growth then is constrained by the
perpetuation of mutual deception (cited In Hlrsch 1989:165)
Germalne Greer felt that it was first necessary to exorclse
the mother In order to reclaim her later Marlanne Hlrsch
Comments that "mothers . .
who succumb to convention In as
much as they are mothers - become the targets of Lthel

process of disidentification and the primary negative models
for the daughterr7 (1989:ll).
view
Betty Friedan shares this
In my generation, many of us knew we did not want
to be like our mothers, even when we loved them.
We could not help but see their dlsappolntment ...
they could not glve us an image of what we could
be. They could only tell us that their lives were
too empty, tied to home, that children, cooking,
clothes, brldge, and charities were not enough
(1971 72).
Fernlnists however over-rule Freudlan psychoanalys~s that
vlews the rage of daughters towards their mothers as
resentment for not havlng been glven a penls
3.3.0. In Meridian. The Diviners, The Summer Before the
Dark and The Dark Holds No Terrors, the daughters see thelr
mothers as havlng taught them a compromise and self-hatred
they are struggling to be free of
They hate their mothers
to the polnt of matrophobla where they experience a dread
that if they relax their guard, they may ldentlfy wlth the
nother completely
The mother stands for the vlctlm In
themselves, the unfree woman, the martyr; and so the
daughters do not want to be vessels of thelr mothers'
frustration and self-denial
Not only thelr mothers, even
Other women who identlfy themselves primarily as mothers
seem threatening and repelling to the daughters who feel
unequal to the mother role.

3.3.1. In Alice Walker's Meridian, Meridian is torn
between her actual feelings and the behaviour expected from
her towards her mother and towards motherhood.
87
The
institution of motherhood demands from her that she love her
mother whlle her innate self revolts.
it is death not to love one's mother or so it
seemed to Meridlan, and so, understanding her
mother as a wllling-know-nothing, a woman of
ignorance and - in her ignorance - of cruelty, she
loved her more than anything (M.17).
~kis love, of whlch she is unsure, soon turns lnto an
aversion toward everything her mother represents
As her
bellefs do not colnclde wlth those of her mother's, she
Incurs her mother's disapproval. "Her mother's love was
gone, withdrawn and there were condltlons to be met before
lt would be returned
meet" lM.17)
Conditions Merldian was never able to
Although she fights hard agalnst her mother's
influence, Meridian feels constantly haunted by her
She
feels guilty of steallng her mother's serenity, for
shattering her mother's emerglng self, though she 1s unable
to declpher how thls could posslbly be her fault. This love
- hate drama alternates in the relatlonshlp of Meridian to
her mother - anger at her turns to anger for her and again,
anger at her
3.3 .1.1. Though the novel contains many parallels to
Walker's own life, fact and fiction diverge at thls point -

~erldian's relationship to her mother is certainly not the
nurturing relationship Walker had with her own mother, about
which she has written very movingly in In Search of Our
Bothers' Gardens
88
In Meridian, both mother and daughter are
estranged by patriarchal norms for female behaviour and
self-zdentity. As Adrienne Rich remarks:
Many daughters live in rage at their mothers for
havlng accepted, too readlly and passively,
"whatever comes" A mother's vlctlmlzation does
not merely humiliate her. lt mutilates the
daughter who watches her for clues as to what it
means to be a woman (1976 243)
Mary Daly's statement, "mothers In our culture are ca3oled
Into kllllng off the self-actuallzatlon of their daughters,
and daughters learn to hate them for it, Instead of seelng
the real enemy" (1973 1491 1s applicable to the relatlonshlp
between Merldlan and her mother
Here, the 'real enemy' 1s
the patriarchal culture whlch denigrates female potentlal
and achievement.
3.3 .1.2. What Merldlan 1s unable to achleve wlth her
ncther, she comes near to achieving In her relatlonshlp with
Miss Wlnter, a childless teacher at Saxon, yet a mcther
:lgure, who saves her by grantlng her the forgiveness her
mother never could glve
Mlss Winter's words have a
therapeutic effect on the alllng Merldian, and she regalns
her physical and mental health.
Through Mlss Winter,
Meridian learns to value life in its relationship to death

As will be seen subsequently, symbollc mothers do have an
edge over biological mothers as in The Summer Before the
Dark (Kate and Maureen), The Diviners (Morag and
MrS Gerson), The Dark Holds No Terrors (Sam and Mavshij.
3.3.1.3. Adrleme Rich refers to such a syndrome where
daughters spllt themselves between two mothers - one, the
b~ologlcal mother who represents the culture of domestlclty.
of male-centredness, conventional expectations, and another.
perhaps a woman artist or teacher who exemplifies strength
and prlde In her body, a freer way of belng in the world,
allve wlth ~deas, representing the choice of a vlgorous work
llfe
Such a splltting, Rlch says, may allow the young
woman to fantasize alternatively, to test out two different
1dentlficatl3ns, but may also lead to a llfe In whlch she 1s
not able to resolve the two cholces (1976.247-48)
3.3.2. A mother-daughter-love-hate relatlonshlp akln to
that of Meridian characterises The Diviners also
8 9
Plque's
outburst at Moraq "Can't you see I desplse you' Can't you
see I want you t3 go away' You aren't my mother I haven't
got a mother', :D 991, indicates her denial oE her mother,
arlsing out of a fear that she too may end up emulating her
Though Morag knows that Pique despises her at tlmes, she is
able to understand her point there, and it 1s In thls
understandlng that hate, like love, blnds them. The water-

dlviner, Royland, is able to divlne that Plque does not
really resent her mother - "she has mlxed feelings, is allv
!D,100). However Pique, like Meridian, has moments of
Intense hatred towards her mother
They thlnk they are sweet reasonableness, and it's
you that's in the wrong, lust by belng, and not
being like them, or looking like them, or wanting
their kind of life It's the anger you can feel,
even ~f they don't lay a hand on you (D 233)
P~que's anguished outburst at her mother. "Why dzd you have
me?" (D . 235) 1s another stone pelted at her
9 0
Plque feels
that Morag conceived her just for her own satlsfactlon
wlthout glvlng a thought to the chlld to be born. Morag too
wonders at tlmes if she had Pique lust to have someone born
of her blood, In the process dld she decelve both Plque and
Jules7
The ambivalence characterlslng the mother-daughter
relationsh~p 1s most obvious In Morag's statement
"Pique,
harbinger of my death, continuer of llfe" (D . 290)
Paradoxically, although creatlng the daughter requlres a
surrender of self, it also recreates the self for the woman.
For Morag, recognltlon of her daughter's adulrhood is also a
recognltlon of her own mortality
Also, through her
daughter. Morag creates, both ln her art and her life, her
f~ture
In creating the future, she recreates her personal
Fast and recovers her lost maternal lnherltance
3.3.2.1. Slgne Hammer, who has described the "underground"
nature of the mother-daughter relationship, also emphasizes

91
that the daughter often recelves a "double - message" from
the mother, one in whlch the daughter is encouraged to obey
rhe patrlarchal definition of her womanhood and another
message which pushes the girl toward definlng her identlty
in more achievement - oriented ways (cited in Buss 1985 :
56) As will be observed In The Dark Holds No Terrors and
The Summer Before the Dark and as already analysed In
Merldlan, thls "double - message" informs the relatlonshlp
between Plque and her mother The psychoioglcal lourney
reveals the ambivalence that characterlses the motherdaughter
relatlonshrp In Plque's efforts to achieve
autonomy, anger and affectlon vle with each other -- she
suffers because she feels that she has deserted her motner.
at the same tlme, she resents her chlldllke dependence She
struggles between anger, gullt and affectlon as she attempts
to define herself
3.3.2.2. Morag's reiatlonshlp wlth her own mother 1s
fraught wlth another klnd of amblgulty Slgnlfzcant here is
Morag's deslre rc converse wlth her dead mother, coupled
wlth the real~zatlon that she is now more than ten years
older than her moLher was when she died: "she would seem so
young to me, so rnexperlenced" (D 11). Morag remembers
only her parents' deaths, not their llves. "yet they're
lnslde me, flowlng unknown In my blood and movlng
unrecognized in my skull" (D :19). Morag's relationship

with her mother-substitutes -- Prin in her childhood and
Ella Gerson's mother in her adolescence -- and her imaginary
conversations with Catherine Parr Trail -- reveal her
~ntense need to commune with a sympathetic maternal figure.
Also, Trall serves as a model of women's experience in an
earlier century, just as Pique suggests future generations.
Helen Buss writes:
Just as in childhood Morag created Plper Gunn's
woman to answer her need for the Ideal femlnlne,
now she creates her new salnt in the form of her
conversations with Catherlne Parr Trail, answering
her need to be in touch wlth a strong, purposeful
vislon of motherhood 11985 . 69)
3.3.2.3. In Laurence's fict~on, the change In the mother -
daughter relat~onshlp begins wlth negation, moves to
recognition and ends in a reconc~liation
Though the
mothers and daughters derlve strength from each other, each
redefining her self through the other, Laurence does not
ldealise or romantlclse the mother-daughter relatlonshlp
She pro3ects the complexity of thls relatlonshlp wlth its
moments of tranqu~llicy and tension, harmony and struggle
3.3.2.4 What sets Laurence's deplctlon of the mother
daughter relatlonshlp apart from other portrayals in the
novels studled here 1s that in The Diviners, the lnitlal
ambrvalence of the daughters toward their mothers 1s
resolved as they begin to draw strength from the bond with
their mothers, which finally helps them in redefin~ng their

dentity. What Elaine Showalter says of women's flction of
the seventies rings true of contemporary Canadian feminist
writers:
Hating one's mother was the femin~st enlightenment
of the 50's and 60's, but lt is only a metaphor
for hating oneself. Female literature of the 70's
goes beyond matrophobla to a couraqeouslv
sustained quest for the mother (clted ln-~lrsch
1989 1251.
The Intricacies of the mother - daughter bond and the
amb~valent attltude towards motherhood emerge dynamically In
the works of other Canadlan women writers as well, notably
Margaret Atwood, Margaret Clarke, Gabrlelle Roy, Sylvla
Eraser and Allce Munro, who recognize the pervasive
influence of the mother and attempt to represent it thrsugh
the daughter's gradually emergmg self and the process of
discovery of her own female identlty
3.3.3. In Lessing's The Surmner Before the Dark, thls
confllct 1s enacEed in Kate's llfe, not wlth her own
daughter Eileen, but wlth Maureen, to whom she becomes a
sort of surrogate mother
9 3
Maureen, caught berween the
femrnine and femlnlst poles, refuses Phlllp's offer of
marriage after she has a glimpse of Kate reverting to her
role as wife and mother
As ln the cases of Merldlan, PlqUe
and Saru, matrophobia, the fear of becoming her mother,
makes her cry out: "I'm not going to be like you
I'm not
golng to be like my mother. You're manlacs. You're mad"

(SBD : 195).
Experiencing a tug - of - war between her
feminine and feminist selves, Maureen's desire for emotional
and economic security through marriage conflicts with her
need to live an independent life. She tells Kate. "You're
already through rt, you've done lt, for better or worse, but
I have to declde whether to do it or not" (SBD : 218).
Llke
Ellem, Maureen represents "the daughter of the seventies
who repeats her mother's llfe wlthout the mother's bellef
System" (Andrews 1986 . 150)
3 . 3 .3.1 When Kate has tested her hypothesis of the
relatlonshlp betxeen appearance and reallty, she leaves
Maureen, her surrogate-daughter and younger mlrrcr-lmage.
As Shlrley Budhos polnts out
Maureen now represents the Kate Brown of the past
Kate, llke Demeter In one of her dlsgulses, moves
through the "seasons" of her llfe, harvestlno and
reaplng self-knowledge after undergoing trlals
whlle Maureen must now spend her season "servng"
In the narltal enclosure Kate has passed through
the "myster:esU, admlts that she is an old woman,
and returns t3 her brown "earth", her famzly home
(1987 181
3.3.3.2 An open-endedness characterises thls motherdaughter
relatlonshlp In Lesslng's novels, Clalre Sprague
states, the relationship between mother and daughter is
never resolved, "unless we wish to call it resolution when
mothers or daughters develop temporary worklng relationships
wlth surrogate, non-biological daughters or mothers"

(1987.110) Although no resolution is reached, the mother-
daughter tie is never dissociated from the process of
growlng and aglng, the problems of growing, aglng and dying
95
are almost always depicted In the painful mother-daughter
relationship
3.3.4. The revolt against the mother reaches scachlng
proportions in Shashi Deshpande's The Dark Holds No Terrors
kihlle Merldlan and Pique, to an extent, understand that
thelr mother's attltude is only a consequence of
~sychologlcai vlctimlsatlon by patriarchy, Saru In
Deshpande's novel directs a more personal attack agalnst her
mother for whom she has only bitterness and scam: "she
never really cared Not after Dhruva's death I lust
dldn't exlst for her I dled long before I left home" (DH .
271 Saru gets no sympathy from her mother even durlng the
sensltlve phase of adolescence. Her mother, on the other
hand, makes her feel ashamed of growing up, and so Saru sees
her body as a burden
appearance 3f her mother
Also, she is repulsed by the physlcal
"If you're a woman. I don't want
to be one, I thought resentfully, watching her body" (DH 551
3 3 4 1 . Just as in The Diviners and Meridian, the
psycholog~cal estrangement between mother and daughter in
The Dark Holds No Terrors, necessitates a physlcal
separation as well. Her hatred and repulsion for her mother

9 6
enables Sam to defy her mother, thereby defying the social
lnstitutlon of motherhood as well She breaks away from the
claustrophobia and stifling atmosphere of her mother's
house: ''I hated her. I wanted to hurt her, wound her, make
her Suffer" (DH 1281. This separation, described by
Destsande In terms of the severance of the umbilical cord,
1s for Saru, far from painful, as no bonds of love and
affection connect her to her mother For Saru, her parents
had become "the past" and "meant noth~nq" (DH . 34) Saru's
flrst act of deflance is seen ln her intention to loin
rnedlcal college aqalnst her mother's wlshes There 1s a
sllent antagonism between the two as Saru refuses even to
talk to her mother
I'm not talklng to you I'm not asklng you for
anythlng I know what your answer wlll be No.
forever a 'no' to anythlnq I want You don't want
me to have anythlng, you don't want me to do
anythlnq You don't even want me to llve (DH
Her act of deflance In marrylng Manu, who belongs to a lower
caste, 1s actually directed against her orthodox Brahmin
mother
3.3.4.2 Although Sam's mother is a character evoked from
the dead, she is more effective than the livlng characters
In the novel Her haunting presence looms large on the
psyche of Sam, the recurring memory of her mother is "as
violent as an assault" (DH . 12), and Saru angrily tries to

97
:elect it. Her obsessive remembrance of her mother is
~ndicative of her own sense of gullt and defeat. Her
assertion, "why should she matter dead when she had never
mattered alive7" (DH . 231 is ineffectual. The realization
that her mother is dead brlngs to Saru not grief but anger
because she could not now have her revenge Even after her
death, her mother seems to draln away Saru's happlness like
a vengeful ghost "I hate her, sapping me of happiness, of
everything She's always done it to me taken happlness
away from me She does it even now when she's dead" (DH .
100)
3.3.4.3. Alzhougn she never admlred or trled to emulate her
mother, the influence of the dead woman is so profound In
Saru's unconscious that she often merges wlth her mother's
she went on ]umbllng herself wlth the dead woman,
sometlmes feeling she was actlng out a role,
sometlmes feeling she was her mother herself And
somewhere was that unloved, resentful, neglected
chlld. Saru (3H 97).
What Rrch says of her own experience as a daughLer loaklng
at her mother, "I too shall marry, have children -- but not
llke her
I1976
I shail find a way of dolng lt all differently"
219) -- exactly flts Sam, who tries hard not to be
what her mother was, but ultimately realizes that she is no
more than an educated version of her mother.

3.3.4.4. Devoid of a sympathetic mother, Sam, llke Morag
of The Diviners, unconsciously searches for a mother -
substitute and flnds her in a neighbour, Mavshi ---- 'I
9 8
the
motherly type with an overflow of motherliness from her own
five children for Saru" (DH .66)
Later, even here, Saru
tastes d~sllius~onment, for when she returns to her house
after a long interval, she flnds a different Mavshl,
embzttered by life's experiences
Earller, the woman's
plumpness and placldlty had been a part of the motherlizess
whlch had attracted Saru
Now, with all her 'motherly'
qualities gone. Saru 1s dlsappoznted once agaln
3.3.4.5. Deshpande's portrayal of Saru's mother explodes
tte myth of the mother belng a paragon of all vlrtues She
herself states that her purpose in her novels 1s to shatter
the sentimental plcture of motherhood
generally one makes literature as full of women --
mother-figures -- as belng very benevolent and I
thlnk I have really moved very much away
(Interview to Mala ;989 135).
The concept of the mother as goddess also undergoes a starp
revision Saru does not regard the 'Devl' In the temple as
a mother-goddess -- "Mother Imagine the thought of having
a mother like that" (DH :91) The 'Mother', like her own
mother, 1s to Saru, a terrible cursing mother
It is her
mother's curse before her death that stings Sam to the

core: "Daughter? I don't have any daughter. I had a son and
he died. Now I am childless.. . I will pray to god for her
unhappiness.
me" (DH . 178).
9 9
Let her know more sorrow than she has given
3.3.5. Probing into the mother-daughter bond In Beloved,
Morrlson however suggests that such a bond 1s fundamental to
the psychological development of both mother and daughter.
MOrrlSOn explores thls relatlonshlp withln the context of a
particular hlstorlcal period and soclal arrangement --
slavery -- hlghlrghtlng the psychologlcal damage of slavery
to the mother-chlld relationship
3.3.5.1. Beloved's feellngs for her mother begln wlth
relectlon at belng deprlved of a symbiotic unlty wlth her,
to splte and retrlbutlon for havlng been murdered by her, to
dependency as a consequence of fragmented lnfancy, to an
attempt at understanding her, and later merglng with her
Both Separation and merglng ocmr alternately In the mother-
daughter relatlonshlp in the novel -- Beloved's ~dentlty
constantly merges with that of Sethe's
Thls 1s
particularly slgniflcant as Beloved was hardly two when she
dled
As Nancy Chodorow explains, the mother "acts as
external ego, provides holding and nourishment, and 1s in
fact not experienced by the infant as a separate person at
all" (Samuels and Hudson-Weems 1990 : 1041
Even after her

emergence eighteen years after her death, Beloved identifies
herself primarily with her mother.
I am Beloved and she 1s mrne ... I am not separate
from her there is no place where I stop her face
is my own and I want to be there in the place
where her face is . . (B 259).
She also says. "I want to be the two of us I want to jolnv
Thls fluld boundary of ldentltles merge when Beloved finally
remarks "You are my face, you are me / you are mine" (B
2661. Even during pregnancy Sethe experrences simultaneous
merglng and separation
splitting and extensron of self
to Beloved. "You asleep on my back.
For her, pregnancy is both a
She explarns her feelings
Denver sleep In my
stomach Felt llke I was spllt in two" (B 249) At the
same tlme, the experience 1s far her a d~ssolutlon of
noundaries, a merger, an embrace of mltipllclty
Thzs
merging of boundaries, seen throughout Morrison's works, is
most pronounced In Beloved
3.3.5.2. The apparent oneness in the mother-daughter trrad
that is seen In the hand-holdlng shadows of Sethe, Beloved
and Denver, 1s marred by tenslons and hostlllYy dlscernlble
beneath the surface
It is Sethe's crime that causes thls
estrangement, creating a wedge and wldening the flssure In
their superficial bond.
the most traglc result of Sethe's helnous crlme 1s
the damage that ~t does to the single most
important community of women to her the community

OD
she forms with her daughters. Beloved an& Denver.
With Sethe's perennial sense of guilt, Denver's
sense of alienation, and Beloved's need for
retribution, their unlty remains superficral,
insplte of external evidences to the contrary
(Clemens and Hudson - Weems 1990 : 120).
The ambiguity
in mcther-daughter relations seen in
Morrison's Sula and Sorg of Solomon, is evident In Beloved
too, both in the Sethe-Denver and Sethe-Beloved
relationships. Though Morrison recognizes the negative
influence of the mother, on the whole female famlly
relationships exert a posltlve influence
comments
As Rlgney
'Dread of the mother' occurs in Morrlson too, but
lt 1s always mltlgated by a love chat 1s virtually
erotlc, a merglng of identitles that transcends
Western Ideas about self and other, about subject
and object (Rlgney 1990 . 47)
3.3.5.3. It is slgnlflcant that Sethe herself did not
benefit from a network of female relationships.
In the
absence of a nurcuring mother, Sethe becomes a "blologlcal
and cultural orphan" [Samuels and Hudson-Weems 1990 112).
She does not remember her mother at all, and can only
vaguely remember Nan, a slave who semed as a surrogate
mother to her.
Even at Sweet Home, she 1s the only woman
slave and hence experiences the various phases of womanhood
without anyone to guide or assist her
Mrs Garner, the only
other woman there, was the slaveholder, besldes being
barren, and Sethe therefore is unable to have a rapport with

102
her Apart from her, Aunt Phyllis, who lived on another
plantatlon came Only when it was time for Sethe to give
blrth to a chlld. The absence of a mother and a woman's
community leaves a hiatus in Sethe's physrcal,
psychologlcal, cultural and splrltual development. As she
confesses to Paul D:
I wish I'd a known more, but, like I say, there
wasn't nobody to talk to Woman, I mean . . . It's
hard You know what I mean? by yourself and no
woman to help you get through ( B 27)
Havlng herself been robbed of the cruclal bond wlth her own
mother, Sethe 1s rntlmately aware of the psychologrcal
devastation it would wreak on her children.
3.4.0. "We are, none of us, erther mothers or daughters,
to our amazemen:, confusion and greater complexity, we are
both" (Rlch 1976 253) The complex crrcularity of
daughters flghtlng mothers and then becomlng mother
themselves both repeats and advances the pattern of the
nother-daughter confllct The protagonists have different
attitudes towards motherhood when they are daughters and
when they become mothers When they are daughters, they are
cppcsed to the lnstltution of motherhood and seem to prefer
motherlng, but when they become mothers, even motherlng
seems to them a demanding twenty-four-hour job wlth whlch
they are not able to cope. From thelr personal experlence,
how do they react to the dichotomy between motherlng as an

experience and motherhood as an institution?
deviate from the patriarchal expectations of motherhood'
SO, to what extent?
103
Do they
If
These and related questions are here
discussed in the light of the perspectives of Meridlan
(Meridian), Saru (The Dark Holds No Terrors), Morag (The
Diviners) , Rosamund (The Millstone) and Kate (The Summer
Before the Dark)
In their conscious revolt against the
passlve, femlnlne ideal of motherhood, these women question
the exlstlng norms and denounce institutional motherhood as
a patrlarchal fiction.
In the process, they confront not
only the question of bearing children, but also that of
rearing them and owning entire responsiblllty for their
upbrlnglng
It is this biological and famlllal/societal
responslblllty that weighs down these 'new' mothers
3.4.1. In Allce Walker's novel, Merldlan equates
mctherhood to slavery
a sense of duty than out of love
She looks after her baby more out of
what she calls an "impersonal love' (M 86)
Her love for her chlld is
3ne day she really looked at her chlld and loved
him with as much love as she loved the moon or a
tree, whlch was a considerable amount of
impersonal love (M 86)
In a deliberately ironically titled chapter 'The Happy
Mother', Walker portrays the tension and guilt Meridian
faces in her role as mother. She feels that pregnancy and
motherhood have stolen from her the capacity to be active In

the emotional, intellectual and physlcal world
104
Pregnancy
changes her physical appearance too, making her once velvety
skin bloated and tqht
Her husband, insplte of his new
role, continues hls education, but Merldian is forced to
glve up her studies and remain at home. She beglns to vlew
motherhood as a life-glving-death. As Barbara Chriszlan
observes :
In givlng llfe to chlldren who were both unwanted
and unappreciated by soclety, Walker's mothers
also had to give up much of their own llves to
Sustaln thelr children's The chlldren know they
survlve only because their parents commltted acts
of extraordinary sufferlng I1980 215)
The birth of her son begins to scifle Meridlan's
lndlvlduallty, and she In turn experiences an urge to klll
her son
The oppressive effect of motherhood makes her feel
SO lnextrlcably caught In thls role that she has a strong
urge to klll her son -- "to strangle that soft, smccth,
helpless neck, to push down that klnky head Into a tub of
water, to lock ~t In lts room to starve" IM , 67) As in
The Drviners, The Summer Before the Dark, The Handmaid's
Tale, and even novels exaltlng motherhood such as Beloved
and Nectar in a Sieve, lmages of blrth are luxtaposed 21th
those of death/murder/suiclde, In Merldian also
3.4.1.1. Meridian realizes that she is not just either a
mother or daughter, but both. She carrles, as a daughter,
negatlve echoes of her mother's martyrdom and the confusion

105
of the double message she receives from her Whrle
Merldian's mother, a victim of social conditioning, bears
and rears children though she does not want to, Meridian
eschews her maternal role when she realizes she is not made
for rt because it requires the submergence of her self rn
=he role Her mother sacrifices her public role to fulfll
maternal obligations, but Merldran does just the opposite
Unllke her mother and a long llne of mothers before her,
Merldian lives in an age of choice She hence chooses a
college education over the motherhood she feels unsuited
for, taking advantage of a scholarship to Saxon College
3.4.1.2. This act of rellnqulshlng motherhood however 1s
not wlthout moral qualms
Feellngs of gullt and nightmares
contlnue to haunt her -- she 1s plagued by "a voice that
cursed her existence -- am existence that could not live up
to the standard of motherhood gone before" (M 88)
Accordrng to her, she is glving up not only her chlld, but
the hlstory of her life -- she thlnks of her declslon ln
terms of maternal hlstory
She thought of her mother as belng worthy of this
maternal hiscory, and she herself belonging to an
unworthy minority, for which there was no
precedent and of whlch she was, as far as she
knew, the only member (M 87-88)
Between Toni Morrison's Sethe, and a host of enslaved women
-- for whom 'freedom' meant being able to keep therr own

106
children -- and Walker's Meridian -- the contrast 1s
glaring.
3.4.1.3. The confrontation between Mrs Hill and Meridian on
the issue of Meridian glving up the child, throws light on
the difference between the passlve feminine attitude and the
conscious emerglng femlnist actltude Mrs fill1 condemns her
daughter as a 'monster' for glving up her child She tells
Merldlan that she ralsed SIX chlldren though she never
wanted to have any Merldlan, though she relects her own
chlld, takes up the cause of the Wild Child and other
chlldren Motherrng, for her, extends beyond the
Constrlct~ons of famlly into a collective, soclal function -
whlle she falls as a personal mother, she succeeds as a
social one.
3.4.2. Whereas in Merldlan, the oppressive effecr of
motherhood is more psycho-social than biologlcal, in Saru,
the averslon to motherhood can be traced back to both
biologlcal and soclal factors In The Dark Holds No
Terrors, Shashl Deshpande strlps off the ha:o around
motherhood, revealrng the palnful reallty that lles at the
core of becoming a mother Motherhood as experience, Saru
comprehends, is a far cry from what has been lngralned ln
her by soclety -- "the miracle of motherhood" (DH 1471,
does not really happen
Like other Deshpande protagonlsts,

107
Jaya of That Long Silence and Indu of Roots and Shadows,
Sam also reduces childbirth to an animalistic actlv~ty
She feels that her labour has made "an animal out of heru
(DH
motherhood
147) and views this process as the painful prelude to
3.4.2.1. In addition, Saru 1s torn because of the
psychological pressures and maternal wilt she experiences
because of not living up to the Ideal image of motherhood
Her mother's negatlve Influence makes her assert that she
would not repeat her mother, but In reallty she is not able
to practlse what she states
Was she an unnatural, unloving mother? She had
sworn she would never fall her children in love
and understanding as her own mother had done
That she would be to her chlldren all that her own
mother had not been to her (DH 146)
Unllke Meridlan, however, Saru 1s unable to relinquish her
role as mother although she temporarily abandons lt
It 1s
the thought of her chlldren that prevents her from
separating from her husband, Manu.
Although Meridla?. at
some point ylelds to maternal pressures, she later relects
the role outrlght when it becomes an imposition of ldeolow
3.4.2.2. The estrangement between Saru and her daughter.
Renu, seems to be a reiteration of the strained relationship
between Saru and her mother -- the same pattern repeats
itself. Renu's quiet watchfulness reminds her of her mother

108
and she has the feeling of being weighed up, criticized, and
possibly relected
She understands that one cannot become a
mother just by bringlng her chlld into the world
My children . . suddenly she found herself full
of dlstaste for the words How possessive they
sounded Can one ever possess another human
being? The act of blrth can be cruelly deceiving,
maklng you imagine you have some claim on the
human you brlng lnto the world (DH ,149)
Saru has a dreadful fear crushlng her that she had forfelted
all rlghts to the children forever.
She feels that her
chlldren wlll walk out on her one day just as she had walked
out on her mother
',Wl11 Renu turn mocklng eyes on me one
day? Wlll Abhi defy me? Will they betray me as I betrayed
her'" (DH 126)
3.4.2.3. Saru's response to motherhood flts neatly rnto the
Mother archetype delineated by Jung
In this aspect of the
mother archetype, Jung remarks, the problem 1s less an
overdevelopment or an lnhlbltlon of femlnlne instincts than
an overwhelming resistance tc maternal supremacy, often to
the exclusion of all else. Further,
should the daushter set as far as marrying,
~ - the
-rarr::le u:ll be ~ssc f3r :::e szlt zur;csi 3f
fszap:nc frzr ner m:-..-er A:: --:25:l~ztl':e
~TCCESS~S -e4t ulrt ,:cexcecrei c:f:z.:l:es
elther sexuality does not function properly, or
the chlldren are unwanted, or maternal duties seem
unbearable, or the demands of maternal llfe are
responded to with impatience and irritation (Jung
1972 25).

109
saru marries Manu mainly to break away from the clutches of
her mother's domineering character, but after she becomes a
wlfe and mother, she is overcome with a feeling that she 1s
emulating and replaying the role of her own mother. She has
no maternal lncllnatlons, and finds motherhood nothing more
than a burden.
3.4.3. Morag's statement in The Diviners that she can
have umpteen lovers but "no husband No kids No stretch
marks" (D 176) reveals her phobia of the physical and
psychological repercusslons of motherhood Though the
macernal consciousness 1s the most vltal mode of perception
In the novel, Laurence does not ldealise 1: The act of
rnotherlng is presented as a tremendously dlfflcult one,
replete wlth responsibility Morag tries to balacce herself
between the demands of career, chlld and personal llfe, with
ldcreasing diff lculty Morag' s feellngs of Inadequacy as a
mother and the frictlon between mother and daughrer due to
the inablllty of each tc live up to the other's
expecrations, form the axis around whlch the mother-daughter
Ccnfllct hlnges The other mothers In the novel, with the
exception of Ella Gerson's mother, also feel inadequare as
nurturers.
3.4.3.1. As a mother herself, Morag 1s caught between the
femlnlne and feminlst poles As a woman with femlnlst

110
values, she does not want to fit into the feminine mould of
a mother and have children, but at the same time feels that
she will be denying herself something, rellnqurshing one
part of her identity as a woman
She envies glrls who
easlly sllp lnto the roles of wife and mother and lead a
'happy' existence
Morag's
I envy glrls llke Susan Trevor so much that I damn
near hate them. I want to be glamorous and adored
and get marrled and have klds
myself that I don't want that
I st111 try to kld
But I do I want
all that. As well All I want is everythlng
(D 182).
deslre to have "everythlng" stems from her
frustration at not belng able to combme marrlage /
motherhood and independence even at the hypothetical level
Throughout the novel, Morag vacillates between the feminlne
and femlnlst -- she is unable to flt Into the femlnlne mould
represented by Brldle, who belleves in large families and
whose chief interest in llfe 1s to have children, nor does
she belong to the other extreme typzfied by Fan Brady who 1s
not the "maternal type" ID
abortions.
310) and who has had flve
3.4.3.2. The maternal lnstlnct however seems to suddenly
have sprouted ln her after her marrlage to Brooke Skelton
Morag's yearning to have a chzld becomes almost a nagging
obsession, all the more so because of Brooke's refxsal to
have one
He glves her evaslve answers whenever she pleads

him on this account. Not withstanding, she tries to probe
into his newly developed desire
Something too primitive to be analyzed? Something
which needs to proclalm itself, against all odds?
or only the selfishness of wanting someone born of
your flesh, someone related to you? (D . 246).
Unable to conceive children withln marriage, Morag seeks
fulfllment of her desire outside marltal bonds. Her extra-
marital affair with Jules results In the blrth of Pique.
Morag's memorles of giving blrth to Plque polgnantly brlng
out the pllght of the single parent.
Morag becomes
painfully aware of the discrepancy between her deslre for a
child and the reality it entailed.
It 1s here that the
hiatus between motherhood as instltutlon and mothering as
experience becomes strlklngly clear
3.4.4. Joe's statement in The Millstone "All women want
babies, to glve them a sense of purpose" (MS . 48) seems to
Rosamund "absolutely stupld reactionary chlldish rubblsh"
IMS 48) Ingrllled wlth the notlons of lndependence rlght
from her childhood, Rosamund 1s offended when Joe implies
that all women have the maternal drlve in them and that she
too has a secret yearnlng for maternal fulfllment. Rosamund
cannot dlgest the fact that any human belng could endure
physical discomforts of babies for something as vague and
pointless as a sense of purpose
Rosamund's can be seen as
a case of 'somatophobla', the fear and discomfort with the

112
body. Hirsch remarks: "Nothing entangles women more firmly
in their bodies than pregnancy, birth, lactation,
miscarriage, or the ~nability to conceive" (1989 : 166).
Though the thought of having a baby leaves her "absolutely
stone cold'' (MS 48), Rosamund is "in some perverse and
painful way quite proud of [her] evident fertility" (MS 48).
3.4.4.1. Rosamund 1s more pained by the physical strain of
childbearing and chlldrearing than the social stlgma of
belng an unmarried mother. The plcture of "human misery" --
the pregnant women at the cllnlc -- seem to her "an
unbelievably depressed and miserable lot" (MS 65) -- and
make her remark on the discrepancy between the mystlcpe of
motherhood whlch euphem~stlcally describes pregnant women as
"ships ln full sall" (MS : 65) -- and the stark reallty that
reveals itself in their grotesque appearance, the anaemic
and exhausted faces, swollen legs, heavy and unbalanced
bodies
She feels trapped Inside a human llmit for the
flrst tlme ln her llfe, but deterrnlnes to learn to llve
lnslde it, by trylng to tell herself that she is not dead,
but al~ve twlce over
3.4.4.2. Rosamund's fear and cyniclsm towards motherhood
gradually begln to dissolve, as her recurring vlslts to the
clinlc begin to establish a klnd of sororlty between herself
and the other pregnant women. Earlier, she had resented the

113
chat that Went on in the queue, the subjects of birth, pain,
fear and hope that drew the women together "in gloomy awe"
(MS
69). A significant turn In her attitude occurs whlle
she holds a baby In her arms -- a gesture which brings out
the maternal in her.
meanlng in her unborn child:
Gradually, she beglns to see some
lt did not seem like the kind of thing one could
have removed, llke a wart or a corn It seemed to
have meaning. It seemed to be the klnd of event
to whlch, however accidental its cause, one could
not say No (MS . 761
Unllke Kate of The Summer Before the Dark, for whom
motherhood means a fragmentation of identity, the birth of
Rosamund's chlld helps her ln reasserting her identlty She
learns to lnsist on her rlghts, even ~f it involves
screaming hysterics as when she demands to see her baby In
the hospital. She learns to relate not only to her
daughter, but to the larger humankind, by shedding off her
retlcence
3.1.4.3. Whereas the Deshpande women mew the physioloqrcal
female funczlons wzth distaste, :he sensations that Rosamund
experiences after her dellvery are "no longer palnful but
Indeed a promise of pleasure" (1% 117) Wltn the child in
her arms, she feels "love . and the flrsz of [her]
llfe" (MS 118) When she tells Joe Hurt of the happiness
she experiences, he says that she 1s talklng about one of

114
the most boring and commonplace of the female experience.
As all women feel exactly that, he remarks that it is not
anythlng to be proud of, or even worth thinking about
Rosamund denies that this feeling of enrapture was
universal She easlly salls into motherhood, and unlike
Deshpalde's mother and child who feel llke "clumsy
amateurs", Rosamund's chlld learns to "suck at the flrst
attempt, not after hours of humiliating struggle8'(MS . 120)
Later, she gives up breast-feeding, not because she finds 1t
dlsgusiing, but because she finds the consequences extremely
messy, feeling unsure of satlatlng the chlld's hunger wlth
her mllk
3.4.5. Kate Brown of The Summer Before the Dark denounces
maternal rnstinct as a myth, imposed on women ln order to
cater to the needs of an androcentric culture. This
auareness begins when she experiences a bifurcation wlthln
herself -- that the many thlrgs she said and thought were
very different from what she really felt An awareness of
belng soclally condltloned by stereotypes overcomes her --
her responses to situations and people around her are, she
feels, nothlng but thlngs "taken off a rack and put on"
(SBD 6) She had spent all her llfe in deliberately
cultivating the so-called femlnlne qualities of patience,
self-dlsclpline, self-control, self-abnegation, chastity,

115
adaptability, but realizes that these are not virtues but a
form of dementia.
3.4.5.1. Away from home, Kate persistently probes Into her
predicament and the femlnine mystique whlch had enveloped
her all these years
It is only through self-analysls and
self-introspection, and a rummaging through her past life
that Kate comes to understand what she had actually been
reduced to all the years of her life.
All durlng the
summer, the "shortened, heightened, concentrated time"
(SBD
9), Kate delves lnto the reasons why she had been
leadlng an Inauthentic existence, why she had been taklng
the same old dresses off the rack
It is only after she
shrugs off her stereotyped attlre, after twenty-flve years
of marriage, that she really thlnks for herself and reallzes
that all those years had seemed a betrayal of what she
really was
All along ',she had been set llke a machire by
twenty-odd years of belng a wife and mother" ISBD . 171
Looking back from the ccndltlon of belng an almost mrcdle-
aged wlfe and mother to her condition as a glrl when she
llved wlth Michael, lt seemed to her that she had accp~lred
not vlrtues but a form of demenrla whlch turned her lnto an
"obsessed manlac" (SBD . 91)
By her husband and children,
she was treated as "something to be put up with":
Mother was an uncertain quantity She was like an
old nurse who had given her years to her famlly
and must now be put up with (SBD : 91).

Kate perceives that she was continually dragged into
,'patterns of behaviour by people who still expected them of
her (SBD : 92). These patterns of feminine motherhood are
what Kate tries to break away from
3.4.5.2. Lessing attempts to debunk the motherhood myth by
delineating the evolution of her protagonist from the
femlnine to the feminist, from being the heart of the family
to assessing her positlon while standing outside it.
Kate
rejects the lmage of herself as the warm centre of the
famlly, the queen termite, the source of invlslble
emanations.
She comprehends that the pain of inlustice had
been waltlng for her all these years, but she had not
allowed herself to feel lr:
Earller, she had carefully
tended the lmage of marrlage but now, through retrospect, ~t
dawns on her that " marriage had a load heaped on it whlch
it could not sustaln" (SBD 62) The only thing which
sustained thelr relaelonship was the marltal bed.
She
beglns to see herself and her famlly as "a web of nasty
deceptions" (SBD 218) Kate's total dlsllluslonment with
lnstltutlonalised marrlage and motherhood and her veerlng
towards the femlnlst pole is most succintly stated In her
own words
There are tlmes, you know, when there's a sort of
switch rn the way I look at things -- everything,
my whole lrfe since I was a glrl, and I seem to
myself as a ravlng lunatic. Love, and duty, and
belng In love and not belng in love, and lovlng,

and behavlng well and you should and you shouldn't
and you ought and you oughtn't Its a disease
Well, sometlmes I think that's all it is (SBD :
2161.
3.4.5.3. LeSSlng pro~ects Mary Finchley, who "wasn't like
other Women" (SBD ,2151 as a foll to Kate. Unllke Lesslng's
conventional, self-sacrlficzng women, Mary refuses the
romanticisation of marrlage and motherhood
To her,
romance figures less promlnently In her decisions
than reason she trades her freedom from economlc
responslblllty for Bill's freedom from chlld -
care res~onsibilitv Kate Brown finds the antlromantic-~ary
~lnchley a flghtening conundrum, one
whlch she fears to solve [Andrews 1986 146)
Mary is "what men descrlbe as a savage woman" (SBD 2121 --
they are scared of her but admlre her for it Never in love
wlth anyone, Mary nevertheless carries on various affalrs
Simultaneously Unllke Kate who thlnks, speaks, behaves and
dresses as the society, her husband and chlldren would deem
lt proper, Mary does what pleases her, unmindful of what the
family or soclety thlnk Children, Mary considers a
hindrance "Klds are all verf well, but they cramp your
style" (583 214) Ber incorrlglble, stubborn and adamant
nature 1s compared to a dog that a man has spent years
training, and then he says" "He's useless, nothing takes"
(SBD : 212). Cynical about the concepts of 'famlly', 'home',
'mother', 'father', Mary volces Lessing's disgust with these
institutions Though Mary is first presen-ed as a contrast

118
to Kate, the latter later takes her as her role-model. At
one time Kate had thought herself better than Mary -- more
sensitive, responsible, and having finer feelings, but
circumstances change her perspective later.
3.4.5.4. From Mary Flnchley's example and from her own
experience at Global Foods, Kate learns that an important
turn towards self-expression lles In the area of cholce --
when women choose for themselves they establish an identlty
of then own. For Kate, her dress and halr style become an
expression of her ~dentlty Earlier, she could wear only
what sulted her posltion as wife of her husband and mother
of her chlldren, curbing her innermost tastes zn order to
avold thelr disapproval Inltlally, she 1s unable to fathom
how Mary Finchley dressed as if "she were unmarried and had
no chlldren" (SBD 111 After her stlnt as translator at
Slobal Foods, Kate literally too stops taklng the same old
dresses off the rack -- she buys herself new dresses, not
different from what she usually wears, but effects a change
ln the manner of wearing them
3.4.5.5. In her transltlonal stage, Kate, llke Morag of The
Diviners, beglns to experlecce an in-between sltuatlon
whereln she is not able to belong elther to the 'femlnlne'
group represented by the numerous mothers she comes across,
or to the 'feminist', of which Mary Finchley is an

119
embodiment. Kate's dilemma is such that she is unable to
completely shed her feminine role, nor is she able to fully
absorb the feminist values. She wonders at the complacency
of young mothers she comes across and finds them moving with
confidence
It is thls confidence that Kate feels she has
lost in excess of self-consc~ousness, In awareness of the
consequences of what she did, just as Rosamund Stacey of The
Millstone and Morag of The Diviners feel outsiders to the
world of maternity, Isolated by virtue of their intellect
Kate contrasts these young women to the older women, her
contemporaries, and sees cautxcn and suspxclon wrlt large on
thelr faces, thelr movement seem~ng as though they are
afrald of being trapped by somethlng, afrald of knocklng
lnto somethlnq, as ~f surrounded by lnvislble enemres
She
concludes that the faces and movements of most middle-aged
women are those of prisoners or slaves
3.4.5.6. Standing on the brink of feminlst motherhood. Kate
gets a gl~mpse of what possljl1lt;es could be open to her
Though she returns Some ln the end, 1t is wlth a heightened
awareness of her situation, wlth an altered appearance and
perception.
Lesslnq makes lt clear that her protagonist
wlll not revert to belng just 'Michael's wife' or her
'children's mother', but w ~ll forge an ldentlty of her own.
3.4.6. Whlle femlnlne motherhood presupposes that the
maternal instinct is a natural condition In women and

120
motherly affection simply wells up in women who give birth,
feminist motherhood, as the above examples amply illustrate,
negates the maternal instinct.
Maternal lnstinct does not
refer to reproductive reflexes, but rather to psychological
and soclal aspects of motherhood. Maternal love, therefore,
1s a socially conditloned sentiment, and llke all human
sentiments, it can prove to be frail, fluctuating and
aberrant
Some women may flnd the role of motherhood
congenial, some do not; some perform lt well, some do not
Maternlty 1s '"a strange mixture of narclssxsm, altruism.
Idle day-drearnlng, slncerlty, bad faith, devotion and
cynlclsm" (Beauvolr 1971 528) The mother's attltude
therefore depends on her sltuatlon and her response to lt
and this 1s hlghly varlable
3.4.6.1. Adrienne Rlch and Ellsabeth Badinter attack socral
myths that lead one to belleve in the innate maternal
Instinct, they however eulogrse freely chosen maternal love
Badlnter remarks
Maternal love 1s a human feellng And, llke any
feeling, it 1s uncertain, fraglle and Imperfect
Contrary to many assumptions, lt IS not a deeply
rooted glven In women's natures When we observe
Che hlstorlcal changes ln maternal behavlour, we
notlce that Interest ln and devotion to the chlla
are sometlmes in evidence, sometlmes not
Affection may or may not be present (1981 : xxlll)
Femlnasts, therefore, assert that there is no biologically
based drlve that propels women mto childbearing or forces

121
them to be childrearers once the children are there.
everth he less, as Oakley comments:
the 'maternal instinct' 1s a phenomenon of
established popularity today It is suggested
that all women have thls instinct, and asserted
confidently that all mothers must have it.
Irreparable damage to maternal mental health is
clalmed to follow from a sltuatlon In whlch a
woman gives birth to a chrld and then hands over
its rearing to someone else (1974 . 1991
Adrienne Rlch shares thls vlew
According to her
"rnstltutionallzed motherhood demands of women maternal
'~nstlnct' rather than lntelllgence, selflesness rather than
self-reallzatlon, relaclon to others rather than the
creatlon of self" (1976 42) By abandoning the motherhood
myth, the protagonists of Meridian, The Dark Holds No
Terrors, The Diviners, The Millstone and The Summer Before
the Dark exercise thelr lndivldual
intelligence rather than instinct,
cholces, choosing
self-real~zatlon rather
tnan selflesness, creatlon of self rather than relatlon to
others
3.5.0 To achleve thls self-realization, the 'new
mothers' move out to establish an rdent~ty vls-a-vis thelr
career, when they reallze that thelr work at home 1s
undermined and 1s a thankless lob
A they move away from
the boundaries of the home and step into the professional
fleld, one question that alarms them 1s how to balance both
motherhood and career
To strlke a mean between the two

122
they have to be both subhuman and superhuman at the same
tlme
In reality, women have found it extremely difficult
KO combme independence and motherhood -- thls 1s because
motherhood has been enforced and instltutionalised. Even if
they attempted to do so, they found both lncompatlble and
eherefore had to segregate career and motherhood into
separate realms. Adrienne Rlch's statement,"for me, poetry
was
where I llved as no one's mother, where I exlsted as
myself" (1976 311, exempllfles thls lncompatabllrty In
addltlon to their professlonal obllgatlons, mothers are held
responsible for the famlly's welfare
The woman's
profession 1s considered less Imporrant than her husband's.
and 1f In a crlsls a confllct arlses between the parental
and the professlonal, it 1s the mother rather than the
father who 1s requ~red to assume the parental obllgatxon
The lmage of the mother at home, the 'angel In the house'
has been hauntlng and reproaching the llves of wage-earnlng
mothers and has become a dangerous archetype
The femlnlst
mothers, however, are ready to confront thls Image when they
conslder the fact that mother-work, In a soclety llke ours,
does not have any productive value, lt has only 'use-value'
b~t not 'exchange value' (aernard 1974 1151
3.5.1. For the new mothers, a career is cruclal ln
placing them in a socletal context beyond the role of a
mother. Tuula Gordon explains

Work means getting away from home, havlng other
interests besldes children, havlng financial
independence, being competent, it provldes status
and self-esteem. But work also has intrinsic
meaning, most women felt that it was an avenue
through which they could explore their interests
and/or campaign for socletal changes (1990 . 128)
For the femlnlst mothers, work helps In establishing and
maintaining an identlty beyond motherhood and bridging the
gap between the prlvate and publlc spheres
Apart from
constructing then own Identltles, work enables them In
pursuing societal interests as well.
It provldes
challenges, poss~bllitles for exploration, and an
opportunlty to develop and expand thelr skllls
3.5.2. In The Diviners, Morag's rnltlal cynxclsm
regarding marrlage has rts root In her bellef that she wlll
not be able to successfully blend rnarriage/motherhood and
career
She is aware that she cannoL have the best of both
worlds and that a balance between her prlvate and publlc
roles wlll be a difficult alm to achleve
However, her
cravlng for emotional securlt;, overvelghs her deslre for
Independence and she accepts Brooke's proposal
marr:age
Her
to Brooke Skelton, a representative of patriarchy,
reveals the femlnlne streak In her, while the detenlnatlon
wlth which she struggles to keep her creatlve skllls allve
desplte all odds, and her decislon to break away from Brooke
when marriage becomes an encumberance, brings out the

124
emerglng feminlst in her. The ability to take an
independent decision is no doubt prompted by the mellowness
she ach~eves through her writing, her fictlon being not lust
an exercrse in Creatlvlty, but also an exercise in self-
~ntrospectlon, a delving deep into the innermost layers of
her consciousness.
3.5.3. Unimpeded by male interference, Rosamund Stacey of
The Millstone is able to successfully combine motherhood and
career, unlike her slster Beatrice who 1s unable to
reconcile the two Because of the rigour of rearlng three
children, Beatrlce 1s not able to use her degree to the best
advantage as motherhood ltself becomes a full tlme
responsiblllty, leaving her wlth no tlme or energy to pursue
a career In contrast to Cora Sandel's Alberta and Freedom
where Alberta, an lmpoverlshed young woman wrlter 1s not
able to wrlte when she discovers her pregnancy, Rosamund 1s
able to work consistently on her thes~s In the pre- and
post- natal phases, successfully completing lt desplte
varlous trlbulatlons she faces as a slngle parent
3.5.4. Whlle Rosamund is able to strlke a balance between
motherhood and career in the face of various odds, Kate
Brown does not have the optlon to do so It is only after
her talent as translator is tapped at Global Foods, does the
thought cross her mlnd that if she had not marrled, she

125
would probably have become something special in her field.
This thought however is erased before she realizes its
Impact; such muslngs about 'the road not taken' are "not
frequent thoughts : she had not found chlldren borlng" (SBD
18) Clearly, Kate at thls stage considers motherhood an
alternative to a career, unmindful of tte fact that she 1s
overlooking innumerable vistas open to her
3.5.5. In Meridian, motherhood takes a back seat as lt
becomes an obstacle In Merldlan's wlsh to achleve soclal
gcals TO become an activlst in the Clvll Rlghts Movement
and to loin Saxon college, Merldlan rellnqulshes her role as
a mother She gives away her son tc a couple deslrous of a
child, and who, she feels, can look after him much better
chan her. Whlle her mother places maternal obllqatlons
before professional ones, suppressing a part of herself and
Edellng bltter about it throughout her llfe, Meridlan flatly
refuses to play the role towards whlch she has no natural
lncllnatlon.
3.5.6. Saru, In The Dark Holds No Terrors, is unable to
meet the demands of her husband and children along wlth her
profession as doctor. Better qualified and more successful
ln her profession than her lecturer - husband, Saru has to
canfront her husband's growlng lnferlority complex, to
overcome which he begins to inflict sexual sadism on her.

126
Even financially, she has an edge over him, for she earns
not only the butter but also the bread for the family.
Earlier, she was known as Manu's wife, but as she gains
recognition through her career. Manu galns his identity by
vlrtue of bemg the doctor's husband.
3.5.7. The prevailing doctrlne of Charlotte Perkins
G~lrnan's time affirmed that the development of women's
talents is injurious to motherhood
Llvlng in such a set-
up, Gllman too faced thls problem in her personal life. The
conflict between the mother and wrlter caused a breakdown in
her after the b~rth of her daughter she had wanted to have
children, but at the same t~me wanted to contlnue wrltlng
Flndlng it extremely dlfflcult to luggle motherhood and
career, Gllman understood that the joy of motherhood 1s lost
when ~t becomes a burden
In Herland, therefore, she
creares a new kind of motherhood whlch no longer shackles a
woman to the domestlc sphere
Gllman creates a contrast
between the work ethlcs In Herland and In a patriarchal
soc2ety where women are exalted only In order to curb their
talent, to be subordinated
The ironlc intent in Terry's
statement comes to the fore "We do not allow our women to
work
Women are loved -- idollzed -- honored -- kept in the
home to care for thelr children" (H : 61)
3.6.0. The pattern that gradually emerges from here is
that the fem~nslt mothers are able :o
successfully blend

127
motherhood and career only when they break free from
1nstitutionalised and enforced motherhood and veer towards a
new klnd of motherhood, free from the dictates of
androcentrlc culture
Of course, the extent to which they
succeed in re-defining motherhood varles In degree and klnd
In Sam, Meridian, Morag, Rosamund and Kate
Yet the fact
that remains is that they call for a replacement of the old,
~nstltutionalised, sacrlflclal mother-love by a more
personallsed motherlrg
Even when chlldren are considered
central as in The Illlstone, The Div~ners, The Dark Holds No
Terrors, the women begin to see motherhood as one aspect cf
thelr lives, not an ldent~ty for all time, other activities
are not suspended altogether
Feminlst motherhood hence
eschews the old patriarchal ideals in favour of personailsed
motherlng that can provlde women wlth the actual experlence
of motherlng, that can help them experlence the potentlal of
tl.eir own bodles and rear thelr chlldren with fenlnist
values, wlthout any lmpcsltlon from wlthout
Wlth psychlc
and physlcal ~ndependence, wlt5 'a room of :heir own', the
new mothers contend with femlnlne stereotypes and reductive
Images imposed on them s;r.ce centuries Their alm, flnally,
llke that of Adrlenne Rlch, 1s not to abollsh motherhood,
but to destroy the lnstltutlon of motherhood
It 1s "to
release the creation and sustenance of llfe into the realm
of decision, struggle, surprise, lmaglnation, conscious

128
intelligence, as any other difficult, but freely chosen
work" (Rich 1976 . 280) Such a courageous mothering
involves the individual effort of the mother herself ln
trylng to expand the llmlts of her llfe. "To refuse to be a
victim. and then go on from there" (Rich 1976 . 246)
3.6.1. By avolding patriarchal intrusion into the process
of motherhood, Drabble questions the institutions of family
acd motherhood in The Millstone
The role of the effeminate
George in hls fatherhood is limlted to lust one sexual
encounter wlth ROSamund
Drabble allows her protagonist the
real experlence of mothering by exclucilng men from thls
realm, and thus shows how motherhood can be a positlve and
fulfllllng experlence ~f untr~ched by the dlctates of a
patrlarchally ~nst~tutlonalised syscem
Drabble is not so
much agalnst men as she 1s agalnst the soclal conditronlng
and unreasonable demands made by the system on motherhood
Ker emergent mother proves, desplte the unsettllng
experiences she goes through as an unmarried mother, that
the chlld as such 1s not a millstone, but a livlng and
lovlng bond
It 1s only the androcentrrc society's
lmposltlons on the mother that become millstones arou2d her
neck.
3.6.1.1. That Drabble wlshes to revamp and create a new
definltlon of motherhood becomes increaslngly obvlous when

129
she does not grant =he 'father' -- George -- his fatherhood
status George 1s not even Informed of hls fatherhood by
Rosamund partly because she does not want to be Indebted to
hlm, and partly because of his own self-protective
dlffldence Further, after Octavla's blrth. Rosamund has no
revlval of Interest ln men Qulte slgnlflcantly George is
the most 'de-sexed' lover -- gentle, diffident and posslbly
homosexual -- that Rosamund chooses to Impregnate her and
now she "scrupulously elects him from the maternal nest
(Crelghton 1985 . 54)
3.6.2. By envlslonlng a female utopla, free from
masculine lnterventlon. Gllman too ejects men from the
'maternal nest' In the process of naturallsrng motherhood,
Gllman subverts exlstlng male and female stereotypes rn
Herland The women have no lnterest in the men except as
ystentlal fathers the male 1s merely the sex and the female
represents the entlre world of actlon To Gllman, mothers
represent "the deep, steady, malnstream of life" and men are
"the active variant", mothers are essential, men are
"ad~uncts" Terry's remark. "The only thlng they can think
of about a man 1s Fatherhood Fatherhood I As if a man
was always wanting to be a father I " (H 1241, remlnds one
Of a slmilar predicament of the man In The Millstone as
nothlng more than a potential father

130
3.6.2.1. Excluding men from her utopia and from the realm
of reproduction, Gilman alms at dispelling the prevailing
notrons and stereotypes regarding mothersjmotherhood. Even
though motherhood is the chief preoccupation of the women of
Herland, lt is a motherhood evolved from thelr essential
nature, rather than one dictated by patriarchal culture
Susan Gubar [clted in Peyser 1992 91 describes Herland as
a place where "culture is no longer opposed to nature".
Gllman hlnts so much herself when she has Van, the male
narrator of Herland, say that the chlldren dld not seem
cultivated at all -- it had become a natural condit~on In
Berland, the narrator reallzes that femlnine charms are
"mere reflected mascul~nlty -- developed to please us
because they had to please us, and in no way essentlall' (H
591 The women In Herland are free from conventional
femlnlnlty, whlch 1s an offshoot of thelr economlc
Independence Incidentally, Gllman believed that "a woman's
economlc Independence 1s the basls of her freedom -- as long
as a woman depends on a father, brother, or husband for
materlal support, she wlll depend on h m emotionally and
intellectually as well" (clted In Sapler 1972 1C9)
3.6.2.2. What one sees in Herland 1s a plcture of
naturaljauthentic motherhood untouched by patriarchy
Sensitive to the difference between motherlny as a
biological experience and motherhood as an instltutlon or

131
social construct, Gilman was wllllng to accept matrimony and
motherhood, provided women were released from their
conventionally defined and llmited roles. She was obsessed
wlth the discrepancy between woman's biological role and
motherhood as an ideological construct, between mothering as
a persons1 activity compounded of love and warmth and as a
physiological definition elevated into a soclal cult. The
tradlt~onal concept of famlly and motherhood, which Gllman
calls the "domestic ethic" (Sapler 1972 . 109) proved,
according to her, a malor deterrent to female independence.
The parthenogenlc mode of reproduction whlch she describes
is hence an attempt to redeflne women's biological roles, lt
suggests that women's bodles can be free of phallocertr~c
law Her concept of woman is "not woman as historically
constituted, not an oppositional figure molded by the
accumulated force of millenia of oppression, but woman as a
dlrect manifestation of natural law" (Peyser 1992 : 2).
3.6.3. Margaret Laurence too works towards redeflnlng
motherhood in The Diviners by excluding men from the
maternal world. Her protagonlst Morag conceives a ckld
outslde marriage and brings her up alone, without any
assistance from her legal husband, Brooke or even from the
father of her child. Jules.
3.7.0. While Herland, The Diviners and The Millstone
explore the possibilities of motherhood without male

132
intervention, another section of feminists demand the
involvement of fathers too in the rearlng and upbringing of
children which, in their opinlon, would dismantle the
~nstitution. Under the institution, the token nature of
fatherhood gives a man rights and privileges over children,
slthough he assumes minlmal responsibility In the flrst
half of the twentieth century, Maxlne L. Margolls
eludlcates, "a dose of father was seen as a good antldote
for an overdose of mother, but there was never any doubt
that the responsiblllty for child care st111 lay In maternal
hands" 11984 . 58) Certain feminis:~, therefore, feel that
~f men too explore their mothering abllltles, thelr support
and co-operation can enable a shared experience of chldrearlng
Mothering, then, wculd not be a merely 'femlnlne'
actlvlty or a burden on the woman alone Exploration of the
'mother' In men would lead to an androgynous outlook,
blendlng both 'feminine' and 'masculine' tralts, deslred by
many femlnlsts According ts Nancy Chodorow and Dorsthy
Dinnersteln, women's monopoly of mothering was chiefly
responslble for their malady They call for shared
chlldrearing in ~nfancy and ch-ldhood If fathers shared In
the all-powerful role of prlmary caretaker, they argue, a
nore balanced human race mlght develop, one whose
attachments might be more flexlble and varied. Elisabeth
Badinter, In her book Mother Love. Myth and Reality, points

out a change ln attitude towards motherhood wlth fathers
participating in mothering:
It seems -- today -- although it is perhaps too
soon to judge -- that the father, having cast off
his authoritarian image, identlf~es more and more
closely with his wife -- that is, with the mother
At the same time as women are "mas~ulinizing'~
themselves and distancing themselves from
motherhood, young men in particular seem to be
more and more incllned taward mothering, lf no'
full-tlme mocherhood Not only do we see more and
more dlvorced fathers asklng for custody of thelr
young chlldren but the most recent studies show
young fathers exhibiting attitudes, behaviour, and
deslres traditionally characterized as maternal
(1981 321
After centuries of the father's authority or absence, a new
concept has come into existence, father love, the exact
equivalent of mother love
It is probable that this new
experience of fatherhood 1s largely attributable to the
Influence of women, who have demanded the sharlng of all
aspects of motherhood
3.7.1. In Marge Piercy's Woman On The Edge of Time,
rnotherlng 1s extended to men also
The men of Mattapolsett
are not male-parents, but 'co-mothers' and 'kld-binders',
the concept of fatherhood 1s strangely lacklng here
Mothering, therefore, becomes a collective responslbllity
with each chlld having three co-mothers
Thls naturally
ellminates possessive parenthood, enabling the kld-blnders
to cultivate a shared responsibility of mothering, instead

134
of concentrating their energies only on children genetically
related to them.
3.7.2. In The Summer Before the Dark, the lack of the
father's co-operation contributes to the breakdown in the
famlly set-up. Michael "worked so hard that he had very
little emotional energy left to glve the family" (SBD 851,
and so Kate has to shoulder the physical, moral and
emotional responsibility of brlnging up her children. She
1s not able to cope with the psychological pressures that
motherhood brings with lt.
For why should it be necessary for a mother to be
there llke a grindstone at the heart of
everything? Look~ng back lt seemed as if she had
been at everybody's beck and call, always
available, always crltlclzed, always belng bled to
feed these -- monsters (SBD 86)
3.8.0. In the feminlst phase of motherhood, women
unaerstand that the instltutlon of motherhood denies them
access to the public sphere
Femlnlsts llke Virglnia Wcolf
have volced their protest against the concept of 'The Angel
ln the House', the Ideal woman of the Victorian age,
developed by Coventry Fatmore
'The Angel In the House',
Says Woolf, is the maternal angel. the figure who encourages
the woman wrlter to "be sympathetic, be tender, flatter;
deceive, use all the arts and wlles of your sex. Never let
anyone guess you have a mind of your own.
pure" (clted in Hirsch 1989 : 941.
Above all, be
Killing the 'Angel in

135
the House' and loosening the tenacious hold that the concept
of 'woman in the home' had in the minds of people, became
part of the project of feminist motherhood. Feminlst
mothers reject John Ruskin's Idea of home as a walled
garden, the walled garden had become a prison for them,
keeplng them In and the world out Slammlng the door to the
doll's house. they venture out to explore newer vistas
3.8.1. In Herland, Gilman dlreccs her 'r~ntellectual
artlllery" (Degler 1989 . 21) agarnst the venerable
lnstlcutlon of the mother-centered home, which she felt was
the malor obstacle to women's employment She strongly
belleves that women's reprsductlve role 1s responsible for
thelr conf~nement to the domestlc sphere In keeping with
her femlnist purport, Gilman takes the mother out of the
claustrophobia of the home and places her In the publlc
Spnere Deeply aware that the least evolved instltutlon 1s
the home, she argues for a radlcal change ln the ldeals and
concepts governing the home Ma-herhood, according to her,
should extend beyond the home and embrace the soclety She
staunchly opposes Victorian ideology prevalent durlng her
Zlme whlch conflned women to the reproductive sphere and
maintained their subordinate role. In 'The Home Its Work
and Influence', Gilman claims that "mother-love 1s the
founta~n of all our human affection, but mother-love as
limited by the home, does not have the range and efficacy

proper to our time".
She envisages the emancipated
twentieth - century woman as "a mother economically free, a
world-servant instead of a house-servant; a mother knowing
the world and living in lt" (cited in Sangari 1983 ,131.
Further, she portrays motherhood completely transformed,
drvorced from heterosexuality, the prlvate famlly, and
economic dependency. In thls connection, Susan Gubar polnts
out
all the evlls of the prlvate home -- isolat~on of
women, amateur unhealthy working, the waste of
labor and products, Improper upbringing of
children, lack of ~ndzvldual prlvacy -- are
avoided not by destroying the Idea of home but by
extending rt so the race 1s vlewed as a famlly and
the world as its home (1989 195)
3.8.2. For Kate of The Summer Before the Dark, awareness
dawns when she moves away from the confines of her home and
famlly to 'a room of her own', a shift whlch brlngs about a
change In not only her physlcal but also mental landscape.
Whlle her famlly home is a constant remlnder of her roles as
wife and mother, Kate's room 1s symbolic of her newly -
found Independence and idextlty
As she moves away from her
large famlllal home to her independent room, she moves away
from marital bonds and obligations, dlscardlng the garbs of
wife and mcther she had been wearlng untll now
She moves
away from oblects that remlnd her of her role and her dutles
to a place where she can en]oy peace and solitude Like
many other feminist writers, Lessing emphasizes that 'a room

13 7
of one's Own' is essentlal to self-expression and
e
realization of the female will According to her, a woman
must have the tlme and opportunlty to explore the sense of
self behind the soclal facades, even if that sense of self
1s not socially acceptable and requires an excursion into
madness or involves hostile and antl-social attitudes
Particularly at middle-age, she must find an independent
room and spend some time discovering who she really is
3.8.3. As for Jaya, the protagonist of Deshpande's That
Long Silence, for Saru of The Dark Holds No Terrors too, a
change in external environment stimulates, llke a catalyst,
a psychological lntrospectlon A ratlonal exploration of
her role as wlfe and mother begins only when she leaves her
husband and chlldren and arrlves at her father's house where
she probes lnto her past and takes stock of her llfe as a
daughter, wxfe and mother. The change in atmosphere enables
her to excavate her real self whlch had till then lam
burled in these roles
3.8.4. Drabble, Walker and Laurence's protagonists follow
the same pattern In Drabble's The Millstone. Rosamund
enjoys belng an independent single mother because of the
freedom she possesses In an independent flat, free from
societal and familial pressures In Meridian, Meridian
ceases being the angel in the house, first when she leaves

138
her mother, next her husband and chlld, to join the Civil
Rlghts Movement. Morag of The Diviners, leaves her foster
parents and lives alone ln the clty in order to achieve her
goals In the academic field. After her marriage, she leaves
her home and her husband to establish herself as a woman
with her own r~ghts, to gain ldentity as a wrlter.
3.9.0. According to the institution of motherhood,
motherhood 1s 'sacred' as long as ~ t s offspring are
'legltlmate' - that is, as long as the child bears the name
3f the father who legally controls the mother (Rlch
1976 421 Slmone de aeauvoir polncs out, "the unwed mother
1s st111 In d~srepute, it 1s only rn marriage that the
mother 1s glorlfled - that ls, only when she 1s subordinated
to a husband" I1971 5411
Yet many mothers, as Rosamund
Stacey In The Yillstone, Morag In The Diviners and Ira In
Nectar in a Sieve choose to become slngle parents
Despite
=he problems they confront, they find rellef ln belnc able
to assume responslbilrty for thelr own llves
Though carlng
for the chlld sl~.gle-handed is a tough lob, many women flnd
~t more satlsfylng to do so wlrhout male Intervention, they
find it easler to carry the responslblllty of chlld-rear~ng
themselves, than trylng to encourage somebody reluctant to
do SO to share it. Paradoxically, to bear an "illegitimate"
child proudly and by cholce in the face of social judgement,
has been one way in which women have defied patriarchy
The

139
example that comes to mind immediately is that of Hester
Prynne ln Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. Childbirth, then,
may be painful, dangerous and unchosen, but it has also been
converted Into a purpose, an act of self-assertion by a
woman forced to assert herself primarily through her
anatomy.
3.9.1. While Ira's adultery and subsequent illegitimate
motherhood 1s purely a consequence of her being a vlctim of
circumstances, Morag and Rosamund consciously opt for
motherhood outslde marrlage - the former rellnqulshlng her
status as wlfe to concelve a child by her former lover, and
the latter decidlng not to enrer the grlp of marrlage at
all, but neverthless havlng a child by a man who 1s no more
than a potentlal father By dong so, the texts doubt not
3nly the institution of motherhood, but also that of
he'erosexuality, reversing exls-lng role-patterns
3.10.0 Whlle the problematlcs of motherhood is dealt
through the mother-daughter cmfllct rn Meridian, Beloved.
The Dark Holds No Terrors and The Diviners, the two Brltlsh
novels - Dorls Lessing's The Summer Before the Dark and
Margaret Drabble's The Millstone - reveal two more facets of
motherhood. Lessing's is a negatlve portrayal of motherhood
as experienced by her protagonist, Kace Brown, who journeys
from her state of happy passlvlty to disgust and

140
disillusionment with her traditional role as wife and
mother. Drabble gives a more positive picture - the movement
of her protagonist Rosamund Stacey is just the opposite of
Lessing's - she moves from an lnltial scepticism and fear of
motherhood to an understanding of its ]oys, which she
experiences through love for her daughter, Octavla. Whlle
Lessing presents her protagonist's lourney from the femlnlne
to the femlnlst phase, Drabble engages herself In re-
deflnlng motherhood, a motherhood mlnus men
The Summer
Before the Dark 1s a negative portralt of marriage, farnlly
and motherhood, The Millstone presents a negatlve plcture
of marrlage, but 1s optlmlstlc about motherhood: "I'm one of
those Bernard Shaw women who wants children but no husband"
(MS 1231 says Rosamund About marrlage, Drabble has made
sceptical comments
(Crelghton 1985 241,
motherhood
Clark
"I don't know why one gets marrled"
but projects a posltlve vlslon of
As she puts it ln an interview to Dlana Cooper-
I see motherhood In such posltlve terms that I
feel almost emharassed to state rt. I thlnk lt 1s
tP.e greatest joy in the world But 1: 1s also a
very-personal thing I just happen to llke it
And ~t's a relatlonshio that. ln fact, avolds the
problems of sex. 1t's-a very pure form of lovlng,
whlch sex rarely 1s .. It has a great deal to do
wlth goodness and love and lack of self-lnterest
(Cooper-Clark 1986 68)
It is this "goodness and love and lack of self-interest'
that Rosamund achleves through motherhood
While Kate

141
experlences a fragmentation of self, Rosamund asserts her
ldentlty through relation to others Kate feels confined to
the home because of her responsrbilities towards her family
and children whereas Rosamund's child teaches her to reach
out to the wider c~rcle of humanity around her. Due to the
circumscribed definition of motherhood that Kate is caught
ln, she is not able to accomplish any role other than that
of housewife, whlle Rosamund, who steers towards a more
personalised motherrng, is able to successfully reconcile
motherhood and career Desplte thelr contradictory
movement, the cwc texts concur at one point in their call
for a redefinition of motherhood Whlle Lesslng stops at
portraylnq her protaqonrst's dissatisfaction with her
'femlnine' roie and the inltiatlon of her awareness about
lt, Drabble moves a step further by evolvlng a new kind of
motherhood In whlch the male 1s eschewed
3.10.1. Walker. Lesslng, Drabble, Laurence and Deshpande
problematlze the lnstltution of motherhood Walker's new
nother re]ec:s lt outrlght whlle the others question or
lqnore some of lts demands While Lesslnq. Lacrence and
Deshpande tread safe grounds by endlnq thelr novels on an
amb~guous note, Walker's treatment 1s more revolutionary -
she takes her protagonist from an insulated to a highly
volatile zone whlch contains endless posslbilitles for her
herolne
The movement in Walker is linear - from the

142
femlnlne to the feminist, whereas in Deshpande, Lessing and
Laurence, it is circular - Saru, Kate and Morag oscillate
between the two poles. Deshpande, Lesslng and Laurence take
their protagonists to the brink of femlnlst motherhood,
offerrng a glimpse of the emerglng new mother while Walker
unhesitatingly leaps into this challenging arena. The
personal/domestic battle and the internally felt urge ln
Sam, Kate and Morag, expands into a racial, social and
ideological battle in Walker's mother

TECHNOLOGIC& MOTEERBOOD
It was part of women's long revolution. When we
were breaklng all the old hierarchies Finally
there was that one thlng we had to give up too,
the only power we ever had, In return for no more
power for anyone. The original production. the
power to glve blrth Cause as long as we were
biologically enchained, we'd never be equal. And
males never would be humanized to be lovlng and
tender So we all became mothers Every chlld
has three To break the nuclear bondlng (WET 98)
4.1.0. From the prevlous chapter, it 1s dlscernable that
advocates of femlnlst motherhood call for the destrucrlon of
the soclal/cultural construct of motherhood - they do not
want women to rellnqulsh mothering, but deslre to convert ~t
to a more pleasurable experience by destroying lmposltlons
:aid on motherhood by the lnstltutlon.
Another group of
fe~nlnlsts move a step further, urglng a shlft from
alologlcal to technologlcal motherhood wlth a promlse that
:i would loosen men's control over women's bodles Vlewlng
reproduction as the root cause of women's oppression,
supporters of technologlcal motherhood assert that women are
bound by blologrcal roles desplte the educational, legal and
polltlcal equallty they had achieved.
Of all differences
between men and women, the most immutable appears to be
Women's reproductlve capacities; lt is this mammalian
responsiblllty that condemns women to a shackled existence.

144
Seeing childbearing as a barrler to self-fulfilment rather
than as a vehicle for it, advocates of reproductive
technology urge women to relinquish their reproductive
functions and take recourse to artificial techniques of
reproduction. The ongoing debate between biological and
technological motherhood has resulted in varlous theoretical
and fictional works contemplating the feasibility of
artificial techniques of reprod'~ct1on. Thls chapter studies
the ideological treatment of technological motherhood
promoted by Hi-tech reproductive strategies and its relation
to feminine/femlnlst motherhood in three utopias/dystopias,
namely, CharloLte Perklns Gllnan's Herland. Marge Plercy's
Woman On The Edge of Time and Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale.
Gilman's utop~a excludes men from the process of
reproduction by attributing to its women inhabitants a
vlrgin - blrth capacity, or the power of parthenogenetic
-.eproductzon. Piercy's utopia, Mattapoisett, views
technological reproduction as the means of liberating women
and along wlth 1t elimlnating sexlsm, racism and classlsm
Atwood, on the ccntrary, staunchly denounces reproductive
technology in her dystopla, Gilead, underscoring that such
technologies will only enslave women further. Herland and
Women On The Edge of Time attempt to make 'unnatural' means
of reproduction sound plausible, viewing them in a posltive
light, whereas The Handamid's Tale 1s a strong critlque of
these techniques.

145
4.1.1. This brlngs us to the question: Does women's
liberation require a biological revolution? Should women
give up their reproductlve roles and opt for reproductive
techniques such as Invitro Fertilization (IVF), Artificial
Insemlnatlon by Donor (AID) and Embryo Transfer (ET)? Or
should they retain their reproductlve powers in order to
galn the actual experience of mothering, at the same time
ensuring that it is not tainted by the politlcs of the
patrlarchial institution of motherhood? While supporters of
technologlcal motherhood exhort women to forsake thelr
reproductive role in favour of technologlcal reproduction,
advocates of blologlcal motherhood affirm that no woman
should deprlve herself of the satisfaction that comes from
bearlng and rearlng a chlld. They clam that lt is not
female blology as such that oppresses women, but male
control of their biology which could be further consolidated
by the developmect of technologlcal reproductlon.
4.2.0. What 'hen, 1s technological motherhood' How far
1s 1t practically feasible? How 1s this concept recelved by
women and men in the world? what are lts advantages and
drsadvantages? Can it be preferred to blologlcal
reproductlon? Before delving into the pros and cons of
these Issues, it would be worthwhile to discuss in what
manner these reproduction-aiding techniques function.

146
4.2.1. Artificial Insemination by Donor (AID) is one of
the commonly used means of artificial reproduction. It
slmply involves the fertilization of an egg by means other
than sexual intercourse. Some feminists favour unregulated
AID because it allows women a measure of control over
reproduction and it threatens male authority. But
unregulated AID also exposes women and the children they
bear to posslble infection from AIDS or venereal disease and
fails to protect inseminated women from unwanted future
intmslons and possible custody disputes wlth their sperm
donors (Donchin 1989.137). Artificial insemination by Conor
has other shortcomings too. This remedy does not meet the
case lf the prospective mother's reproductive equipmerr is
not functlonlng properly or if her general state of health
is so poor as to make childbearing an even more r:sky
b,lsiness than it 1s ordinarily (Nelson 1989.86).
4.2.2. In vltro fertilization (IVF) involves the
fertllization of an egg outside the womb and lts subsecJent
lmplantatlon in a woman's womb. The procedure begins rlth
the removal of one or more eggs from a woman. Often. the
woman's ovaries are induced to 'super ovulate' througr. the
use of drugs The removal is a painful, costly and lergthy
process, usually involving full anaesthesia. The eggs are
then fertilized in a petri dish with the semen. Once the
embryo is found to be nondefective, it is implanted In a

147
womb, sometimes after it has been frozen and stored for a
while (Eichler 1988:281).
The procedure makes it possible
to separate the female genetic and gestational contributions
--- an egg may be removed from a woman, fertrlized, and re-
implanted in her, or, the fertilized egg may be implanted
into another woman who will carry it to term, thus becoming
its uterine mother, but without being genetically related to
the child. The latter case is an instance of egg donatron,
foetal adoption, or intrauterine adoption.
4.2.2.1. Although IVF was originally developed to bypass
the blocked or mrssing fallopian tubes of infertile women,
it is now also the treatment of chorce rn cases of male
infertility due to low sperm count, poor sperm motility, or
badly shaped sperm.
Judith Lorber in her paper "Choice,
Gift, or Patriarchal Bargain? Women's consent to In Vitro
Fertilrzation in Male Infertility" explores the reasons why
women who are themselves fertile might consent to undergo
IVF wlth an infertrle male partner. The reasons given are:
deslre to have that particular man's child, or altruism,
givlng a gift to the partner. Lorber contends that while a
fertile woman undergoing IVF to try to have a baby with an
infertile man may be exchanging a gift of love or expressing
love, it is more likely that she is making a patriarchal
bargain - trying to maintain a relationship and have a child
within the constraints of monogamy, the nuclear family

148 1
LA'
structure and the valorization of biological parenthood,
especially for men. Even the gloss of love and altruism may
be part of the bargain (Lorber 1989.32-331.
4.2.3. Apart from IVF, AID and ET, research for
ectogenesis or in vitro gestation (IVG) is belng carried
out IVG refers to the creation of an artificial womb If
ectogenesis is to be accompl~shed, replacements must be
found for the serles of biochemical processes performed by
women's bodies in pregnancy: egg maturation, fertllizatlon,
lmplantatlan and embryo maintenance, temperature control,
waste removal and transport of blood, nourishment, oxygen to
the embryo (Murphy 1989 :681 .
4.2.3.1. A question central to ectogenetlc research 1s
Wlst women reproduce'
Or should they be liberated from the
responsibility of child-bearing? Desp~te liberation in
other areas, does the burden of chlld-bearlng shackle women
to their anatomy7 Do foetuses belong in women's bodies7
,
4.2.3.2. Exlst~ng reproductive technologies, for example.
embryo transfer, rndicate the possibility of creatlng an
arcificlal womb.
Embryo transfer makes it clear that a
foetus need not be implanted in the uterus of its genetic
mother in order to thrive. Also, research techniques for
sustarning pregnancies in brain-dead women have resulted in
a few live births showing that foetuses can survlve in the

149
bodies of brain-dead pregnant women if there is proper
temperature regulation, intubation and ventilation and all
vital organs remian unharmed (Murphy 1989:69).
4.2.3.3. A woman may desire ectogenesis because she is
unable to malntain a pregnancy or may have had a
hysterectomy. Her medical history mlght lndicate that she
would have a hlgh risk pregnancy, or that her health might
be impalred because of having endured pregnancy Other
reasons involve the effect that pregnancy can have on
women's soclal or professional lives. A woman may flnd
ectogenesis desirable because she is a smoker, drug user or
casual drinker and does not wlsh to alter her behaviour or
place her foetus at risk. Pregnancy might make a wcman
lnellglble for career opportunities leg athletlcs, danc-ng,
modelling, acting) . A woman may be in good health and
fertile but may not want the emotional and physlcal stress
of pregnancy, and therefore would seek an alternative In
ectogenesls.
4.2.3.4. There are three assumptions that are fundarner-tal
to support for ectogenesis. that IVG would not harm foetal
development, IVG privileges a genetically related child over
an adopted child, either for ego-centered reasons or because
Of the shortage of children for adoption; IVG would not
contribute to the further oppression of women. While all

150
supporters of IVG might share the first assumption, along
with one or two positions in the second assumption, lt would
be feminists who would be concerned with the third
assumption.
4.2.3.5. Hence IVG would enable some infertile women to do
something they would otherwise not be able to do. reproduce
rt would also enable fertile women to have genetic offspring
without the risk of pregnancy IVG would thus expand our
reproductive optlons But women who value the experience of
pregnancy and see ~t as offering a deeply satisfying and
unique connection to new llfe would still choose pregnancy
Women who see pregnancy as elther life-threatening or sunply
undesirable might feel bodily control expanded by the option
of IVC
4.2.4. Surrogate or contracted mocherhood 1s an
arrangement where a third party 1s hired and required by
contract to bear a child to be reared by someone else The
birth mother (the woman whose pregnancy has been contracted
for) is either the full blologlcal mother of the chlld (that
is, both the genetlc and gestational mother1 Or the
gestational but not the genetic mother of the child. A
surrogate mother is therefore a woman who is hired to bear a
chrld whom she turns over at birth to her employer.

151
4.2.4.1. Surrogate motherhood has brought with it various
conflicts, tensions and controversies. Marxist feminists
argue that most contracted mothers, like most prostitutes,
are much poorer than their clients. Unable to get a decent
lob, a woman is driven to sell the only thing she has that
seems to have any value her body. To say that a woman
"chooses" to do this, says the Marxlst femlnlst, is to say
thac when a person is forced to choose between being poor
and being exploited, she may choose being exploited as the
lesser of the two evils (Tong 1989:90). The strongest
objection that some radical feminists lodge against
surrogate motherhood is that lt creates divisions among
women ---- between economically privileged and economically
dlsadvantaged women and also between childbegetters.
childbearers and childrearers According to Gena Corea, the
process of reproduction 1s being segmented and specialized
as lf ~t were a mode of production. In the future, no woman
wlll beget, bear and rear a child. Rather genetlcally
superlor women will beget embryos in vitro; strong-bodled
women will bear the test-tube babies to term, and sweettempered
women wlll rear these newborns from infancy to
adulthood (cited in Tong 1989:92).
4.2.5. The three texts have expllcit or implicit
references to reproductive technology. Herland anticipates
a technique of reproduction not yet reported as successful

152
--- cloning ---- "reproduction of a human from one human
only' (Eichler 1988:283).
Parthenogenetic reproduction,
that is, reproduction of offspring without sexual union, 1s
Gilman's SOl~tlOn for Women's liberation. Gllman believed
that sex was necessary only for procreation; if
parthenogenesis was ensuring survival of the specles, then
no Sexual activity was needed.
Basing her thesis on
Lamarckian theory, that is, on the natural tendency of any
functlon to lncrease in power by use, and on the genetlc
transmission of these adaptations, Gilman evolves the
maternal history of Herland
She grounds "her polemlc m
biology, leadlng her to portray cultural conditioning as
genetic determinism" (Peyser 1992 3 )
At the same t;me,
parthenogenesis also "functions symbolically . to
represent the creativity and autonomy of women, mother-
daughter reclproclty, and the interplay of nature and human
nature
At the same tlme lt releases women from the female
Oedipus complex" iGubar 1989 196)
By attrlbutlng such a
virgln-blrth capaclty to the women of Herland and eschewing
men from both the biological and social axes of parenthood.
Gilman creates a female utopla, free from the dictates of
patriarchal culture.
She declutches motherhood from male
Culture and places it in a female culture.
4.2.6. Piercy's >brooder' solution in Wornan On The Edge
of Time has its scientific backing in ectogenesis or in

153
vitro gestation (IVG) which involves the creation of an
artificial womb in which the embryo is brought to term
Mattapoisett, therefore, Piercy foresees an ideal land where
women are no longer burdened with begetting, bearing or
rearlng chlldren single-handed
In
What makes this liberation
from reproductive roles possrble is technological
reproduction and the socretal set-up which favours
collective mothering
Babies in Mattapoisett are born from
the 'brooder' - a place where the genetic materlal 1s stored
and from which the embryos grow.
Also, the system of
rearlng a child with the help of "co-mothers" and "kld-
b~nders", which include men, reiterates that chlld rearm9
1s not the sole responslblllty of women alone
4.2.7. Gllead. Atwood's dystopia, which stands in stark
contrast to Piercy's utopla, envisions what the drastic
effects of a biological revolution may be. Her novel is a
crltique of the uLopia desired by those enthusiastic about
reproductive technologles, particularly surrogate
motherhood. What one sees in her dystopia, Gllead, is wcmen
reduced to their reproductive functions.
Atwood condemns
the segmented and specialized process of reproduction whlch
seems more like a mode of production.
Her thinking is in
llne wlth that of Louise Vandelac who opines that Surrogate
motherhood reduces maternity to mere gestation, assimilating
the mother with her uterus, thus transforming a highly

154
social, symbolic and cultural activity into a simple
instrumental function. Vandelac views women who rent their
uterus as nothing more than "walking incubators" (cited in
McLaren 1988:257).
4.2.7.1. By means of allegory, Atwood satirises surrogate
motherhood and the segmentation of reproductive functions of
women - into child begetting, childbearing and childrearing
- it entails. Corresponding to these divisions, in the
Republlc of Gilead, one flnds the Marthas or domestics. the
Wives, or social secretaries and functionaries, the Jezebels
or sex prostitutes, and the Handmaids, or reproductive
prostitutes - that is, women reduced to thelr respective
roles. The narrator. Offred (who derlves her name from the
Commander, Fred), is a Handmaid recruited for "breeding
purposes". Alloted to the aging Commander, she 1s supposed
to act as a surrogate mother and bear hlm a child with the
collusion of his barren wife If the Handmaid does not
succeed by the end of her two year posting, she is declared
an 'unwoman' and shlpped off to the colonies Male
infertility, however, is unthinkable in Gilead. "There are
Only women who are fruitful and women who are barren, that's
the law" (HT.61)
4.3.0. A vital question that the three texts raise is:
Is reproduction through sexual intercourse essential?
Is

155
pregnancy necessary? Do foetuses belong to women's bodies?
To what extent are women obliged to be child-bearers? Would
other alternatives undermine the role of women ln soclety
and impede their struggle for liberation or would
reproductive technology be regarded as a means of liberation
from reproductive roles instead?
4.3.1. While Plercy creates an artificial 'brooder' to
enable women to break free from the shackles of thelr
biology, Gilman evolves a natural way out through the
process of parthenogenesis An important difference between
Plercy and Gllman to be noted here 1s that Gilman does not
oppose biological reproduction as much as she does man's
control of woman's blology. Her thinklng antlclpates that
sf Adrlenne Rich who asserts that, if women take control of
childbearing and childrearlng, more mothers can experience
biological motherhood on their own terms. Gilman literally
bestows the power in the mothers of Herland to bear and rear
their children wlth feminist values This she does by
electing men from her utopia and attributing to the women
the power to reproduce parthenogenetically
4.3.1.1. Though parthenogenesis functions symbolically in
Herland, Gilman does not fail to ground it in science and
history and thus make it appear plausible. Zara, one of the
matrons of Herland, recounts to the three men, the history

156
of their uniqae capacity for parthenogenetic reproduction,
and the evolution of the 'Motherhood' of Herland, bringlng
out the differences "between us, who are only mothers, and
you, who are mothers and fathers too" (H:471. According to
their hlstory, all their men were killed in a series of
wars, leaving behind only a few matrons. A few babies were
born after the cataclysm - but only two boys, and they both
dled. For around ten years, the women worked together,
growing more and more mutually attached, and finally the
miracle happened - one of the young women bore a child At
first, they thought there must be a man somewhere, but none
,was found. They then decrded it must be a direct glft from
the gods, and placed the proud mother In the temple of Moaia
- their Goddess of Motherhood - under strict watch. As the
years passed, this wonder-woman bore flve children - all
airls
Here at last was Motherhood, and though it was not
for all of them personally, lt might - if the
power was inherited - found here a new race
(H.561.
These flve girls, when they grew up, bore five daughters
each Presently there were twenty-flve New Women, Mothers
in their own right, and the whole spirit of the country
changed from mourr.lng and mere courageous reslgnatlon to
Proud joy. To the Herlanders, the longed-for motherhood was
not only a personal joy, but a natlon's hope. Slnce the

157
prosperity of then children depended on it, the fullest and
subtlest coordination began to be practiced. The loss of
everything masculine thus led to the development of the
virgin-birth capacity.
4.3.2. Piercy however retains male contribution to the
reproductive process, but in her utopla women are freed from
the burden of bearing children due to the employment of
advanced reproductive techniques. However, anticipating
adverse reactlon from those sceptlcal of as dellcate and
sensitive an issue as technological reproduction, Plercy
delrberately depicts her protagonist as one initially
sceptlcal of reproductive technoloqy At flrst, Connle
feels that the brooder reduces a mother to a machine, and
asks "Were you all born from thls crazy machine" (WET.961
Repulsed by the embryos floatlng in the brooder, Connle does
not want to even look at the young bables To her, the
brooder-born babies are less than human. "the bland bottleborn
monsters of the future, born wlthout paln, multicolored
llke a litter of puppies, without the stigmata of race and
Sex" iWET:99).
4.3.2.1. Connie's initlal reaction IS, no doubt, propelled
by her conventional notions of motherhood. She feels that
one has to be a biological mother, bear her child in paln,
to fully understand the experience of being a mother,

How could anyone know what being a mother means
who has never carried a child nine months heavy
under her heart, who has never borne a baby in
blood and paln, who has never suckled a child, who
got that chlld out of a machine the way that
couple, white and rich, got my flesh and blood.
All made up already, a canned chlld, just add
money What do they know of motherhood? (WET.99)
To Connie tlll then, only a genetlc bond is capable of
sustaining an Ideal parent-chlld relationship
4.3.2.2. Connle's inltlal scepticism regarding reproductive
technology vanlshes as she beglns to compare the merlts of
artlflclal reproductlon with the llmltatlons of natural,
biological reproduction
Technological reproductlon In
Mattapolsett prevents motherlng from belng a llfe-tlrne lob,
therefore not demanding too m~ch of a person's tlme and
energy
Further, motherhood 1s not a compulsron only those
w~th an aptltude for ~ t those , confident of motherlng well,
take rt up
The people of Mattapolsett, moreover, rear a
c?-ild upto a certaln phase and leave her/hlm free after the
'end-of-mothering" stage (WET 107) as they belleve that a
chlld sometlmes has to do wlthout mothers
As opposed to
blologlcal parenthood, technologlcal reproductlon ensures
that the responslblllty of bearrng and rearlng a chlld does
not fall on the mother alone
4.3.3. TO Atwood, on the other hand, technologlcal
alternatives obstruct women's ernanclpation as they further

159
strengthen male control over female biology. She regards
surrogate motherhood as degrading and demeaning women's
status ln society The divislon of female functions results
in rlpping the Identity of women into fragments ~twood 1s
caustlc towards the entire business of reproduction in
Gllead The Commander, who feels that he 1s dolng women a
great favour by letting them "fulfil therr bloloqical
destlnies In peace" (HT 2191, stands for male-controlled
reproductlve technology, responsible for reduclng women ts
thelr reproductlve roles By givlng blrth, the women have
to repay ttelr food and keep, "like a queer. ant wlth eggs"
(HT 135) Of the Commander, Offred sarcastlcally remarks
"When the Lord said be fruitful and multlgly, dld he mean
thls man'" (HT 218) The Handmaids In Gllead are lust
reproductrve prostitutes, what reproductlve Eechnology
3-uphemistically terns surrogate mothers, valued only for
their vlable ovarles, and exploited by the economically
prlvlleged
4.3.3.1. In a deliberately lronlcal vein, The Handmaid's
Tale reverberates wlth Blbllcal echoes The Gileadean
reglme legltlmlzes and enforces surrogate motherhood as 1t
was considered to have Biblical precedents The Gileadean
system of reproduction operates with Blbllcal sanction as
Slmultanaeous polygamy was practiced in early Old Testament

times
Atwood herself alludes to it in the epigraph to the
novel in her reference to Jacob and Rachel:
And when Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no
chlldren, Rachel envied her sister, and said unto
Jacob, give me chlldren, or else I dle
And Jacob's anger was klndled against Rachel, and
he said, Am I in God's stead, who hath withheld
from thee the fruit of the womb'
And she said, Behold my mald Bilhah, go In unto
her, and she shall bear upon my knees, that I may
also have children by her
- Genesis, 30 1-3
The Glleadean Commanders, who regard themselves as latter-
cay Jacobs, use their handmaids In a slnllar way
Further,
The Handmaid's Tale rs an aztack directed at the Roman
Cathollc Church laws agalnst abort~on and contraceptlon
Gileadean ideology prohlblts birth control and abortlon
under any c~rcumstances as "unnatural" and obliges the
handrnalds to submrt to "natural" chlldblrth without
medlcatlon
4.4.0. By giving up thelr powers of reproductlon, do
women glve up thelr only power'
reproductive roles lead to self-denlal?
Does the rellnqulshlng of
relat~onshlp necessary between parent and chlld?
essentlal that a child be 'of woman born'?
Is a biological
Is It
Supporters of
biological motherhood lnsist that no woman should, In an act
Of unreflective defiance agalnst patriarchy, deprive herself
Of the satisfaction that comes from bearlng and rearlng a

161
chlld, while advocates of technological motherhood believe
that the roots of women's oppression are biological, and
hence women's liberation requires a biological revolution.
A discussion of this issue by feminist theorists would
provlde the necessary background before studying its
flctlonallsation by Gllman, Piercy and Atwood.
4.4.1. Critics of technological reproductlon argue that
women's oppresslon 1s not caused by female biology in and of
~tself, but rather by man's control of that bloloqy - a
control that could become total depending on how
reproductive technology is developed Mary O'Brien asserts
that if a woman 1s to free herself from man's control, she
has to understand that the source of her oppresslon is also
t3.e source of her liberation Despite the fact that the
process of reproductlon has been a bitter trap for women. it
also contalns for her untapped possibilities and freedom
(Tong 1989 78) O'Brlen analyses reproductlon through the
lens of male alienation from reproductlon. Man's allenation
from reproduction, and from children, she says, rests on
three factors First, the spatial and temporal continuity
between the ovum and the resulting chlld is unbroken, taklng
place inslde the woman's body, whereas the Spatial and
temporal continuity between the sperm and the resulting
child is broken, taklng place outside the man's body
Second, women, not men, perform the fundamental labour of

162
reproduction - pregnancy and birth. Third, a woman's
connection to a particular child 1s certain but a man is
never absolutely sure, even at the moment of birth, whether
the child 1s genetically related to him. Because men are
aware that then parental status is precarious, O'Brien
stated, that they reason that to own women's reproductlve
labour power is also to own the product of that labour
power Thus, men seek to control women's children For
thls reason, Insisted O'Brlen, women should be wary of
reproductlve technoloqles because they are s~mply ways for
men to get something - that is, a child - for nothlng
4.4.1.1. Adrlenne Rich too favoured blologlcal motherhood,
s'rongly assertlnq that women should not give up thelr
reproductlve powers. Llke O'Brlen, Rlch belleved that men
are lealous and fearful of women's reproductive powers The
iealously stems from men's reallzatlon that woman has a
unlque power to create llfe Hence, in order that
patrrarchy survives, men tried to restrlct the power of the
mother As soon as they were able to devise the means, men
took 'birthing' over from women Male obstetrlclans
replaced female mldwzves and hands of iron (obstetrical
forceps) replaced hands of flesh (femaie hands sensitlve to
female anatomy) Men even dlctated to women how to feel
during the process of childbirth, when to feel pain and when
to feel pleasure. But, said Rlch, these rules frequently

clash with a woman's llved experlence, and when this
happens, a woman does not know whether to trust the
authority of the doctors or the sensations of her own body
~hls klnd of experlence can transform pregnancy into a
profoundly alienating experlence
the antlcipatlon of labour has been associated
wlth fear, physlcal angulsh or death, a stream of
superstitions, misinformation, theological and
medical theories - in short, all we have been
taught we should feel, from wlllrng vlctlmlzation
to ecstatic fulfilment (Rlch 1976,1561
Further, Rrch opined that lf blological motherhood can
become a real choice (as distinct from belng forclbly
prescribed or rendered obsolete), then the concept of woman
as womb, and of blological destlny becomes harder to defend
In a patrlarchal soclety, Rich sald, the solutlon to the
palns of chlldbearlng is not technology, but rather for a
woman to rlde with, not agalnst her body
The solutlon to
the lmposltlons on childrearlng In a patrlarchal society 1s
not the renunciation of children. the solutlon is for each
and every woman to rear those chlldrer. with femlnrst values
4.4.Z.2. Some of Rlch's ideas have been developed by
several radlcal fernlnists lncludlng Andrea Dworkin, Margaret
Atwood, Gena Corea and Robyn Rowland, all of whom belleve
that reproductive technology poses an enormous threat to
whatever powers women still possess. As Andrea Dworkln saw
it, reproductive techniques make the womb the province not

164
of women, but Of men, used to create a society in which
women are not persons but mere functions domestics, sex
prostitutes, and reproductlve prostitutes Dworkln's
analysls is ~nspired by Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale Gena
Corea is also suspicious of what the new reproductlve
technologles and thelr concomitant soclal arrangements
promlse women. Robyn Rowland urges Infertile women to
forego the use of these technologies for the sake of "women
as a soclal group" because she feels that the new
technologles only serve the Interests of "technopatrlarchs"
[Donchin 1989.138) and do not glve the malority of women
control over thelr llves
4.4.2. Ann Oakley and Shulamith Flrestone, on the other
hand, urge women to dlscard biologlcai reproduction As
Oakley saw it, bxologlcal motherhood 1s not a natural
condition According to her, motherhood 1s a myth based on
the threefold bellef that "all women need to be mothers, all
mcthers need thelr chlldren, all chlldren need thelr
mothers'' (Oakley 1974 186). As far as Oakley was coccerned,
the need to mother owes nothlng to women's possession of
ovaries and wombs and everything to the way in whlch women
are socially and culturally condltloned to be mothers
Mothers are not born, but made.
4.4.2.1. Firestone suggested that the desire to bear and
rear children is less the result of an authentic liklng for

165
children and more a displacement of ego-extension needs.
people do not need to be biological parents in order to lead
child-centered lives, said Flrestone
Now that technology
promised to liberate the human species from the burdens of
reproductive responsibility, Flrestone predicted that women
will no longer want to bear children In pain and travail or
rear chlldren endlessly and sacrlficlally
As she saw it,
blologlcal reproduction is neither In women's best interests
ncr in those of the children so produced. The joy of giving
blrrh -
patrlarchal myth
invoked so frequently in thls soclety - is a
In fact, Flrestone comments, pregnancy is
"barbaric" and natural chllclbirth is "at best necessary and
tolerable", at worst "like shitt2ng a pumpkln" (Tong
1989 76)
4.4.3. In Piercy's novel, Connie ar first feels indignant
that a woman shoul5 give up her powers of reproductlon, her
means of self-fulfilment, by relinqulshlng the only power
she has
how dare any woman share that pleasure These
women thought they had won, but they had abacdoned
to men the last refuge of women. What was speclal
about belng a woman here? They had given 1t all
up, they had let men steal from them the last
remnants of ancient power, those sealed in blood
and mllk (WET 126)
Luclente however attempts to allay her doubts: "You thlnk
because we do not bear llve, we cannot love our chrldren

166
gut we do, wlth whole hearts" lWET.125), thus asserting that
blological reproduction is not the preconditlon for maternal
1 me
4.4.3.1. Through Connie's ultimate realization, Piercy
stresses that a blological relationship is not essential to
good parenting In her utopia, because no one has her/his
own genetlc child, chlldren are not their parents,
possessions to be brought up In thelr parents' image and
reared according to then idiosyncratic values Connle
eventually agrees that technologlcal reproductlon 1s
superlor to blological reproduction In that the klnd of
mother1r.g that flows from rt is truly nurturing and
unselfish, totally separated from ambivalent feellngs of
resentment and gullt, and always freely chosen
4.4.4. Whlle Plercy wishes to underline that
technologlcal reproduction wlll obliterate the equatior. of a
woman zo her womb, Atwood refutes thrs assertion In The
Handmaid's Tale, Offred realizes that Gllead echoes the
anclent Greek concept that a woman 1s her womb The only
value that women hold here is by vlrtue of thelr belng
vessels to carry the embryos Thls sense of frustration at
belng only gestational mothers, mere reproductive machines,
makes her comment "We are containers, it's only the lnsides
of our bodles that are important" iHT.96) Atwood agrees

167
w~th Adrienne Rich's stance that if women took control of
chlld-bearing and child-rearing, more women would be able to
experience biological motherhood on their own terms
~twood, llke Rlch, does not want women to renounce their
b~ologlcal functions in the name of ‘liberation'.
Female
b~ology, for her, therefore is not a llmitlng factor, on the
contrary it is a source of expanding women's potential
4.4.4.1. Further, Rlch's belle£ that if blologlcal
motherhood can become a real cholce, then the concept of
woman as womb and of blologrcal destlny wlll lose currency,
1s reflected in Atwood's novel
Here, she explores the
questLon Is a woman's anatomy her destiny? and concludes
that whxle reproductive technology claims to ellmlnate th~s
equation, in reallty it only shackles women to thelr
anatcmy
The Glleadean women, as a result of thelr
segmented reproductive functions, feel alienated from thelr
badlss Offred, sublected to sexual exploltatlon
nasqueradlng as rellglous fervour, experlences herself as
utterly subcrdinated to the pracreatlve functlon
In her
former llfe, she had regarded her body as under her control
- -. with "limlts but nevertheless llthe, slngle, solld,
one wlth meN, but under her drastrcally changed
circumstances, experlences her body as separate from herself
and not withln her control
She avolds looking at her body
because it "determines [her] so completely" (HT.63). Her

168
alienatlon from her reproductive organs is clearly reflected
rn the lines. "Now the flesh arranges itself differently I
am a cloud, congealed around a central object, the shape of
a pear, which 1s hard and more real than I am" (~~.73-74)
In Gllead, t3e female body 1s not only used as a tool for
reproduction, but bodles in general are ob3ectlfled and
described in terns of parts rather than as wholes Offred
and the handmaids are. to those in power In Gllead, merely
parts of bodles: "two-legged wombs" The doctor who
examlnes them periodically for slgns of pregnancy does not
see their faces, he deals with a torso only
4.5.0. Both In Grlman's Herland and Plercy's Woman On The
Edge of Tame, motherhood becomes a collective responsrblllty
rather than a personal affair In Gllman, thls rs
attrlbutable to the absence of the male factor rn
raproductxon, and in Piercy, technologrcal reproduction
removes the burden not only of child-bearzng but also that
of chlld-rearlng from women, thus fostering a shared
responslblllty of both women and men in brlnglng up
ctlldren Both the authors percelve communal motherhood
both practically and rdeologlcally: practically rn that lt
removed some of the dlfflcultles that a prlvatised famlly
llfe posed - there were more people available to provide
Support and asslst with childcare, ideologically lt
elxminated the family as the site of women's oppression,

169
allowing women to place themselves outside family
households The mothering and education of the children,
carried out by trained specialists, is crucial to the
creation of a new people wlth a new consciousness in the two
4.5.1. While outside Herland, the mother 1s totally
absorbed in her baby and takes no more than theoretical
lnterest in other chlldren. the chlldren of Herland are of
Interest to the entire natlon Gilman's statement, "Our
chlldren are largely benefited by the publlc, and would be
much more so lf the domestic concept dld not act too
strongly in llmltlng mother love to so narrow a fleld of
action'! (clted ln Sapler 1972 llO), 1s enacted In Herland
where motherhood is the basis of the sense of solldarlty and
community as well as the ~mplled prlnclple of organlzatlon
As one of the Herland mothers says
We soon grow to see that mother-love has more than
one channel of expression I thlnk the reason our
chzldren are so so fully loved, by all of us, is
that we never - any of us - have enough of our
own we each have a mllllon chlldren to love
and serve - cur chlldren (H 71)
Collect~ve motherhood, therefore, lmplies a lack of
compet:tlon / incentive. One of the mothers reacts wlth
shock on learning about the competition motherhood outslde
Herland involves. "Do you mean, for instance, that with you
no mother would work for chlldren without the stimulus of

competltion7" lH:60). To Terry's question. "But does not
each mother want her own child to bear her name7',. Moadine
replies. ''No - Why should she? The child has its own"
(H 75) The children of Herland do not even carry thelr
mothers' names because surnames imply ownership The
chlldren belong to themselves fxrst, and are the pride of
ail of Herland - not lust thelr birth - mothers
As In
Plercy's novel, here too, motherhood does not entall
possession of the chlld Here, as In many other Instances,
we are led to percelve the difference between the purely
maternal and paternal attitude of mlnd Because of
collective motherhood, the element of personal pride seems
lacklny In the Herlanders A mother ln Herland does not
cllng ts her chlld, but entrusts her to a group of comothers
who are fully equlpped to tram and educate her
after the baby - year the mother was not so
constantly In attendance, unless, Indeed, her work
was among the young ones She was never far off,
however, and her attltude toward the co-mothers,
whose proud chlld - service was dlrect and
continuous, was lsvely to see (H . 103)
In a sentelce, motherhood for Gllman extends beyond care for
'my chlld' to 'the child' As Ann J Lane succlntly puts lt,
Gilman "transforms the private - world of mother - child,
lsolated in the individual home, into a comrnunlty of mothers
and children in a socialized world It is a world in which
humane social values have been achleved by women ln the
Interest of all" (Lane 1979 :xxiii)

171
4.5.2 Mothering, In Mattapoisett, is extended to men
also
The men are not male parents, but co-mothers and kid-
blnders, the concept of fatherhood is strangely lacking
here Mothering therefore becomes a collective
responsibility with each chlld havlng three co-mothers.
T~XS naturally fliminates possessive parenthood/motherhood.
enabling the kld - binders to cultivate a shared
responslblllty of mothering, instead of concentrating the~r
energles only on chlldren genetically related to them
This
congenial practlce of shared chlld-rearlng 1s agaln a dlrect
outcome of technological motherhood
As opposed to
blologlcal reprocldctlon, here, shared parenclng leads to an
andrownous outlook, thus brlnglng about an equality between
the sexes, Instead of tiltlng the burdens of reproducing and
rnotherxng on the woman alone
4.5.3. Gilman and P~ercy's concept of collective
motherhood conc'lrs wlth that of femlnlst theorists Germalne
Greer, Jullet Mitchell and Betty Freldan - who inslst that
b~olog~cal parents should be replaced by social parents
Critlcal of the nuclear family because it engenders
lsolatlan, frustration, and meaninglessness, they envlsage a
soclety where a woman who has a child is not autsmatlcally
commlcted to brlnging it up
They insist that a new
approach to child - rearing ought to be created where it is
not lust the mother but also the father
and SoClety as a

172
whole that should involve Itself in thls responsibility.
Adrienne Rich however expresses her cyniclsm towards
collective rearlng
According to her, mass chlldcare In
patriarchy has had only two purposes, to introduce large
number of women into the labour force or to indoctrinate
future cltlzens. She stresses the fact tnat this system has
never been conceived as a means of releasing the energles of
women Into the mainstream of culture, or of changlng the
stereotyplc gender - lmages of both women and men
4.6.0. As opposed to blologlcal motherhood, where a woman
1s expected :o
has an Inc1:natlon
bear and raise her child, whether or not she
to do so, In Herland and Woman on The
Edge of Time, motherhood becomes a speclallzed craft,
antrzsted only to those wlth an aptlc-de for 1t
when mozherhood is lmposed on all women tha:
3urden
It 1s only
lt becomes a
Wlth the firm n ew that all women are not cut out
far maternal dutles, motherlng In these two utoplas 1s
asslgned only to those sulted for it
4.6.1. Whlle all women are valued fcr thelr child-bearlng
capacltles lc Eerland, chlld-ra1slr.g and educatlon 1s
+I..cF
-~---ed to those best able to provlde lt
educatlon of the children, carrled
The motherlng and
out by tralned
Speclal-sts "who are not necessarily mothers but who are
always women, 1s cruclal to the creation of a new people

173
with a new consclousness" (Lane 1979:xlii). Chlldcare 1s
shared by a variety of people, lncludrng the blologlcal
mother
Gllman always made lt clear that she lntended tc
supplement the mother, not exclude her from chlld-rearlng
Teaching, seen as a specialised craft, 1s the responsibility
of the most competent of Herland, because, as Gllman saw lt
Any nom.al woman can be a mother, as any normal
man can be a father, but every woman cannot be a
educator any more than every man can be a muslclan
iclted In Ceplalr 1991 245)
Thls arrangement prevents mothering from belng a twenty
four hour lob, enabllng the mother to concentrate her energy
on other work, at the same time leavlng her sat1s:led
her chlld was recelvlng the flnest education
thai
In Thf
Forerunner Years, Gllman agrees to the deep universal neec
of the chlld for the mother and the mother for the chlld
She denles however that thls need exlsts In one ,~nbroken
unrelaxlng straln, every hour of the day and nlght
The chlld does need the mother, the mother does
need the ch~ld, but both are better off for
certaln breaks ln thelr companlonshlp When the
baby 1s asleep, when the chlldren are at sc>ool,
when they are all In bed at nlght, then even the
rotherllest mother can breathe a llttle more
freely, and refresh her
iclted in Ceplalr 1991 mind other
242)
4.6.2. Technological reproduction In Mattapolset'
prevents mothering from being a llfe-time job, therefore no
demanding too much of a person's tlme and energy
Further

174
motherhood is not a compulsion. only those with an aptltude
for ~ t , those confident of mothering well, cake it up AS
~uclente explains to Connle
"If person dldn't want to
mather and you were a baby, you might not be loved enough to
grow up lovlng and strong
cannot do" (WET 94)
Person must not do what person
The people of Mattapo~sett, moreover,
rear a chlid upto a certain phase and leave her / hlm free
after the "end-of-mothermg" stage (WET . 107)
As opposed
to blologlcal parenthood, tecbnoloqical reproductlon ensures
that the responslblllty of bearlng and rearlng does not fall
on the mother alone
4.7.0. Atwood and Plercy argue convincingly and draw upon
tle posltlve
aspects of brological reproductlon and
techn0;oglcal reproductlon respectively to prove thelr
stance
G~lman's posltlon however can be regarded as a vla
rnedla between the two - her women retarn thelr powers of
cl3laglcal reproductlon - but she redefines the very rneanlng
cf motherhood by banlshlng men froa Herlacd and w-th xt
heierosexuallty
Plercy afflrms that through technological
neans and laboratory-produced bables, women can break free
from thelr reproductlve roles and render their stereotyped
Images obsolete. Atwood, on the contrary, malntalns that.
made-to-order bables and Hi-Tech reproductlve techniques
wlll only culminate in newer siereotypes such as domestics,
sex prostitutes and reproductive prostitutes
Gllman

175
subverts the existing stereotyped images of the mother,
blending the so-called 'femlnine' and 'masculine' traits,
thus reaching an androgynous vlsion
In Herland, the women
are physically aglle, rationally sound, capable of
organlzatlon, independent and self-sufficient, the 'Land-
Mother' is called 'Mera' - meaning thlnker
By attrlbutlng
the so-called 'masculine' tralts to the women of Herland,
Gllman ellminates any false, artificial dlvlslon of
femlnlnlty and mascullnlty, embracing lnstead a common set
of human values
In the novel, Vandyck, and to some exten:
Zeff, learn from their experience rn Herland, they begln to
understand that femlninlty 1s not a physiological
characterisclc b u ~ an rdeological construct as is
mascul~n~ty In P~ercy's Mattapolsett, the slmllarlty In
appearance, career and style of functlon of both males and
females, and the replacement of natural gesratlon and blrth
by a number of mothers (~ncludlng males) for each chlld,
wlth hormone In2ectlons for these male mothers so that they
may suckle, reduces the barrlers between the sexes to the
lowest posslble polnt.
4.8.0. P11 alteration In famlly structures 1s the dlrect
outcome of reproductive technology, the advent of whlch
signifies a masslve change in heterosexual relationships
With reproduction no more relylng on sexual intercourse, the
relatlonshlp between the sexes undergoes a slgnificant

evision.
176
It is Interesting to view how human sexual and
social behaviour is transformed by science
Both Plercy and
Gllman dlrect thelr attack on institutionalised sexual
Intercourse, in which male and female each play a definite
/
role, which, accord~ng to them, only reinforces the
institution of motherhood. As Shulamith Firestone predicts,
wher technology is able to perfect artiflclal ways of
reproduction, the need for the biological family will
disappear and wlth lt, the need to Impose genital
heterosexuality as a means for ensurlng human reproduction.
The two fem~nist utoplas re]ecc
both the ownership of
women's sexuallty and the~r reproductive capacities by men
Plercy's novel, whlch 1s outspoken on sexuallty, deglcts
both a dystopla and a utopia, the possessiveness of sexual
relations xn the former 1s contrasted wlth the openness of
the palrings between 'sweet frlends' ln the latter. Connle
1s at flrst shocked at their openness which seems an
unbearable l~cense, but later understands what thls means
no more prostltztlon, no more explo~tation, no more unwanted
children, no more unhappy women forced Into marrlage for the
sake of social conformity Caustlc towards
instltutionalised sexual intercourse, Gllman belleved that
sex was necessary only for procreatlon, if parthenogenesis
ensured the survrval of the specles, then no sexual activity
was needed
In Herland, the Herlanders are Tlte confounded

177
when they learn from the men that outside Herland, people
have sex wlthout regard to motherhood The status of women
In Herland 1s an lnverslon of the contemporary the male is
merely the sex and the female represents the whole world of
actlon Jusc as in Herland, so in the Whlleawayan soclety of
Joanne Russ's The Female Man, parthenogenesls 1s practised.
rendering men superfluous to therr exrstence. Women have no
need of men for emotional, flnanclal, or socral security, or
even for sexual fulfilment. The men therefore frnd ~t
dlfflmlt to establrsh relatlonshlps wrth the women In the
absence of traditional sex roles In Woman on The Edge of
Txme, Luclente states "Fasure we couple Not for money,
not for a llvlng For love, for pleasure, for rellef, out
of hablt, out of curloslty and lust" (WET 581 Gllman and
Piercy str-ke common ground In eraslng the connection
between sex and econornlcs, but whlle Gllman does so by
ellmlnatxng sexuallty altogether, Plercy removes only the
utllltarlan motives from sexuality maklng ~t a purely
hedon1st;c act:vlty Gllman re~terates the fact that sex and
economlcs go hand-ln-hand, she clalms that human belngs are
the only specxes In whlch the female depends on the male for
food, the only specles ln whlch the sex-relatlon 1s also an
economlc relat;on. Treatrng sexuallty both as a cultural
construct and de-emphasizing zt, she advocates economlc
independence and a subllmatlon of the sex-lnstlnct Into a
social lnstinct

178
4.8.1. Elimination of the institution of heterosexuality
also avoides the entrapment of women in the nuclear famlly
structure In Herland and Woman on The Edge of Time, the
erasure of female / male gender roles is most effective In
the redeflnltion of the family In Piercy's novel
llberatlon of women from role responsibility for childbearing
and rearing means that they are able to contribute
soclally In ways whlch sult thelr physlcal and intellectual
capablllties, while the greater inclusion of men in thls
responslblllty gives them much lncreased enotlonal awareness
and freedom The chlldren too seem more independent and
secure, freed of the complex psychological stresses of the
nuclear farnlly Connle's assertLon that her daughter (who
was forcibly taken away from her and senc for adoptlonl
would grow up better In Mattapoisett "she wlll be strong
there, well fed, well housed, well taught, she will grow up
m,Jch better and stronger and smarter than I" (WET 133)
amply illustrates Plercy's belle£ that the claustrophobia of
the nuclear famlly would prove detrimental to a child's
health The unsatlsfylng relat1onsh:p Connle has with her
own mother, and the inadequacy she herself feels as a mother
to her daughter Mgellna glven the circumstances of the
present reality, set in stark contrast to the vltality and
buoyancy the children of Mattapolsett experience, confirms
this fact

179
4.9.0. As Piercy's Wcrman on the Edge of Time proclams,
reproductive technology has its far-reaching effects on the
elimination of reclsm and classism along with sexlsm
atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, whlch stands In direct
oppositlon to Plercy's text glves exactly the opposlte
verdlct --- here technologically - alded reproduction only
reinforces the helrarchlcal set-up In Plercy's novel, the
problems of survlval for Connle In her own sociery are not
cnly a functlon of gender, but also that of race and class,
Connie 1s treated as a crlmlnal because she 1s a woman, a
Chicano, hence ncn-whrte and belonging to the working class
In Mattapolsett however, the genetlc materials are so mlxed
that no noelon of ownership exlsts between parent and chlld,
resulclng In the elimlnatlon of raclsm, the people of
Mattapolsett are "a mlxed bag of genes" (WET . 93' wlth "no
chance of raclsm again" (WET 93) In The Handmaid's Tale,
the opposrte holds true - surrogacy strengttens class
dLfferences, motherhood becomes a purchaseable servlce
afforded only by the elite, resulting 12 further
exploltatlon of the underpr:v~leged The same car. be argued
ln relatlon to ectogenesls or rnvltro gestatlon In a
utopla llke that of Piercy, ectogenesls could ellmlnate
class dlvlslons, but if lt 1s reallzed In the reallty of the
present, ectogenesls, llke surrogate motherhood can
reinforce class structures It could lead to the creation

180
of a class system in reproduction wlth the rlch reproducing
In ectogenetic laboratories while the poor continue to rely
on women's bodies for pregnancy
4.10.0. One of the maln reasons why women are conflned to
the prli.ate, domestlc sphere of the home is due to thelr
reproductlve role However, once women no longer have to
reproduce, the maln reason for keeping them at home
disappears Tt-e patriarchal dlvlslon of labour on the basls
of sex 1s overhauled with the advent of reproductlve
technology in Plercy's Woman on The Edge of Time In thls
androgynous utopla, both women and men are equally involved
In the worlds of nature and culture, and gender differences
are dei~berately mlnlmised By exchanging traditional
roies, ieavlng no d~stlnctlons of dress or degree of sexual
actlvlty and lntroduclng ectogenetlc reproductron to remove
the last differences between the sexes, Plercy reinforces
her polnt that work need not be gender-structured once
repraductlon takes place outslde the body
4.11.0. A:vood and Plercy volce their stances clearly, but
Gllman's concept of motherhood 1s replete wlth
contradlct~ons The question that stlll remalns 1s Is
Gllman's utopla yet another mystlque of motherhood' A
closer look may reveal that Herland 1s a feminist
apprapriation of femlnine motherhood. Instead of a

181
patrlarchal culture, we see here a matriarchal lmposltion of
'VlrtUeS' on motherhood
Wlth motherhood belng imposed on
the women as thelr Sole occupatlon and ~ t s elevation lnro a
religious Cult, One wonders if Gllman 1s not agaln
ucdermlnlng the Status of women
By movlng mothers from the
domestlc sp'?ere to the soclal sphere, Gllman attempts to
move women from the marglns of androcentric culture to the
eencer of a gynocentrlc socieFf, but in dolnq so, 1s she
st111 successful in bringing out the reai experience of
motherhood? By ralslng it into a c-lt, 1s she zot taklng
motherhood further away from reality?
4.12.0. The utoplan wrlters cons~dered here are more
analytical than predlctlve In thelr representations, they
examme the nat31re of contemporary gender ldeology along
wlth 1ts effect on the family
Thelr speculatlse flctlon
uses both posltlve and negatrve Images of motnerhood to
denouzce patrlarchal control of blrch
Regardless of
whether the 1nd1vld'~al writer chooses to portray negative or
pos;tlve aspects cf pregnancy, eacn cholce emphasizes the
need to alter patriarchy's penchant for transfomlng women
lcto powerless birth machlnes
4.13 .O. Ir. flne, reproduction - a~dlng techno;ogy, whlle
considered by certain femlnlsts as a means of liberating
women frsm thelr reproductive role, is, on the contrary,

182
regarded by others as an instrument of manipulation of
women's reproductive powers While feminists have been
un~ted ln support of methods that enable women to control
thelr fertlllty, there is still disagreement, as the above
study shows, among them about new reproductlve techn~ques
designed to treat lnfertlllty and induce pregnancy Desplte
the vary-ng and conflicting stances adopted by feminlsts,
the common vlew that emerges is that lf ever technology 1s
applled for reproductlve purposes, lt should be nonexplaltatlve
It is not the replacement of functions of
women's bodles by technologlca: alternatives that should
galn top prlorlty, but the development of non-exploxtatlve
ways to treat ~nfertllity Safe and restorative technology
that can enable wonen experience pregnancy and chlld birth
1s what femlnlsts can support In a unlfled way

THE USTEETICS OF MOTHERHOOD
. Women's relation to the symhollc is somewhat
different from men's women's narrative will
enact a somewhat different process
- Joan Lldoff
5.1.0. Gender plays an important role In determining
subject or style Fiction written from a self-consclaus
femlnlst perspective encodes an Ideology whlch 1s In dlrect
opposltlon to the domlnant patriarchal gender ldeology
Opposlng sexlst dlscourse whlch deflnes, describes and
dellmlts how men and women must act In order to be
considered masculine and femlnine, the femrnlst dlscourse of
the texts under study challenges the naturallsatlon of the
exlstlng aascullnlst discourse Bemlnlst dlscourse
influences not or-ly the thematlc but also the styllstlc
aspects of a llterary plece In addltlon to the ideological
complexltles, feminlst writers perfon aesthetic manoeuvres,
utlllzlng thelr marglnallsed or Inferlor posltlon as a
vantage polnt ln order to stow how patriarchy legitlmlses
lts institutions Whether toid In the reallst or fantastic
mode, the fernmist texts reveal how women are distanced from
power structures of dominant culture -- physlologlcally
through thelr role as chlld-bearers, soclologlcally through
thelr role as chlld-rearers, and psychically through symbols

184
and images which elevate and at the same trme marglnalise
them This chapter shifts the focus from the thematrc to
aesthetic aspects, indicating how a self-consc~ous feminlst
narrative point of view, structure, genre, imagery and myth
contribute to worklng out the problematlcs of motherhood
5.2.0. wrthln a femlnlst dlscourse itself, texts may be
written elfher from the perspectlve of the mother or the
daughter Femlnlst wrltlng wrltten from a 'daughterly'
perspectlve can be said to ally wlth patrlarchal dlscourse
in the process of 'otherlng' the mother, lt reiterates the
patrlarchal dogma that 'mothers can't wrlte, they are
wrltten' Whxle the storles of women have been ecllpsed In
men's plots, the storles of mothers are belng neglected in
the plots of sons and daughters Psychoanalytic femlnlsm
has added the female chlld to the male, allowing women to
speak as daughters, but 1t has d~fflculty accounting for the
experience and the voice of the adult woman who 1s a mot>.er
5.2.1. The mother's presence, tlll now reduced to a
utllltarlan functlon In llfe acd In fictlon, springs tc
prominence when women reallze that e5Jen when they are
mothers, there is a part of them that 1s not just a mother,
a part that remains a separate and independent '1'. Thrs
enables her to be the subject of her own story lnstead of
being a slave to the reproductive process As Dl Brandt

185
sees lt, the mother's voice is largely unheard in literature
',not because she is unnarratable, but because her
sub]ectivlty has been violently and repeatedly, suppressed"
(1993 7) It is only when the story is told from the
perspective of the mother, rather than the daughter, that a
different conception of sublectivlty emerges Maternal
dlscourse therefore makes one llsten to storles that mothers
have to tell, by creating the space In which mothers can
articulate thelr stories, assumlng a maternal posltlon and
speaking ln a maternal voice A maternal crltlque of
'daughterly femlnlsm' is of paramount Importance to
:enlnis:s llke Marlanne Hlrsch ln partlcuiar who see thls
cr1t:que as parallel to the crrtlpues of white feminlsm by
women of colour, the critiques of western femlnism by thlrd
world women or the crltlques of middle-class feminlsm by
worklng class women
5.2.2. Deshpande's The Dark Holds No Terrors and Walker's
Merxdian are told from tne perspectzve of the woman both as
daughter a-d mother, but the domlnant volce here 1s that of
the woman as daughter who occuples the siib~ect posltlon
whlle the nother 1s relegated to the status of the 'other'.
In these two novels, although mothers are present, even
domlnant, maternal dlscourse suffers from llmitatlons and
constraints --- the daughter-narrator often defines herself

186
in opposition to, and not in imitation of, the maternal
figure
5.2.3. The maternal narrative of Morrison's Beloved and
Laurence's The Diviners ensures that maternal sllence is
transmuted to maternal anger The maternal discourse of the
fexts questions not only where the stories of women are In
men's plots, but also where the stories of mothers are in
the plots of sons and daughters The maternal sublect 1s
articulated in a way that is useful for rewriting and
xdentlfying the place of the mother in the narrative The
maternal narrative here 1s not based on separation or
absence, but on the lntlmate lnteractlons of the mother wlth
the world arsund her
5.2.4. Beloved explores a maternal volce, offerlng an
example of how the volces of mcthers and daughters can speak
the unspeakable plots, orlglnating wlth the mother Here
Mcrrlson unearths the doubly repressed volce of the black
slave woman, sllenced by raclsm and gender In Beloved,
Morrlson 1s concerned with not what hlstory has recorded ln
the slave narratlves, but what lt has omltted. In slave
narratlves, the story 1s usually told by the black male
narrator whose focus 1s on his own lourney to wholeness
What was generally told was hls/story while her/story hardly
emerged. Morrison's Beloved provldes the avenue for the

esurrected female slave narrator's voice
187
It is not only
Sethe's voice we hear, but also that of her mother, Patsy,
Denver, Deloved and Baby Suggs
5.2.4.1. Beloved suggests how anger, tlll now remalnzng
unspoken, can nevertheless be spoken
The bltter paradox
conslscs In the fact that the mother-daughter conversatlons
that occur are conversations beyond the grave; lf Sethe 1s
to explain her incomprehensible act, she has to do so to a
ghost
Although Sethe's story is "not a story to pass on',
(B 3361, Beloved 1s the story of the mother, and the
novel's dominant volce and narratlve is hers
Thls novel,
more than Morrison's earller works, does lec the mother
speak for herself
It allows her both to recognize her love
for Beloved and her love for herself
Marlanne Hlrsch remarks
With Beloved,
Ton1 Morrlson has done more than to shift the
dlrectlon of her own work and of feminlst
theorlzlng along wlth writers llke Grace Paley and
Tlllle Clsen, she has opened the space for
maternai narratlve In femlnlst fictlon (Hlrsch
1989 272)
5.2.5. Margaret Laurence is a ploneer in fashioning a
place for maternal narratlve in Canada. Though the maternal
consciousness 1s of paramount importance as the mode of
perception In her novels, Laurence does not romantlcise or
1dea;lse lt The act of mothering is presented as a

188
tremendously drfflcult one, fllled with responsibillty, as
Morag Struggles to balance motherhood and career. The
maternal discourse In The Diviners 1s rnextricably bound to
Morag's CreatlVe work. Morag's realization of herself as a
wrlter and as a mother is through the storles she tells both
herself and her daughter It 1s not only the volce of one
mother -- Morag - that 1s heard, but multlple voices of her
lost mothers from hrstory, llterary and orai trad~tlon are
recalled and rearranged In Morag's narratlve Morag feels
the loss of the mother ln her llfe but tracks her down
through her lmaglnatlve effort -- the llterary mothers
replace the dead, real mother To lnfuse the themes of llfe
versus art, mother versus daughter, past versus present, in
her maternal narratlve, Laurence makes her protagonist both
a mother and a creative wrlter The mother - daughter
relatlonshlp here is not limited to psychological concerns,
lt also Involves lssues such as the relationship between
maternity and creativity, between female values and literary
tech31pes Morag ldentlfles herself wlth her characters in
her novels, each of which marks her contlnulng effort to
Integrate the past Into her own growing maLernal .rlewpolnt.
She investigates what it feels like to be the sublect of
one's own flctlon, the questlon of women findlng a lanwage
to wrlte about oneself is central to the female tradltlon,
and Laurence focuses on this. Morag mothers both her

189
daughter and her wrlting and while miotherling the text, she
enters into a loving and reciprocal relationship with the
other, to let the daughter too tell her own story In her
relatlon to Pique, she finally reconciles the confllctlng
claims of other and self, of belng a mother and an artist,
the confllct at the heart of the female Kunstlerroman
5.2.6. Llke The Diviners, The Millstone ~llustrates that,
besldes belng wrltten, women do write as mothers, and that
thelr wrlting can be furthered rather than merely impeded by
thelr motherhood The novels refute the elther / or theory
wrltlng or motherhood, work or chlld -- whlch imply that as
long as her motherly capacltles are put to use, a mother
does not need to wrlte But both Laurence and Drabble drlve
home the polnt that creatlvlty through reproductlon alone 1s
not an end ;n Itself, women should explore other forms of
self-expression too Motherlnq and creatlve writlng are not
mutually exclusive areas In Drabble's novels, Jerusalem
the Golden, The Waterfall and The Millstone, the mothers who
wrlte have an unproblematic, a;most Ideal relatlonshrp to
thelr chlldren. In The Millstone, Rosamund 1s able to write
better and successfully complete her thesls after her chlld
1s born Yet the novel leaves thls question open to debate
Can a creatlve woman wlth chlldren have a satisfying,
permanent relationship wlth a man7

190
5.3.0. The narrative tone of the texts considered is
significantly double-volced, both because the herolne speaks
simultaneously as mother and daughter, and also because of
the conflict she experiences between her real self and
soclal self Eventually, the protagonist's passage through
her narrative enables her to sltuate herself as a speaking
sublect, voice her femlnist discourse, as agalnst the
exlstlng patriarchal discourse.
5.3.1. Tte narratlve of The Dlviners oscillates between
past memory and present reallty, revealing the story of a
story-teller, it 1s a story about story-telllng that 1s
Itself composed of stories Told from the v~ewpoint of
Morag, both as daughter and mother, Laurence's text
conslsts of two narratives. The 'Now' narratlve of 'Rlver
of Now and Then' tells the story of Morag as mother, that
15, her presenc life as a forty-seven year old writer and
slngle parent. the 'Then' narratlve is told from the
perspective of Morag as daughter, her past whlch is embedded
In her present 1s revealed through a series of 'snapshots'
The rellance on memory fuses flction and fact In Morag's
portrait of herself as a daughter Slgnlflcantly, the past
events In The Diviners are narrated in the present tense,
and the present events, in the past tense. Uslng ltallcs,
Laurence intersperses her thlrd-person narration with the
first-person narration. The maternal discourse emerges

191
through the flrst person narration where we see Morag's
experiences from inside, her comlng to terms with life and
her act of wrlting, in contrast to the th~rd-person
patriarchal discourse where we see Morag bemg written or
shaped by experiences, not composing her life story but
belng composed by it
5.3.2. Similarly, in The Dark Holds No Terrors, the
narrative shlfts from the first person to the third person,
and meanders between the past and present. The narrative
volce of The Diviners and The Dark Holds No Terrors 1s
ne~ther the thlrd person with its implled oblectivity nor
the flrst person wlth its implied sub~ectivlty but an abrupt
interplay, a constant osclllatlon between the two
5.3.3. Among the texts undertaken ~n thls study,
Charlotte Perklns Gllman's Herland stands alone ln employing
a male narrator Van, the authoritative narrator of
Herland, though moderate In hls news when compared to the
woman-ldeallslng Jeff or the woman-degrading Terry,
nevertheless voices contemporary soc~al preludices whlch,
paradoxically, arlse from the sexism Gilman's utopla works
to deconstruct Though Gilman malntalns a male narrator to
create an impression of apparent objectrvlty, underlying
thls veneer of disinterestedness 1s a distinctly clear
feminist polemical stance Even within a male narrator, the
reading position constructed in this text is feminist.

192
5.3.4. Exactly the opposite rings true of Markandaya's
Nectar in a Sieve, where, though the narrator is a woman and
a mother, the voice that emanates is not really hers - a
patrrarchal volce lurks somewhere In the background which
she, puppet-llke, mlmes
1s not her voice one hears
The mother does speak here, but 1t
Moreover, there is a
(con)fuslon of author and narrator ln the novel - a barely
llterate peasant woman can hardly project such a
sophlstlcated and sensltlvely poignant polnt of view w ~th a
flne literary style that does not suit her
R S Pathak
explalns that the author-narrator fusion is Indeed a serlous
technical flaw
The novel though ostenslbiy narrated from
Rukmanl's polnt of vlew is Ln fact belng narrated from
Markandaya's polnt of view
The problem faced by Kamala
Markandaya here 1s that of representing the speech of an
Indlan peasant, barely literate
Thls 1s a dlfflcuity
encountered by Indlan wrlters, writlng in Engllsh, who have
no readymade dlaiect at thelr command to give thelr peasant
characters
Desplte these contradlctlons, the fact however
remalns that the readlng positlon constructed here 1s
rnascullnist, or rather in Elalne Showalter's terminology, a
'femlnlne' one.
5.3.5. The irony mlssinq in Markandaya's novel renders
the text bereft of any feminlst purport, whereas Lesslng In
The Summer Before the Dark maintains an ironic perspective

193
on Kate, uslng the omniscient narration to tell things which
Kate is too unimaginative to perceive. he Smer Before
the Dark 1s a surprisingly conventional novel for the
lnnovatlve and experlmental novellst of the narratively
darlng Briefing for a Descent into Hell or the structurally
experimental The Golden Notebook
5.3.6. Drabble's me Millatone is a double-volced
discourse, exemplifying the tenslon experienced by the
herolne struggling to define herself wlthln a patrlarchal
frame of reference The narrative is double-volced also
because she speaks slrnultaneously as a mother and daughter
The flrst person narrators of Drabble's novels are usually
lntelligenz, educated and fluent In the discourses of
literature, psychology and contemporary culture, yet then
explanations of themselves are frapentary and at tlmes
Inadequate, leaving a lot to the reader's conjecture and
speculation Her narratxves lle open to m~ltlple, divergent
and lnconcluslve views. Drabble sees the novel as an open
fcm, not a structure of certainty, a form incapable of
resolution, of inconclusiveness and therefore havlng a
'femlnlne ending'
5.3.7. The story of Beloved, told in complex narrative
loops, 1s fragmentary, unresolvable, chaotlc and arbitrary
Whlle the mother Sethe tells part of the story, the daughter

194
Denver recounts another portion of the story of her own
birth, and the omniscient narrator provides more. The bas~c
details get modified depending upon who 1s relatrng the
story to whom. Beloved learns her family history and fills
in the gaps In her llfe she cannot remember, through her
mot:ler's story
The daughters become inheritors of the
mother's story, the black mother becomes the female
precursor who passes on the authority of authorship to her
daughter and provides a model for the black woman's presence
In society.
5.3.7.1. The narratlve structure of Beloved eschews
contlnulty and chronolog~cal sequencing
Past consciousness
and present reallty colllde wlthln the text's fragmentary
narrative. The narrat~ve lourney goes forward loaded wlth
memorles of the past
narratlve. Ann Snltow observes
Wrltlng about thls fractured
Morrlson doesn't really tell these lncldents
Brts and pieces of them leak out between the
closed evellds of her characters. or between thelr
clenched' flngers She twlsts and tortures and
fractures events untll they are little sllvers
that cut She moves the lurid materlal of
melodrama into the mlddle of her people, where ~t
gets sifted and sorted, llved and rellved, untll
~t acquxres the enlarging outllnes of myth and
trauma, dream and obsession (Snltow 1990.27)
Out of this leaking, twrsting, torturzng, sifting, sortxng
and re-livlng, the doubly invlslble black female story comes
to the foreground. Although Beloved is specifically Sethe's

195
story, It is also the story of the slaves of the Sweet Home
plantation of Kentucky Framed in purpose, thematics and
structure after the Afro-Amerlcan slave narrative, Beloved
is the composite story of all slaves and their quest for
freedom through fllght But unlike other significant texts
that belong to thls unlque American genre, Beloved requires
no call for the abolltlon of slavery because Sethe's story
LS narrated to a twentieth-century audlence
5.4.0. Gllman, Piercy and Atwood employ fantasy/allegory
In order to subvert/deconstruct the exlstlng patriarchal
codes, the utopian mode used sultlng the purport of radical
femlnlsrn by mak~ng the unposs~ble seem plausible
Femlnlst
utoplan flctlon 1s wldely used by femrnist writers as part
of thelr own ideological practice, they use the generic
conventions In a displaced tempora; and/or geographical
settrnq to reveal the ways In whlch patrrarchal practices
are naturallsed in their society
The utoplan genre sults
the alms of radical femlnlsm as lt subverts the confinements
of a reallsm dedicated to the representatlon of, and thus
acquiescence to, a patrlarchal order
As Susan Gubar
remarks, "women abused by the probable refuse lt by
lmaglning the possible in a revolutlonary rejectlon of
patrlarchal culture1t (Gubar 1989.1921 . Feminist utopian
fiction constructs for the readers a femlnlst readlnq
positlon from which the institutional practices of

196
patriarchy become visible. The ideologlcal discourses of
the androcentric culture are revealed as ideologlcal
constructs, not biological or historical inevitabilities
Recent feminist utopias such as those of Angela Carter,
Doris Lesslng, Joanna Russ, Marge Piercy and Ursula Le Guln
are not blueprints for the future, but elements In a debate
about the nature of the wrlter's own society, about its
patriarchal ldeology and the social or institutional
practices through whlch that ideology operates The utopia
as a literary genre rs situated between polltical theory and
the novel - though it 1s a flctlonal narratlve, it is
overtly polxtlcal, presenting an alternative ldeal soclety
based on a crltlque of the author's reallty Uslng
estrangement and defamillarrsatlon techniques, utoplas
prov~de a shccklng and dlstanc~ng mlrror above the famlliar
reallty
5.4.1. In Woman on the Edge of Time, Marge P~ercy deprcts
both a utopla and dystopla
hs a narratlve devlce, thls
heightens the femlnlst polemics by ccmparlng tendencies In
modern soclety, polarlsed Into utopla and dyscopla, and
ernphaslzes :he urgent need for present actlon to detennlne
the future
Piercy juxtaposes three narratlves in her novel
- realist, utopian and dystoplan. The dlalectlc between
Conn~e's realist narrative of life as a marginallzed woman
ln a contemporary United States society, a fantastic

197
narrative of her visit to a utopian future state
characterized by sexual equality, and a yet another
fantastic narratlve of a dystopian future characterized by
extreme sexism, make Woman on the Edge of Time a distinctly
utoplan text which deconstructs contemporary United States
soclety and ~ t s institutions of heterosexuality, nuclear
famlly structure and motherhood
Joanna Russ similarly uses
four different narratlves In The Female Man to construct a
composite female subject.
In Plercy's novel, the three
lntersectlng narratlves - reallst, utoplan and dystoplan -
construct a complex text ln whlch Plercy deconstructs
domlnant patriarchal Ideology whlch, as seen zn the reallst
narratlve, naturallses the lnstztutxon of motherhood
The
,Jtoplan narratzve rectifies the sexlst outlook of the
reallst narrative and the dystoplan prolects ~t
as worse
In fact, the maln figures of Plercy's utopla and dystopla
are actually extensions of Connie's personalltj, -
whlle
Luclente 1s her utoplan analogue, Glldlna 1s her dystoplan
analogue
Whlle gender divisions are stretched to thelr
extreme In her dystopla. Piercy's utoplan vlslon ellmlnates
traditional gender roles
Interestingly, language too
breaks free from belng gender-speclfic as Plercy employs the
non-speclflc possessive 'per' instead of the sex-speclfic
'her' and 'his', and the noun 'person' in place of 'he' and
'she'

198
5.4.2. In Herland, Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses the
utopian mode as a machine for dismantling popular pre3udices
concerning interconnected concepts as gender stereotyping,
sexual dlvislon of labour, and motherhood, with an eye to
some future reconstruction. Retaining the equation of women
to nature. Gilman accepts the claim that 'biology' 1s
destiny and transforms it into the definition of woman as
truly different and inherently superior to men Joyfully
clalmlng nature as woman's own provlnce, Gllman creates an
ocherdorld of female retreat, maklny it a vantage polnt
cutslde tke prevailing culture Parthenogenetic
reproduction In the utopla, whlch suggests that women's
bodles are or can be free from phallocentrlc law, functions
on another level as a declaration of female llterary selfsuffrc~ency
Herland is ln facL one of the earllest
femlnlst utoplas to exhibit pol~tlcal and textual
sophlstlcatlon, and to construct a femlnlst reading posltlon
as a strategy ln the productlon cf a femlnlst subject
Gllman's use of the nineteenth cen:ur). convenclon of love
story and her sustained use of the quest narrative, axd thls
deconstructlve prccess
5.4.3. Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale interestingly
illustrates that a man's utopia can be a woman's dystopla
Atwood's dystopian targets include reproductive technology,
patriarchal hlerarchy and the repression of women in a male-

dominated soclety.
199
In Atwood and Plercy's dystoplas, all
the unwanted elements of society - aggression, pollution,
sexlsm and alienation - find place
While the two utoplas,
Aerland and Mattapoisett, present a soclal state where
rationality, harmony, utillty and order prevall, the
dystoplas ---- Gllead and the soclety of Gildma's tlme ---
warn of a future that the present may be incubating. The
utoplan wrlters depict human nature changing for the better,
the dystoplan writers deplct it belng manipulated for the
worse
As Nan Bowman Alblnskl noces, dystop~a 1s "a soclety
demonstrably worse than the known worid, lf eutopla is the
dream, dystopla is the nightmare" (1988 111
5.5.0. Apart from the expllclt statements, the overt
speeches and actlons of the characters, the irnpllclt
lnteractlon of the imagery also contributes to worklng out
the problematlcs of motherhood.
The novels under study
employ metaphors, symbols and lmages - both abstract and
concrece - to reinforce and reiterate the phases of
motherhood, be ~t femlnlne, feminist or technolog~cal
Desplte the cultural differences, strlklng slrnllarltles ln
the employment of Images, symbols and myths as artlstlc
tools, can be observed In the authors under study
Animal
lmages connoting docility, muteness or tame acqJlescence,
deflne the feminlne mother or indlcate the grotesque naVJre
and stark physicality of sexuality and childbirth; avian

200
Images of wounded or caged blrds ~ndicate captivity /
enclosure / darkness, of nesting birds, lndlcates the
maternal protective instinct, lmages of earth, trees, fruit,
seed, egg, rlver, blood, mllk/breasts pornt to the mother's
potential fertility, lmages of placenta or umblllcal cord
establish the llnk between mother and chlld, while negatlve
images of the child - as millstone, burden, hump, wart,
corn, nuisance, monster, tyrant and shackling chain -
reiterate the burden of motherhood
5.5.1. A prollflc use of anlmal images in the novels
reveals elther the grotesque face of sexuality, or of
physlcal llfe In general The phases of precnancy and
chlldb~rth are shorn off the halo surrounding them through
the employment of animal images that lndlcate the sheer
physlcallty of these experiences, minus their mystlque
Animai Images, wlth their conr.otatlons of doclllty, muteness
or tame acquiescence, deflne the predicament of the femlnlne
mother In a patriarchal world. Apart from a few exceptlonal
Instances, animal lmaoes malnly serve to explore the
negative srde of motherhood, at the core of whlch lres the
stark physical experience of pregnancy, chlldblrth, and
chlld-nurslng
5.5.1.1. Rukmanl's comment on her pregnant condition in
Nectar in a Sieve:
"I must have looked like a Water-

201
buffalo" (NS 14) brlngs to light the grotesque appearance of
the pregnant woman, slrnultaneously stripping away the
characteristic dlvlnlty said to be surrounding her
appearance In The Dark Holds No Terrors, Saru views the
woman rn labour as one producing "flerce anlmal grunts"
!DH,l47! She wonders " . the paln that made an anrmal out
of her Was thls the prelude to motherhood7" IDH 147)
Morag of The Diviners however, feels "as strong as an ox"
!D 2941 durlng her pregnancy
5.5.1.2. In the femlnlne phase of motherhood, the analogy
of women to animais 1s strongly suggestive of thelr docile
and tamed nature It serves as a caustlc comment on the
Status of women 1n a patriarchal environment where they are
denled the capaclty to reason or a means to volce thelr
thoughts An oft-repeated metaphor In Afro-Amerlcan
WomanlsL flctlon 1s :hat of the woman as mule of the world.
burdened wlth centuries of sexlst and raclst oppression
Thls Image occurs ln Walker's Meridian ln the reference to
Mrs Hlil's father who bears hls wlfe and chlidren wlth more
pleasure than he beats hls mules. Sybll, in The Handmaid's
Tale becomes "as docile as a plastic cow" !HT 871 In The
Dark Holds No Terrors, a neighbour recounts to Sar~'s mother
the story of "a woman who had been tied to a peg In a cattle
shed for ten years and fed on scraps llke a dog" (DH.781.
Saru experiences 'the desperation of a trapped anlmalv

202
(DH 195-96) in her roles as wlfe and mother, roles from
which she 1s unable to escape. In The S-er Before the
Dark, Kate's feeling of vulnerabll~ty as she takes up a
summer vocation, away from home, is descrrbed. "as if a warm
coverlng had been stripped off her, as if she were an animal
belng flayed" (SBD: 22:
5.5.1.3. The anlmal Images reach horrlfylng proportions In
Morrlson's Beloved where the slave -
woman's identity 1s
reduced to that of an anlmal, exploited for work and
breeding purposes
The fact that Sethe is mllked like a cow
and has her mllk stolen by Schoolteacher and hls nephews
reflects on the dehumanlsatlon the slave wonan had to
endure In helpless anger. Sethe laments, " they handled
me llke I was the cow, no, the goat, back behlnd the stable
because ~t was too nasty to stay In wlth the horses"
(B 2471 Taklng Sethe as an example, Schoolteacher asks hls
puplls tc put her human characterlsclcs on the left and
anlmals characterlstlcs on the rlght slde of the paper
They define her as an animal wlthout memory
Sethe is
unable to shake off thzs image, and even years later 1t
takes Paul D to assert to Sethe that she has two legs, not
four (B 2021, she is human, not anlmal, though Paul D too,
when a slave, was tied "lrke a mule" (B.277)
The whlte
girl. Amy, too, inltlally sees Sethe as nothlng more than a
pregnant anlmal which prompts her to ask. "What are you

203
going to do, just lay there and foal?" (B : 42) reducing
childbirth to an animalistic activity.
Viewed in the
context of slavery, Sethe's association wlth a cow is
insulting and degrading, but this image, as Wilfred D.
Samuels and Clenora Hudson Weems polnt out, has lts positive
implications too:
, viewed in the mythical and nystlcal world of
ancient Egypt, one may come to envislon a goddess
such as Hathor, mother of the sun god, who had a
human face but the ears and horns of a cow. In
mythology moreover, a cow 1s generally seen as the
gzver of llfe Because of its fecundity, the cow,
llke the earth, 1s often mother goddess, nurturer,
and provlder of food (milk), a llfe glvrng source
(ln Hlndulsm for example) (1990 137)
5.5.1.4. The employment of anlmal images rlps off the
mystlque surroundlnq sexual Intercourse lust as lt subverts
the myth of motherhood
The sexual act, as the women
writers studled here see lt, 1s not a manifestation of love,
but a baslc an~mallstlc instinct, a response to one's body's
r.eeds
In The Diviners, Morag uses equestrian lmages to
descrlbe the act - "as though the glrl were a mare co be
mounted by a studhorse" ID 149) or "a perfornlnq fzlly"
!D 150) Her casual encounter wlth Chas 1s one ln whlch
"they screw llke anlmals" ID 3261
Thls image 1s
dellberately used in thls context because Mcraq's momentary
passlon does not lnclude love, she 1s more an uncaged and
vulnerable animal than a sensitive woman at this stage.
Similarly, in The Dark Holds No Terror, Saru, In fearful

204
anticipation of sex becomes "a terrified, trapped animal"
(DH 121)
The sexual act Itself, instead of being an
afflrmatlon of love, becomes a vlclent assault and
nightmarish experience as Manu "atta, zed [her] llke an
anlrnalv (DH 1821
In The Handmaid's Tale, the Commander,
practlslng simultaneous polygamy with h ~ s handmaids is
compared to a bee pollinating various flowers
Offred
lmaglnes a balding Commander wlth hls wlfe and handmaid
"fertlllzlng away ilke mad,llke a ruttlng salmon" (HT 218)
5.5.1.5. In Gllman's Rerland, various analogles to fauna
are employed In a more positlve manner The wornen of thls
Utoplan land are ilkened to deer (H.321 which 1s lndrcatlve
of thelr swiftness and aglllty of movement, thls Image 1s
used to bring about the destruction of the stereocjiped image
of woman To descrlbe her concepts of collective motherhood
and parthenogeneclc reproduction, Gilman takes recourse to
entomological Images, malnly that of ants and bees To
d~spel Terry's mong notlon that women lack the quailty of
cooperation, Jeff compares the place to an anthill where
systematic organlzatlon and indlvldual ccntrlbutlon to the
larger scheme produces great results
This place 1s ilke an enormous anthill - you know
an ant hill 1s nothing but a nurse- And how
about bees7 Don't they manage to cooperate and
love one another? (H:67)

205
Further, the chlldren brought up under collective motherhood
are compared to the offspring of ants and bees (H 71), and
parthenogenetic reproduction to the same mode of
reproduction in ants and aphids lH.77,99,1231
5.5 .l. 6. The Bandmaid's Tale, however, employs ant imagery
in a derogatory sense
used for breedlng purposes
The handmaids are llke queen ants,
Offred wlstfully remarks "It's
up to me to repay the team, lustlfy my food and keep, llke a
queen ant with eggs" (HT 135)
5.5.1.7. In Lesslng's The Summer Before the Dark, the ween
termlte 1s used as an lmage of the femlnlne mother
Kate
Brown, at the openlng of the novel, 1s "a queen termlte,
whose splrl: fllled the nest, making a whole of indlvlduals
who could have no other connection" ISBD 471
In her
transition from the 'femlnlne' to the 'fernlnlst', she sheds
off thls lmage
the p~cture or Image of herself, as the warm
centre of the famlly, the source of invlslble
ernanatlons llke a queen termlte, was two or three
years out of date (SBD 52)
5.5.1.8. Rukmanl in Nectar in a Sieve envisxons her
daughter's illegrtimate motherhood as "fears [that] came
swarming about my head like the black flyrng ants after a
Storm" (NS 116)

206
5.5.1.9. Piscean imagery is made use of in The Diviners and
Woman On The Edge of Time to describe the foetus in the
womb/brooder respectively. In The Diviners, Morag is first
presented in a photograph, concealed In her mother's dress
as "st111 a little fish, connected unthlnklngly to life"
(D 71 In Woman on The Edge of Time, the embryos In the
brooder are "llke fish ln an aquarium" (WET 951, they sing
to Connle a "flsh song" (WET 241), she dreams of a baby
"floating among others like trout in a stream" (WET.311)
Whlle earlier she found the brooder - born babies
"multicolored llke a lltter of puppies" (WET 991, thls
dlsparaglng canlne image is later supplemented by the more
positlve plscean one as she comes to terms wlth
technological reproductlon
5.5.1.10. In The Summer Before the Dark, Kate's predicament
1s imaged through a series of dreams In which she sees
herself carrylng a seal in her arms, scruggllng to return it
to the sea
The seal's amphlblous nature suggests Kate's
exlsLence between the feminine and femlnlst phases
general movement withln the dream -
The
Kace dragglng and
carrying the heavy seal in her arms - symbollses Kate's
growrng awareness of how she had been conditioned 1ntO her
role as lover, wife and mother
all that time she had been holdxng In her hands
something else, the something precious, offerlng
it in valn to her husband, to her children, to

everyone she knew - but it had never been taken.
had not been noticed. But this thing she had
offered, without knowing she was doing it, which
had been ignored by herself and by everyone else,
was what was real in her ISBD . 124)
:ier dream's ending --- when the seal re-enters the ocean,
reveals the endless posslbilrties open to her --- Kate
recognizes the possibility of release now that she had
gamed an awareness of her confinement In the roles of wife
and mother
Sydney Janet Kaplan points out that the image
not only suggests the object it depicts, it might also refer
t3 the word for that image, a word wlth several denotatzons
A seal may denote a mark or a brand ---- a slyn of ownership
and ~ndlvrduallty, of differentlation - here symbollsing
what 1s unlque In Kate, what 1s most deeply herself
Also,
1t may mean to decide irrevocably (the fate of a person or
thlngj, in thls way suggesting the lnevitablllty of Kate's
aglng, death and posslble transcendence
may have hldden or esoterlc connections
Flnally, the word
the seallng of
one's llps, vows of secrecy and silence IKaplan 1982 12)
5.5.2. The feminlne mother IS described through avlan
lmages --- the Image of the nesting birds revealing the
protective maternal instinct of the rnotter in the nest
(home), the imitative parrot referring to the woman without
a volce of her own in an androcentric world, the caged bird
denoting the claustrophobia of feminine motherhood

208
5.5.2.1. In LeSSlng'S novel, Kate Brown's role as
translator 1s that of "an exceedingly xntelligent and fluent
garrot with maternal inclinatlons" (SBD 33) Her role at
nome too 1s similar, where all she does is, like the parrot.
repeat the patriarchal volce, translating lts orders into
nousework The blrd lmage 1s repeated agam In the context
of the mother-chlld relationship
she had felt llke a wounded bud, be~ng pecked to
death by the healthy blrds Or like an anlmal
teased by cruel chlldren (SBD 951
Thxs image of the mother as vlctlm, as a wounded bird, belng
pecked to death by healthy brrds, 1s In fact a relteratlon
of the host-paraslte lmage used earller rn the novel, that
of a mother as a ',spongeN(SBD 891 for all her children's
wants
5.5.2.2. Images of captlvlty / enclosure / darkness, a
regular feature of Lesslng's novels, are manifest In The
Summer Before the Dark tnrough the lmage of the caged blrd
Xnages of captlvlty and enclosure In Lesslng's flctlon are
pclnters to woman's confinement to the home and the curblng
of her natural 1nstlncLS Kate dreams of Maureen as a
"brllllant-yellow blrd" (connotatlons of l~ght and
vltal~ty), dash1r.g around the flat, whlch seems "a sorz of
cage" (SBE 196) 1~1th the connotatlons of captlvlty.
darkness and enclosure1 "Cages and belng shut in are much

more my style" (SBD . 228) says Maureen
209
Images of light
and darkness are more explicitly juxtaposed as when Maureen
1s seen dartlng In and out of dark spaces where shafts of
bllndlng light fall
The blrd/cage lmage recurs as Maureen
1s agaln described as "the brlght-yellow - bird who was In a
cage slnglng No, no, no, no" (SBD 238)
The bird caged in
the zoo becomes a llteral manifestation of this image
zowards the end of the novel
Blrds with cl~pped wlngs and
the Images of caged birds and rats ln The Handmaid's Tale
rernforce thelr assoclatlon wlth captlvlty and enclosure
5.5.2.3. Margaret Laurence, In The Diviners, develops the
image of the swallows from a casual reference (D 4 i
to an
lmage havlng a wlder slgnlflcance In the context of the
rnother-child relazlonshlp
The nurcurlng Image of the
swallows Eeedlng thelr newly - hatched fledgl~ngs (D 531,
grows xnto the xmage of the young ones ready to leave the
nest
The fledglings were ready to fly, and took up all
the space ln the nest, so the parert swallows
slept on the mud - and - straw Fazlo these nlghts
Adrnlra~le parents Intelligent Joyous (D 2321
The next reference to swallows is when Morag notices them
fidgeting and flltterlng In the nest, wanting to fly
ID 235), and flnally, when they fly away she remarks "Thls
is how you fly, kldsl
lmmobile agaln" (D 242)
rt's easy' Try it - you'll never be
Clearly, these stages correlate to

210
the relatlonshlp between Morag and Pique - Morag brlnging up
Pique, rhe growlng estrangement between them, and flnally,
Plque embarking on her lourney The mlgratlng swallows
(D 404) furnish the physical and psychological 2ourney motlf
pervading the novel, whlch culminates In Morag's eplphanlc
vlslon of the blue heron - an Image of acceptance and
afflrmatlon central to the resol'utlon of The Diviners
5.5.2.4. Assoclaclon of the mother and home w-Ch the blrd
and lts nest occurs In Herland also where there 1s a comment
on the chlldren growlng up, "leavlng the mother alone In her
empty nestv (H 951
5.5.2.5. Though Sch3olteacher stresses Sethe's anlnallstlc
characterlsclcs In Beloved, yet her actlon Ln trylng to
protect her chlldren 1s described through blrd Images She
"heard wlngs i;ttle hcmmlngblrds stlck chelr needle beaks
rlgtt through her head cloth lnto her halr and beaL thelr
wlngs She 3usc flew" (B 200) Thls lmage is repeated once
agaln when Sethe senses that tne grown Beloved 1s ln danger
5.5.3. Images from the vegetative world, earth Imagery
and even colour syrvhollsm 1s employed to connote ferclllty
or women's reproductive pocentlal
5.5.3.1. Gllman's utopian land 1s flrst presented to the
reader as a country whose roads are flanked by frult-bearlng

211
trees, fountains and flowers These Images expand as their
slgnlficance is made more explzclt 'Here was Mother Earth,
bearlng frult. All that they ate was the frult of
motherhood, from seed or egg or their product" (H 591 The
leader of the Herlanders 1s called 'Land- other' (H 751, the
land or earth again symbollslng fertility Garden imagery
pervades the book --- the gardens of Herland are, llke thelr
motherhood, perfect, cultivated, beautiful, clean, pleasant
and ordered Terry xmaglnes the Herlanders as "a rosebud
garden of gxrls" iH 881 Kumkum Sangarl sees the pastoral
Image as slgnlfylng the ~nterdependence of wo(man1 and
nature, and the garden country as "an Image of arrlstlc
control which affrrms the Innate ablllty of women"
11983 101
5.5.3.2. Rukmanl In Markandaya's Nectar in a Sieve 1s
gerpetually associated wlth symbols cf fertlllty --- wlth
green f~elds. gram, sunshlne and beauty (NS 71
husband Nathan harrests hls f:eld,
Whlle her
Rukmanl does her blt by
plantlng fr'llts and vegetables In a small patch behlnd her
hut and watch1r.g them rlpen
I had planted, in the flat patch of ground behlnd
the
-
hur a few ~ um~kin seeds The sol1 here was
L .
rlch, never havlng ylelded before, and loose so
that lt d:d not requlre much dlgglng The seeds
sprouted qu~ckly, sendlng up dellcate green shoots
that I kept carefully watered, going several tlmes
to the will nearby -for the purpose Soon they
were not dellcate but sprawling v~gorously over
the earth and pumpklns began to form, whlch,

fattening on soil and sun and water, swelled dally
larger and longer and ripened to yellow and red,
untll at last they were ready to eat (NS:B)
The rlpe frult evokes a response In Rukmanl's body too ---
pleasure was maklng my pulse beat, the blood, unbidden,
came hot and surglng to my face" (NS 9 )
Thls comparison
between the rlpenlng frult and the mother waltlng for her
child to be born 1s made expllclt towards the latter part of
the novel Rukmanl and Nathan watch the paddy rrpen as "a
mother [watches] her chrld, wlth prlde and affection"
INS 931
The man - woman - chlld relatlonshrp 1s also
envisaged xn terns of seed / frult lmagery
hls seed and he wlll see her frultful" (NS 116)
"She wrll carry
5.5.3.3. As 1r. Herland and Nectar in a Sieve, so In The
Handmaad's Tale, frults and flowers are assoclated w~th
fert;l~ty
The Glleadeans greet each other wlth the words,
"Blessed be the fruit" (HT 19), the pregnant woman's stomach
1s compared to "a huge frurt" IHT 261
'ere
Seeds and fru~ts
are however assoclated wlth manipulated, not natural
repronuctlon
In Gllead, there 1s nc such thlng as male
sterlllty -- there are only "women who are frultful and
women who are barren" (HT 611
the Blbllcal alluslon
Thls lmage 1s hlghlrghted In
God to Adam God to Noah Be fruitful, and
multiply, and replenish the earth Am I ln
God's stead, who hath wlthheld from thee 'he fruit
of the womb? (HT. 881 (emphasis added)

Quite ironically, the Commander's wife, who is barren, 1s
constantly associated with gardens / flowers The blossoms
worn by Serena Joy, however, are wlthered, like her
NO use for you, I think at her, my face unmoving,
you can't use them anymore, you're wlthered
They're the genital organs of pllnts (HT 82)
Flowers and plants suggest the conflnlng circumstances of
sex'Jallty and reproduction in Gllead Colour symbolism 1s
employed in the novel -- Offred struggles to keep the Image
of crimson tullps free from the assoclatlon wlth blood The
entlre attlre of the handmaids 1s red In colour "Everything
except the w1ngs around my face IS, red the color of blood,
whlch defines us" (HT 8 ) (emphasis added), blood, of course,
standlng for fertlllty / sexualrty Looklng at herself,
Offred feels llke "a srster, dippedln blood" (HT 91
5.5.3.4. Beloved's youth and exuberance IS described in
terms of planc Images
women drd what strawberry plants dld before they
shot out fhln vlnes, the quallty of the green
changed Then the vine threads came, then the
buds By the t ~me the whlte petals died and the
mlnt-coloured berry poked out, the leaf shlne was
glided t~ght and waxy That's how Beloved looked
- gllded and shining (B 79)
The scars Inflicted on Sethe's back which Amy visuallses as
a chokecherry tree 1s indicative of her fertll~ty and role

214
as nurturer. The scars are mute reminders of her commitment
to motherhood and the consequences she has to bear for ~t
5.5.3.5. Water as a symbol of new life/ fertility occurs ln
~eloved, The Diviners and Nectar in a Sieve. Water 1s a
llfe - glvlng source, the assoclatron between water and
llfe, new llfe or reblrth 1s clearly conceived here.
5.5.3.6. The water metaphor dominates Beloved and 1s
closely assoc~ated with Sethe She crosses the Ohio rlver
to the land of freedom, she has new llfe - her water breaks
and she glves blrth to Denver The water Image takes an
alnost rltuallstlc slgnlflcance as she drlnks from the Ohlo,
a klnd of rltual cleansing, and later, as Baby Suggs bathes
her, providing the rltuai purlflcatlon (reblr-h) that she
needs to enter the new community Beloved, her dead child,
returns by walklng out of the water, and significantly,
Sethe experiences an artlflclal delivery, as her bladder
Spllls before she reaches the house
5.5.3.7. Just as Sethe crosses the rlver to a new llfe,
R~kmanl, afLer her marrlage, remarks that she has entered a
rew phase In her llfe, the brook "belongs to a part of her
llfe that 1s flnlshed" (NS.5) Rukmanl and Nathan name
their daughter after a rlver, Irawaddy Ironlcally however,
Irawaddy remains sterlle after her rnarrlage.

215
5.5.3.8. The river 1s a dominant symbol in Laurence's The
Diviners whlch begins with the contradiction that the river
flowed both ways
The river is assoclated with Royland, the
,old Man River', 'The Shaman Dlvlner'. HIS gift as a soul-
8;vIner duplicates hls abrllty to release earth-locked
water, he releases pent-up spiritual resources from other's
innermost belngs Slgnlficantly, one of the four elements
domlnates each fictional work of Morrlson and Laurence -
'flre' in Sula, 'alr' in Song of Soloman and 'water' and
'earth' In Beloved. in Laurence's Manawaka works - 'earth'
domlnates the Stone Angel, 'flre' - the Fire Dwellers, alr
In A Blrd in the House and Water In The Divxners
5.5.3.9. Images of b13od and rn~lk, also assocrated wlth
fert:llty,
work on yet another level slgnlfylng the bond
between the mother and child
'Mllk' and 'breasts' are the
symbols of fert~llty and motherhood that Sethe 1s identlfled
wlth throughout Morrlsan's Beloved - these are lmages whlch
underscore the nurslng f~qure of Sethe, of the mother as
nurturer
The psychological scars of havlng her mllk stolen
by Schoolteacher's nephews remaln wlth her throcghout her
llfe as grlm rema~nders of the vlolatlon of her motherhood
and are more sordrd than the scars lnfll=ted on her back
Barbara Hill Rlgney points out that mllk and the lmage of
motherhood are particularly assoclated wlth male Impotence
In Beloved, as Halle watches helplessly from the loft above

216
while Schoolteacher's nephews violate Sethe so brutally by
taklng her mllk
Halle's anger is impotent, and he 1s
presented later sittlng by the churn, butter all over hls
face, "because the milk they took 1s on hls mlnd" (B 85-861
From the beginning of the novel, when Sethe wants to rush
her milk to her chlld, to the end, where Sethe. Beloved and
Denver drlnk mllk together, the image of m~lk throughout
s~gnlfles the maternal bcndlng, the fluid connection between
mother and daughters
Thls Image is further strengthened
when 1t occurs In association wlth 'blood', as Denver drlnks
the blood of her slam slster along wlth her mother's milk
5.5.3.10. The Image of 'blood' occurs in assoclatlon wlth
:he menstrual cycle In Beloved
After her escape, Sethe
experiences twenty-elght days of freedom, whlch ev~dently
carrles undertones of the menstrual cycle, a perlod of
rsgeneratlon and renewal - of llfe, death and reblrth
Samuels and Sudson-Weems observe
llke the mecstrual cycle to whlch ~t also
inevitably a1;udes glven Sethe's central roie as
greaz mother, lt symbolizes a perlod of pram~sed
new llfe, fertxllty and gestation followed by
death Preflqured here 1s not only the flow of
blood that takes place at the end of the cycle
wlth the aborted ovum, but also the bloody scene
that w ~ll taxe place at the moment that Sethe wlll
once agaln lose her freedom, her own spbollc
death, as well as the blood that wrll flow from
the slam Beloved, whose life 1s abruptly aborted
(1990 118)
As

217
5.5.3.11. Morag of The Diviners remembers the deaths of her
parents, but not their lives. Yet she is painfully aware of
the bonds of blood, of then presence lnfused into her
being "they're inslde me, flowing unknown in my blood and
moving unrecognized In my skull" fD 191 Also, her
obsesslve desire "Zo have someone of her own blood" fD 2351
prompts her to seek thls fulfilment outslde rnarrlage
5.5.3.12. The sparsely used mllk/breast symbol in Nectar in
a Sieve nevertheless reinforces the fertility Image
5 .5.3 .13. There are references to the "bond of blood"
(WET 121, "year of blood" [the year of Connle's flrst
abortlonl
fW3T 411, blood associated wlth chlldblrth
(WET 96) ln Woman an the Edge of Time
Blood and mllk are.
for Connle, essential In establlshlng the flrst llnk bet.#een
mother and chlld, and hence she cannot dlgest the concept of
brooder-born bables
HOW could anyone know what belng a mother means
who has never carrled a ct~ld nlne months heavy
under her heart, who has never borce a baby ln
blood and paln, who has never suckled a chlld
(WET 991
Llke Sethe of Morr~son's Beloved, Connle "had loved breast-
feeding - that deep-down warm mllky connection that seemed
to start In her womb and spread up through her trunk lnt0
her full dark-nippled breasts" (WET.1261. The lmages of

lood and mllk are fused again in Connie's comment on what
she feels is the futility of technological reproduction
What was special about being a woman here? They
had glven ~t all up, they had let men steal from
them the last remuants of ancient power, those
sealed in blood and milk lWET.126) (emphasis
added) .
5.5.3.14. For Saru of The Dark Holds No Terrors, breastfeedlng
does not brlng out the 'maternal' in her, on the
contrary, 1t "evokes an intensely erotlc response', (DH.147)
5.5.4. Tke image of the umbilical cord placenta occurs
In The Diviners. Woman on the Edge of Time, The Dark Holds
No Terrors and Beloved, indlcatlng, llke the blood and mllk
lmages, the llnk between mother and chlld In The Dlviners,
Prln's chlld 2s "strangled on the cord" (D 441, and on
Plque's blrth, "the cord 1s cut, and the placenta comes away
wlthout Morag's belng aware of rt" (D 3041 The lrteral
separation between mother and daughter shapes Into a
psychcloglcal estrangement ln the course of the novel In
thls novel, though the umblllcal cord ]olnlng the mcther to
the daughter 1s stretched, lt is not severed The
"umblllcal cord" Image 1s luxtaposed wlth the "bond of
blood" (WET.121 In Connle's reminiscences of her daughter ln
Woman on the Edge of Time. In The Dark Holds No Terrors.
Saru describes her separation from her parents In terms of
the Image of the severed umbilical cord. For her, the

separation is as easy as cutting off the placenta from the
infant at childbirth, because she is not bound by parental
affection
She tells Manu
Have you seen a baby being born? Do you know,
Manu how easy lt 1s to cut the umbilical cord and
separate the baby from the mother9 Llgate, cut
and lts done There's scarcely any bleedlng
elther It's as lf nature knows the chlld muse be
detatched from the parent No, Manu, for me there
wlll be no trauma, no bleeding (DH.34)
In Beloved, the umblllcal cord Image occurs In the
descrlptlon of Denver's blrth !B 103)
5.5.5. For the mothers who devlate from the femlnrne
Ideal of motherhood, chlldren are no more the cllched
bundles of ]oy
Wlth the mounting pressures of motherh>od,
these mothers vzew therr chlldren elther as burdens,
monsters or tyrants
The title of Margaret Drabble's The
Millstone evokes such a negatlve linage of the chlld
Rosamund Stacey lnltially sees her lllegltlmate chlld as a
millstone, a burden she must carry all her life
She e-oices
all negatlve lmages 3f pregnancy and chlldb~rth. "Gln,
psychlatrlsts, hosplLals, accidents, vlllage maldens droxned
12 duck ponds, tears, paln, humlllations" iMS 39) La:er,
her foetus assumes emotional signlficance " ~ dld t not seem
the klnd of thing one could have removed, llke a wart or a
corn. It seemed to have a meaning" (MS.76) In The
Diviners the aborted baby found in the nuisance grounds is

220
nothing more than "a nuisance" (D 76).
In Nectar in a
Sieve, the pregnant Kunthi moves "gracefully despite her
burden" (NS. 6) . Saru ln The Dark Holda No Terrors regards
her chlldren as burdens and has distaste for the words "my
chlldren" (DH 149) because they sounded too possessive
Childbirth for her is associated wlth "n~ghtmares"(DH.184)
lust as her own mother regarded her blrth as "terrible"; the
word 'Mother' sounds llke "plnprlcks" (DH.1571 to Saru.
Association of lnfanticlde wlth vlolent lmagery 1s evldent
in The Eandmard's Tale - Images of stabblng a foetus wlth a
knlttlng needle (HT 11) Lesslng's novel, remlnrscent of
Kate Chopln's The Awakening, equates chlldren to "monsters"
and mother to a nvlctlm" (SBD 85), bound by "invisible
chams" ISBD 213) For Kate Brown, "the faces and movements
of most mlddle aged women are those of prlsoners or slaves"
(SBD 90i, Connie In Woman on the Edge of Time sees the
canned lnfants as "bland, bottle-born monsters of the
future" (WET.99) Merldian ln Meridian sees herself as a
slave to her chlld's wants and feels burdened wlth the
weight of motherhood, "he dld not feel llke anythlng to her
but a ball and chain" (M,63i, lust as her own mother's
reaction to motherhood was that of "a person who is belng
buried alive, walled away from her own life, brlck by brlck"
(M 41) Mrs.Xill feels Meridlan is a "monster" (M 85) to
give up her child. Merldian, like Drabble's Rosamund, has

221
mixed feelings about her child. At times, she finds hlm
beautiful, at others she sees him as "ugly, like a hump she
must carry on her back" (M:87). In The Sunnner Before the
Dark, Mary Finchley asserts that children should not be
allowed to become "tyrants" iSBD 11) In stark contrast to
these Images, the babies of Herland are "fawns In dewy
forest glades and brook-fed meadows' (H:100) For the
Herlanders, motherhood is far from bang a burden, although
Jeff ln his chlvalry asserts that "motherhood is a
sufflcrent burden . men should carry all the others"
(H.92)
5.5.5.1. The physlcal act of childblrth ltself 1s
associated with negatlve Images In Woman on the Edge of
Time, childblrth is connected to "dirt" and "pain"
(WET 271) , Connle sees Angelma as the "chlld of [her] sore
and bleedlng body" (WET 98)
In The Diviners, Morag
associates chlldblrth wlth "stretch marks" (D 176)
5.5.6. Culte paradoxically, the womb becomes the tomb as
images of blrth and death are ~uxtaposed as ln The Diviners:
"Plque, harbinger of my death, continuer of life" (D.290),
In Nectar in a Sieve, Kunthi's son 1s "a fine boy who nearly
took hls mother's life in exchange for his own" iNS.10). ln
The Handmaid's Tale, the siren at the birthlng 1s like the
"sound of death" iHT.112) and Offred's comment on the

222
pregnant woman: nNow that she's the carrier of llfe, she is
closer to death" (HT:26) has suggestions that the birth of
the child brings the mother closer to death
In Meridian,
the bxrth of Meridian's son instils in her the urge to
murder him, "her fingers eager to scratch him out of her
llfe" IM 63). "To strangle that soft, smooth, helpless neck,
to push down that kinky head into a tub of water, to lock it
In rts room to starve" (M.67) becomes her obsessive desire
In Morr;son's
Beloved, Sethe fears that her womb may turn
out to be a graveyard for her slx-month baby, but wlth Amy's
tlmely help, her fears are allayed
Later, the blrth of
Denver is followed by the death of her 'crawllng already?'
~nfanc, who returns as Beloved
5.5.7. The monotonous rut of housekeeping and chlld-
rearlng leads the feminist mothers to compare themselves to
'machines' or 'aucomat (r) ons' ,
feellngs are not taken Into account
lifeless belngs whose
In The Swer Before
the Dark, Kate Brown, after her awakening, realizes wlth
lndlgnatlon what she had been dolng all along "she had been
set llke a machlne by twenty-odd years of belng a wife and
mother" (SBD 47)
The mother-machine Image is used wlth
different lmplicatlons in Woman on the Edge of Time
Connie
1s at first sceptical of the art~flclal techniques of
reproduction followed at Mattapolsett and calls the brooder
a "crazy machineu (WET:96) and its products "bottle babies"

223
(WET:95) and "canned childLren1 " (WET:99). Another
denigrating image, inanimate like the machine, occurs in
Morrison' s Beloved. here, Sethe is just "property that
reproduced itself wlthout cost'' (B:281).
5.5.8. The concept of 'woman as womb' dates back to the
anclent Greeks. Reduction of woman to her reproductive
functlon not only demeans her status as a human being but
also makes her feel frustrated at her failure to control her
own body Offred in The Handmaid's Tale voices her
frustration at being a handmaid, a mere vessel to carry the
Commander's child. "We are containers, it's only the insides
of our bodies that are important" (HT 96) After Connie's
mother ln Woman on the Edge of Time has her womb removed,
she is "no longer a woman An empty shell" (WET 39)
Sybll, cynlcal about woman's part in sexual intercourse,
remarks "who wants to be a hole?" (WET 78)
5.5.9. Images of femlnlne motherhood or stereotyped
images of the mother abound in the novels under study, then
purpose being either to descrlbe the women protagonists in
the femlnlne stage or to set the feminlst mothers against
thelr feminine counterparts
5.5.9.1. In Laurence's The Diviners, Morag tells Ella. "I
make boxes for myself . . . and then get fur~ous when I find
myself inside one" (D.188). The 'boxes' she makes for

224
herself are those slots issued to women by the patriarchal
order. Morag is in the transitional stage, '!caught between
the old pioneers and new pioneers" (D:170) - she is unable
to fit into patriarchal moulds, nor is she able to llve an
unimpeded llfe of her own. Oscillating between the two
extremes she sees Fan Brady on one end who is "not the
maternal type" (D:310) and the femlnlne mother Brldie on the
other who has "connotations of perpetual bridehood,
something chlldish and affected about her" (D . 373)
5.5.9.2. In Nectar in a Sieve, we come across Janakl, the
stereotyped mother wlth her "homely face and sayglng flqure,
for she had borne her husband several chlldren" (NS 51.
Rukmani's mother is also an embodiment of the 'femlnlne'
mother, constantly assoclated wlth domestlc lmayes - her
house 1s "clean and sweet" and her chlldren are "well fed
and cared for" (NS 11) Rukmanl too is assoclated wlth
domestlc lmages (NS.139) The Musllm women In 'bourkas' are
assoc~ated with "closed doors" and "shuttered windows"
(NS 48), women who had shut the door to thelr lndlviduallty,
the claustrophobia of the~r homes extending to thelr
personalities
5.5.9.3. The Image of the femlnlne mother portrayed In
advertisements 1s a regular feature of Deshpande's fictlon
and The Dark Holds No Terrora is no exception. Both in

225
Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time and Deshpande's novel,
the advertisements portraying the perfect mother In a happy
famxly are indicators of what the protagonist cannot achieve
In her circumstances. They are also telllng comments on the
themes of mystique versus reallty, feminlne versus femlnist,
and culture versus nature.
The protagonist experiences a
tug-of-war between what is innate in her and what is
expected of her In a male-dominated society
novel, Connie contemplates on this image
In Plercy's
Like Mrs Polcarl, she was going to have only two
chlldren and keep them clean as advertlsemects.
Those beautiful rooms, those clean-looklng men who
woresulcs, those pretty sanitary bables (WET 41)
Though she later shrugs off thls image, Sam in The Dark
Holda No Terrors envisions herself ln such a role.
I saw myself, the end of my sarl tucked lnto my
walst, hair tied lnto a neat knot, smlllng at them
all as I serJed them And all of them smlled back
at me. A mother ln an ad, ln a movle, dressed In
a crisply starched, lroned sarl. Wife and mother,
lovlng and beloved. A plcture of grace, harmony
and happ~ness Could I not achleve that' IDH 73).
Thls lmage occurs in the beg~nnlng of the novel also
A famlly the right size The right klnd. Llke
tne ads A happy famlly Healthy, happy, smlling
and in colour IDH.17)
In Beloved, the image of the family rs evoked xn Paul D's
deslre for a family whlch he knows is out of reach for hlm.
and m his vehement assertion to Sethe that he wanted her
pregnant

226
5.5.9.4. Saru's mother is connected with domestlc images
The novel opens with the image of the 'tulsi' which produces
bitter memories of her mother. Saru's mother is perpetually
associated with cooking or serving meals, an area from which
she derlves power. The analogy to Shivaji's mother Ji3abai
and the 'terrible' mother-goddess is also significant The
association of Mavshi with 'kumkum' and 'black beads'
:DH 68), symbols of her wifehood and motherliness, attract
Sam initially, but when she sees her later as a widow,
bereft of these symbols, Sam 1s a blt disappointed The
image of the passive, self-sacrificing woman evokes dlsgust
In Sam "their unconscious, unmeaning heroism, born out of
the myth of the self-sacrxf~clng martyred woman, dld not
arouse elther her plty or her admlratlon" (DH 98)
Wlch
bltter sarcasm, she comments on such women. "Smlta, the
happy wife, and mother" (DH 107) or Padmakar's wlfe, "a good
wlfe and mother" (DH 1201 She feels that thelr att;tudes
are lust "thln shells that cracked at the tap of a flngerv
iDH 107)
5.5.9.5. The mother image occurs in juxtapos;Clon wzth
domesticity in The Handmaid's Tale too
Offred takes in the
smell emanating from the kitchen with an aura of nostalgia
It [the kitchen] smells of mothers, although my
own mother did not make bread. It smells of me,
In former times, when I was a mother
This is a treacherous smell, and I know I must
Shut it Out iHT.47)

227
5.5.9.6. "Maternity clothes", "maternity shops" and
"boutiques for babies" (M 9) stir images of the expecting
mother ln The Millstone, whlch seem to reproach Rosamund
carrying her ~llegitimate child.
Drabble attempts to
destroy the myth of motherhood, the false lmages of mothers
propagated by men for thelr own advantage
At the cllnlc
for instance, Rosamund flnds the pregnant women a depressed
and miserable lot and cannot help contrasting them wlrh the
mystique woven around them:
One hears much, thoush mostlv from the Interested
maie, about the be&ty of 'a woman wlth chlld,
shlps In full sall, and all that klnd of
metapnorlcal euphemism 1M 65,
In reality however these metaphors are lnvalld as the welght
of evldence 1s overwhelmrngly the opposlte
5.5.9.7. Domestrc lmages are lrnked to Kace Brown ln the
beginning of Dorls Lesslng's The Summer Before the Dark.
"She carefully carrled her tray, and she was thlnklng about
the washzng-up whlle she continued her prlvate stock-taklng,
her accounts makrng" (SBD 91
Wlth her qualltles, she seems
to conform to the ldeal of femln~ne motherhood. "a beautiful
woman, a wonderful mother, a cook for the angels, a
marvellous belng, all warmth and kindness, wlth not a fault
In her" (SBD.17)
She plays the role of "provider of
lnvls~ble manna, consolation, warmth, sympathy" (SBD 47)
Other degrading images associated with her are lndlcative of

228
her existence merely in terms of the functions she is
expected to perfonn, images of mother as "servant", "door
mat" (SBD: 92) ; as "invalid" (SBD: 851 , as "grindstone"
(SBD:87); as "nurse" (SBD:91), as 'prisoner or slave"
(SBD:901, and the image of mother as pacifier - ',the oilpourer,
the balancer, the all-purpose famlly comforter"
(SBD 204). Kate plays her different roles as if she is
"trying on ideas like so many dresses off a rack" (SBD:66)
Like the dresses off the rack, the role of wlfe and mother
are also unsulted for her, they are 111-fltting and
unsatisfying
5.5.9.8. Meridian opens wlth the Image of the 'mummy' who
1s described as an 'obedient daughter', 'devoted wife',
'adoring mother' and a 'goddess' iM.5-6) There 1s a
caustlc comment on the stereotyped lmage of woman prolected
in magazines. "woman was a mindless body, a sex creature,
something to hang false hair and nails on" (M.651 The
femrnine mocher, Mrs Hl11, who suppresses both her anger and
love and channels them lnto her househod dutles expends all
her energy Into "the lronlng of her children's clothes"
(M:73)
5.5.9.9. Amy's "mama's song" in Beloved reverberates wlth
echoes of a "cradle" in a "quiet cozy home" (B:100) --- thus
reiterating the association of the mother with serenity,

229
warmth and shelter and at the same time emphasizing the
stark contrast to Sethe's vulnerable situation as she gives
birth to Denver.
5.5.9.10. Images of the stereotyped woman are seen maznly
through the perspectave of Terry and Jeff in Herland, the
former who thinks pretty women are lust "game", and homely
women "not worth cons~dering" (H.91, and the latter who
mposes "rose-colored halos on his womenfolks" (H.9) Jeff
sees women as "clinging vines" whlle Terry davldes them into
two categories - ',desarable and undesarable women" (H.21),
viewang them as "sort of a natlonal harem" (H 13) Gilman
alms at destroying both these extreme viewpoints concerning
women - that of ideallsing them and that of treatlng them as
mere oblects of deslre Even Van, whoe views are moderate
when compared to Jeff and Terry, sees the women through the
lens of patriarchy ---- lnltially he feels that since
Herland 1s a civlllzed country, there should be men
somewhere, but he gradually accepts the fact that women need
not be frivolous as he looks at the faces that are "calm,
grave, wlse, unafraad, assured and determined" (H:19)
5.5.9.11. Through an adept employment of images, Gilman
explores the question of "what is femlnine and what is
masculine, what is manly and what is womanly, what is
culturally learned and what is biologically determined male-

female behaviour" (Lane 1979:xiil) .
230
To destroy the feminlne
stereotype, she invests the women of Herland with both
'feminine' and 'masculine' traits, bringing them to the
realm of androgyny. The Herlanders are "like schoolboys,
not shy girls" (H.301 with their "cropped hair" and "sexless
costume" (H:841.
Moreover, "they are not, in the girl
sense, beautiful" iH.191, causlng Terry to comment that
though their main concern is motherhood, the '!women aren't
womanly" (H:581
As the women are striklngly deflcrent rn
what 1s called femininity, the narrator Van 1s led to the
conviction that those 'femlnine chams' we are so fond of
are not femznlne at all, but mere reflected masculln~ty -
developed to please us because they had to please us, and in
no way essential to the real fulfilment of the great
process" (H.591
5.5.9.12. Emotlon as opposed to reason, Lntuitlon as opposed
to lncellect, is said to be characteristic of women.
according to the patrlarchal claim
Herland overrules this
notlon by portraying 'de-feminized' mothers as strong, clear
th~nkers iH 6Bi wlth the qualrtles of "clear rntelllgence
and dependableness" (H.691
Physically too, they are tall,
strong and healthy, wlth no traces of 'femlnine vanivf', no
'frills and furbelows" (H:B1) nor are they the
"underflannels - and - doughnuts mother" iH.142) wrapped in
their "pink bundle of fascinating babyhood" (H.691. Thls

231
prompts Terry to remark that the Herlanders were not human,
but just a pack of females (H:80). Since they lack modesty,
patience, submissiveness and "natural yielding that is
woman's greatest charm" iH:98) and are equally deficient in
sex appeal, Terry reduces them to "a parcel of old maids"
(H:134)
5.5.9.13. The lmage of the home undergoes a revision in
Herland as the scope of motherhood is broadened to a wider
social arena
Gllman, as part of her feminist project,
disentangles motherhood from the confines of the home,
placlng it in the uninhibited soclal sphere. She felt that
motherhood, as restricted by the home, curbed women's
nature, and hence she attempts to erase the deflnltlon that
equates the mother to the home
As representative of the
patriarchal volce. Terry clams that women should .work at
home, while the world's work is the prerogative of men. To
the Herlanders, Terry's statement "Women are loved -
ldollzed - honored - kept in the home to care for the
children" (H.61) seems atroclous, first of all because they
cannot understand the concept of a home, and secondly, they
find it unseemly that a woman be so confined.
5.5.10. Religious, mythologlcal and historical images are
used to describe the feminine mother, elevating her into a
goddess and expecting her to behave like one, suppresslng
her innate nature.

232
5.5.10.1. In the first chapter of Meridian, the mummy which
had once been Marilene O'Shay,
'an ideal woman' is
described as "a goddess" (M:61. The indication, no doubt,
1s that Meridian 1s not going to be all that this woman was.
In The Dark Holds No Terrors however, the lmage of the
terrlble mother, the temple-goddess, is evoked.
She looked a dreadful cursing kind of Devx,
anyway The women sometimes called her 'Mother"
Imagine, I thought, havlng a mother like that
(DH:91).
Baru also sarcastically compares her mother's relation wlth
her brother Dhruva, to the historical flgure Ji~abai, who
moulded a brave son, Shiva]~ (DH 75)
5.5.10.2. Eschewing patriarchal rellgion, Herland elevates
motherhood to a religious cult. Motherhood here 1s not only
a soclal servlce but also a "sacrament" (H 69)
Thelr great
"Mother Spirit" (H 11) 1s to them what thelr own motherhood
is - only magnlfled beyond human llmlts, it IS a 'power'
fH.112)
Thelr 'Temple Mother' (H 1141 1s developed from
the central theory of a lovzng power, and they assume that
1ts relatlon to them is motherly - that it deslred thelr
welfare and development. All mothers In Herland are 'holy'
(H 1401, and every thought In cofinectlon to maternlty is
considered 'slmple yet sacred' (H 1401
All their wlde mutual love, all the subtle
interplay of mutual friendship and service, the
urge of progressive thought and invention, the

deepest religious emotion, every feeling and every
act was related to thls great Central Power, to
the River of Life pouring through them, which made
them the bearers of the very spirit of god
(H:140).
Atwood's The Handmaid's
Tale however makes an ironical
employment of Blblical rmagery - the Gileadean regime
operates with Bibllcal sanction
The architects of Gilead
desire to create a replica of the Kingdom of God on earth by
closely following the tenets lald down in the Blble.
The
regime ]ustifles lts racist and sexlst pollcies as havlng
Blblxcal precedent
As Atwood remarks "A new regime would
never say, 'we are socialist, we are fasclst'
They would
say they were servlng God . . You can develop any set of
beliefs by uslng the Blble" (Vevalna 1993 224).
5.6.0. The Demeter - Persephone myth, the archetype of
the mother-daughter separatlon/union, forms the underly~ng
pattern In Margaret Laurence's The Diviners
Morrison's Beloved
and Toni
5.6.1. Although the separatron between
Demeter and Persephone 1s an unwilling one and 1s nelther a
questlon of the daughter's rebellion agalnst the mother, nor
the mother's relection of the daughter - thls paradigm has
been made use of to denoce not only the physlcal but also
the psychological estrangement between mother and daughter
In The Diviners, the separation between mother and daughter,
and Pique's return towards the later part of the novel

234
followed by her subsequent departure bears distinct echoes
to the Demeter - Persephone myth. The novel 1s a
reiteration of the mother's need of the daughter and the
daughter's need of the mother. Pique's physical journey
parallels Morag's psychological journey, thus enabling her
to recognize her ldentlty and redeflne herself as a woman, a
mother and an artlst. Plque's physlcal movement 1s integral
to Morag's mental journey whlch in turc motivates her
artlstic endeavour
Thls structural and thematlc
relatlonshlp Helen Buss calls the 'Mother-Daughter-Creatlve
Sp~rlt Triad" (Buss 1985.66)
Demeter -like, Morag's
creatlvlty :s channeled lnto her wrltlng The novel 1s in
fact a female Kunstlerroman where the growth of the woman as
mother parallels her growth as artlsc
The wrlter-llterary
product and mother-child parallels penade the book - it 1s
the baslc prxnciple of structure on whlch the novel
operates
Talklng of the mother/chlld and wrlter/creatlon
analogue, Helen Buss comments
In the case of the female artist, the word 'child'
mat be taken In more than a symbollc sense Thls
does not mean that the female artlst must
literally become a mother, but lt does mean that
she must find the mother wlthln herself to become
a whole woman, and she must be a whole woman to be
an artlst (1985.64)
5.6.1.1. The interdependence between mother and daughter
can be seen as an extension of the woman - woman bond, a
reassertion of female sorority. The tltle of Allce Walker's

235
In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens reaffirms the importance
of the 'mother-daughter-creative spirit triad' Walker
views literary women as daughters of the female literary
tradition and as inheritors of their mother's creative
spark When she says. "Yet so many of the storles that I
write, that we all wrlte, are my mother's stories" she
echoes one of her llterary mothers, Virglnla Woolf, who
stated that "we think back through our mothers".
5.6.1.2. The mother-daughter relationship In The Diviners
1s a statement of the Interdependence between the past and
present. A hauntrng obsesslon wlth the past colours the
novel whose structure alternates between the past and
present The presentidaughter is inextricably woven to and
1s dependent on the past/mother The past alters the
present and the present alters the past - therefore the
plcture of the past 1s different when seen through the lens
of the present memory Also, the ]uxtaposition of the past
and present 1s clearly ev:dent in the re-enactment of the
mother's past problems by the daughter When Morag does not
understand her daughter, she does not understand herself
!4orag's discovery of her self as a woman, as a wrlter, as a
Canadian, is In relation to her daughter's identity. Pique,
In a way, 1s an extension of Morag's self - she therefore
continues Morag's quest Both Morag and Plque discover
their identlty by returning to and accepting the past This

236
takes place on a literal level too as Pique, like
Persephone, returns to her mother and discovers herself
through her, the reconciliation between past and present 1s
in fact the reconciliation between mother and daughter
According to Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, to forget the
past is to ignore a matriarchal heritage which would enable
the herolne to find her own "distinctive female powerw
(cited in Hirsch 1989:44) In The Madwoman in the Attic,
the two feminlst wrlters see in motherlessness the emblem of
female powerlessness Maternal absence and sllence, they
argue, rob the heroine of Important role models for her
development, of the matriarchal power whlch could facilitate
her own growth into womanhood. The assumption is that even
within patriarchy, as the Demeter-Persephone relat-on
illustrates, women can be powerful lf connected with each
other
5.6.2. To rewrlte the story of mother-chlld relationship
from the maternal perspectlve. ln particular from the
perspective of the mother of a daughter, Toni Morrlson
adapts the woman-centered myth of Demeter and Persephone
It is in then nurturing functlon that the parallel between
Demeter and Sethe 1s most strrklngly obvlous. Just as
Demeter, the goddess of graln, nourashes the entlre world,
Morrison's Sethe has "milk enough for all" Demeter and
Persepkone's tale is told from the perspectlve of a bereaved

237
Demeter, searching for her daughter, mourning her departure,
and effecting her return through her own divine power. The
breach caused by rape and death is undone by the mother's
power to fulfil a mutual desire for connection. Beloved,
llke the story of Demeter and Persephone, is about the
temporary reunion between mother and daughter as Beloved
emerges from the other side to question her mother But
just as in the Demeter - Persephone myth, separation and
loss are inevitable, so must Beloved return to the dark slde
from where she came
5.7.0. In flne, maternal discourse has carved for Itself
a niche ln feminist wrltlng as the mother 1s no longer the
shadmy figure of androcentrlc wrltlng nor the ecllpsed
flgure of gynocentrlc wrltlng, wrltten from the daughter's
perspective, maternal silence gets translated into macernal
anger through a maternal narratlve Maternal narratlve
however remalns double-voiced as the woman-narrator has to
~nvarlably speak both as mother and daughter It
nevertheless provides a vlable area for the mother to
channel her creat:ve urges by provldlng a vantage point from
wh1c.i she can voice herself Further, the use of the
utoplan genre facllltates femlnlst writing by making the
imposslblllties in an androcentric culture seem plausible In
a gynocentrlc one.

CONCLUSION
Since the patriarchy commanded women to be
mothers, we had to rebel with our own polarity and
declare motherhood a reactionary cabal. Today a
new synthesis has emerged; the concept of motherright,
affirmation of a woman's chlld-bearing
and/or child-rearing when rt is a woman's
cholce It is refreshing at last to be able to '
come out of my mother-closet and yell to the world
that I love my dear wonderful delicious child.
- Robin Morgan
6.1.0. The introductory chapter made a global sumey of
the changlng attitudes towards motherhood ln the context of
the feminist movement, highlighting issues such as the
creatlon of the mystlque of motherhood by religlon / myth,
patrlarchal expectations of a mother and her reactlon to the
role, biological, psychological and soclal problems involved
In bearing and rearing children; and the increasing
difficulty in balancing motherhood and career.
It also
Introduced the authors and texts proposed for study, placlng
:hem Ln their respective cultural milieu.
6.1.1. 'Funinine Motherhood' --- the second chapter ---
focused on the manner in which patrlarchal lnstltutlons wlth
religious sanction mould women into feminlne mothers, as a
consequence of which motherhood becomes synonymous wlth
femininity. The major points of focus of this chapter were

239
- the ways in which feminine motherhood socially conditioned
mothers through reductive images; identified women only with
their mother-role, valuing them only for their chlld-bearlng
capacltles; demanded a renunciation of aims and interests of
mothers, inculcating in them the abillty to relate to others
only through their famillal role; instilled In them a deslre
for sons rather than daughters so that the patriarchal rule
was perpetuated; confined mothers to the domestic sphere
creating 'The Angel in the House', asserted that mother -
love was supposed to be unconditional as female anger
threatened the institution of motherhood, used religion,
myth, customs and rituals to determine familial structures
that subordinate women.
6.1.2. The thlrd chapter --- 'Feminist Motherhood' ---
highlighted how the conflict between women's desires and the
domlnant values of motherhood which made women volce then
protest led to a change ln attitude towards motherhood,
culminating ln 'femlnlst mothers'. Thls chapter dealt wlth
the revolt of the protagonlsts agalnst their mothers whlch
was not so much a personal attack on the mothers as it was
against the lnstitutlon they represented; the debunking of
the maternal instlnct through the protagonist's questioning
or relection of the maternal role foisted on her, the
attempt of the protagonist to break free from the image of
the angel in the house by taking up a career, the veering of

240
the mothers towards a more personalised mothering, free from
the dictates of patriarchy; and a change in parenthood
patterns wlth the involvement of fathers In the rearing of
children, making motherhood an 'androgynous' activity rather
than a 'feminine' one.
6.1.3. The fourth chapter --- 'Technological
Motherhood'--- discussed the ideological treatment of
technological motherhood and its relation to feminine /
femlnist motherhood. It explored the questions: Does
women's liberation require a biological revolution? Should
women relinquish thelr reproductlve roles and take recourse
to techniques of reproduction or should they retain then
reproductlve powers in order to gain the actual experience
of mothering, at the same time ensuring that it is not
talnted by the patriarchal lnstltutlon of motherhood? The
ongoing debate between supporters and detractors of
technolog~cal motherhood as reflected in select femlnlst
utoplas and dystoplas was studied in this chapter.
6.1.4. The focus of the flfth chapter --- 'The Aesthetics
of Motherhood' shifted from thematic to aesthetic aspects of
motherhood, indicating how a self-consc~ous feminist
narrative polnt of view, structure, genre, imagery and myth
contributed to working out the problematics of motherhood.

241
6.2.0. A quick recapitulation of the previous chapters
points towards differing attitudes of the women characters
towards motherhood - some accept it meekly and
unquestioningly, others accept lt wlth an iota of
scepticism, yet others accept ~t though they consider it a
burden, some others accept it on thelr own terms, ignoring
or questioning certain norms, some women totally rebel
against foisted roles while others relect lt outright.
Between acceptance, questioning and relectlon lie a range of
attitudes whlch may be conservative, revolutionary.
reactionary or radical. It hence becomes increasingly
d~fficult to taper down these wlde-ranging claims to one
Single deflnltion of femlnist motherhood Taking Into
account the differences in cultural background of the
femlnlst authors studled here, lt would be best to conslder
the pluralistic attitudes towards motherhood, rather than
tylng oneself to a single definition.
6.2.1. What, then, 1s fem1n:st motherhood? If lt 1s not
a blind acceptance of motherhood, does it necessarily mean
that 1t 1s a rejection of motherhood? The emerglng femlnist
mothers del~neated in the prevlous chapters at some point or
the other in thelr lives questlon or rebel agalnst the
normally accepted Ideals of motherhood. But although Saru,
Kate, Meridlan and Morag, at some stage, relinquish their
mother-role, they later try to redefine it. The endings of

242
The Dark Holds No Terrors and The Swmer Before the Dark
project the protagonists on the verge of a return to thelr
mother-role, but it is clear that they will do so with an
Intensified consciousness of their situation and an
unwavering determination to rewrite relationships and
counter patriarchal impositions; Meridian in Ueridian gives
up her role as a personal mother, but extends mothering to a
wlder social arena. Morag of The Diviners comes to a deeper
understanding of her self and her relationship to her
daughter after she purges herself of the ambivalence
surrounding motherhood. But the message that feminzst
motherhood 2s not a total relectlon of motherhood, but a
questlonlng of the impositions laid on it, resonates most
loud and clear in Drabble's The Millstone whose protagonist
proves that motherhood can be a fulfilling experlence if it
1s independent of the dictates of patriarchy. Whlle for the
other protagonists, the cholce is an inescapable either/or.
motherhood or ind~viduation, motherhood or creativity,
motherhood or freedom, Rosamund is able to successfully
experlence the best of motherhood and satisfactlon through
work, at the same tlme retaining her ~dentlty and the
freedom to exercise her choice.
6.2.2. Feminist motherhood, therefore, leaves the choice
to women, whether to mother or not. It is in exercising
this choice that women actually experlence unconditioned

243
freedom: those with an aptitude for mothering take it up
whlle those without it are also deemed 'normal' in every
way.
The other extreme of resenting child-bearing and
child-rearing, viewing motherhood from a purely antagonistic
stance is yet another kind of lie.
r2 asserc rca: m-rkerhood ls a rcrrure cc any
~.:3egenfa.:, l?-.rel?rgen: 'do-an 1s secc:ner.cal - as
far rerr7:ed fr-n act'lal ex:erlence - as :c asserr
that motherhood is the true and hlghest fulfilment
any woman could deslre (Harris 1975 254).
As mothermg beglns to be viewed as one cholce among many.
feminism and motherhood are no more in diametrical
opposltlon. Feminists do not attack family or mothering.
except as defined and restricted under patriarchy, they do
not denigrate motherhood, but remove the pressures from ~ t ,
making it truly voluntary
The motherhood role is congenial
to some women, whlle others are put off by its demands, some
feel they are unable to perform the role as
inst~tutlonallsed by soclety and yet another sectlon of
women have an in-between stance - they would en]oy
mother if it weren't a twenty-four-hour lob
being a
Femlnism
accomodates all these positions, maklng motherhood as well
as 'non-motherhood' a genulne optlon for those who prefer
lt, making one as esteemed and acceptable as the other. As
Jessie Bernard asks
Instead of coercing [women] Into motherhood.
making them feel that not becoming a mother is a
misfortune or, worse, pitiable, why not appreciate

them for their good qualities rather than
denigrating them for the lack of maternal
aptitude? Or structure motherhood in a more
congenial fashlon? l1974:35)
The feminist agenda finally aims at removing the stigma from
non-motherhood and giving it a positive, valued and
desirable status, thus creatlng free, uncoerced, genuine
choices between motherhood and other llfe-patterns. ~ o all t
feminists underplay the role of the mother.
What many
object to is the insistence that all women must become
mothers, that motherhood is every' woman's destlny, that only
through bear~ng children can women flnd fulfilment
Feminrsts finally polnt to a world in which motherhood,
strlpped of its mythlc compulsions, will be Infused with as
much declsion and conscious lntelllgence as any other
dlff~cult and freely chosen work
In such a world, they
emphasrze, maternal affection w ~ll become all the more
rlcher and steadier because it wlll be a decision freely
taken
6.3.0. As Meridian, Saru, Kate, Morag and Rosamund begln
to ask if self-realizat~on by way of work or career 1s in
any way Inferlor to self-realizatron by way of motherhood,
Or what is so sacred about self-sacrifice or noble about
wanting children, the concept that is being repeatedly torn
apart is that mother-love 16 natural and every woman 1s born
with the maternal instinct.
As mother-love is no more

considered natural, conversely there is no such thing as the
'unnatural mother'. The definition of a 'good mother' could
hence be re-written as one who has the time, the means and
the will, not the blood or instinct, to mother.
The
capacity for mothering is therefore not instinctive but
imitative it is associated with the upbring~ng and cultural
condlt~ons under whlch women experience their maternity. AS
Oakley wrltes, the behavlour of women as mothers
owes nothing to then possession of ovaries and
wombs, any more than the behaviour of men as
fathers proceeds directly from thelr possession of
alternative genitals 11976 199)
thus dlscred~t~ng the definltlon that a woman is her womb
Further, rt 1s clalmed that the maternal xnstincr has more
to do wlth physiological foundations than psychological
phenomena
Maternal functions undergo a psychological
transformation lnto maternal love
Wlth maternal lnstlnct
belnq demcunced as a cultural flctlon, femln~sts d~scredlt
the argament that maternal love, a deslre so commonly and so
compellingly felt ought for that very reason to be
considered organic and universal
6.4.0. Marge Plercy's Woman on the Edge of Time throws up
an interesting and much sought after possibll~ty for change
ln attrtudes towards motherhood, namely the involvement of
fathers too In child rearing Wlth the firm entrenchment of
feminlst motherhood in our culture, Piercy's utopian vlsion

246
is being translated into reallty. the previously existing
mother - child lnteractlon is converted to interaction
between parent and child. The concept of 'mother' 1s
extended to mean any person of either sex. A growing
awareness of the lmportance of fathering has been created in
soclety where full-tlme mothering is no longer the norm.
With tlme, stereotypes have changed. Fathers have become
frlends, and as work and career have become an Integral part
of a woman's life, mothers no longer bear the demlgod tag
The role of the mother today depends on how effectively the
partner plays the role of the father The reallzatlon that
fathers are parents too, and the recognltlon that what
chlldren need 1s the warm, loving attentlon of a few
cons1s:ent caregivers, not the full time devotlon of the
mother alone --- amply illustrated in Eerland and Woman On
the Edge of Time --- are factors that have revamped the
maternal rcle The advent of women lnto the professional
stream and tbelr new role as pravlder, has necessitated a
reshuffl~ng of roles, enabllng men to explore their homemaking
aptltude The sharlng sf the provider role by the
mother calls :or a sharing of the 3urturer role by the
father Role sharing, however, does not mean role reversal,
it d3es not mean that the mother takes over the provlder
role exclus~vely and the father the chlld-care role. Nor 1s
role sharing the same as mere helping Just helping does

247
not relieve the mother of her responsibilities; it is the
psychological responsibility that makes the integration of
the mother role and worker role so difficult.
With the
elimination of the sexual divlsion of labour and the public
/ privato dlchotorny, 'motherhood' extends to 'parenthood',
no longer adhering to gender-based roles.
Thls changing
Image 1s increasingly reflected In the med~a, most obviously
in advertisements whlch have switched over from the
dellneatlon of the devoted mother-at-home to the independent
woman-at-work, and, conversely, from the macho image of the
man to a more 'homely' one - of the father in the kltchen,
the father wlth hls daughter, his son.
6.4.1. Such a masslve change, especially with regard to
notrons deeply embedded m the human psyche sxnce centuries,
has not met wlth universal consent
Even today, mothers
continue to be confined to thelr home-bound responsibllltles
which Includes twenty-four hour mothering with little or
absolutely no involvement from their partners. Brlnging men
rnto the parenting process and domestlc work has not been an
easy task. Wantlng, and even demanding, a partner's equal
partlclpation, does not guarantee securing it. Lack of co-
operation from thelr partners is what has made many mothers
such as Morag of The Diviners and Rosamund of The Millstone
opt for single parenthood
Women like them, who attempt to
integrate work and motherhood, find it easier to do so

248
without a spouse than to try to secure the help of one
Single mothers see men as a hindrance rather than a help in
combining work and motherhood To them, balancing career,
housework, children and husband seems a tougher job than
managing career, housework and children
6.4.2. Should the cholce then be an either / or one - as
Meridlan of Meridian and Kate of The Sumxner Before the Dark
are forced to make - a choice between family and career? Or
1s it practically possible to integrate motherhood wlth
career as Rosamund of The Millstone succeeds In achieving?
For many femlnlsts, motherhood loses lts significance unless
:t is interwoven wrth work outslde home. Srmcne de Beauvolr
remarks
[A woman1 cannot consent to brlng forth 1:fe
unless llfe has meaning, she cannot be a mother
wrthout endeavouring to play a role In the
economic, pollt~cal and soclal llfe of the tlmes
the woman who en]oys the rlchest individual
lzfe wrll have the most to glve her chlldren and
wlll demand the leasr from them, she who acqulres
In effort and struggle a sense of true human
values wlll be best abie to brlng them up properly
(1971.540)
In thls context, the dlstlnction between workxng women and
working mothers cannot be overlooked
The predicament of
the worklng mothers is even more lntense as thelr task
lncludes ownlng physlcal and emotional responsibll~ty for
their children, husband, home and career. Added to thls 1s
the plaguing sense of yullt that is foisted on them by an

249
androcentric society which repeatedly asks: Are worklng
women good mothers? In Meridian, The Summer Before the Dark
and The Dark Holds No Terrors, worklng fathers are never
consldered a problem, only worklng mothers are because
child-care has always been a mother's exclusive duty It is
however be'lng established today that working mothers enJoy
then chlldren more and are less irritable with them than
the full-time mothers, and that the employment of mothers
has no deleterious effect on the children's phys~cal,
soclal. ~ntellectual or emotional development
6.4.3. When they are not able to fit Into patriarchal
moulds. Morag (The Diviners). Rosamund (The Millstone1 and
Ira [Nectar in a Sieve) opt for slngle parenthood. An
extended possiblllty from single motherhood is lesbian
motherhood Though we do not come across lesbxan mothers ln
the texts undertaken for study, lesblan motherhood is yet
another optlon available for women Bct lesblan morherhood,
also consldered 'deviant', comes under the censure of
soclety According to a socxety whose focus is "the best
Interests of the child", llvlng w ~th a lesblan mother 1s
detrimental :o the child However, some feel that the chlld
would be safe if the woman behaved like a mother to her
child and dld not flaunt her lesbianism or live with a
lesbian lover or engage In lesbian politlcs The posslble
harm that is considered is - that of a potential lesbian or

250
gay identity in the chlld, harm of stigmatization of the
child because of having a lesblan mother, harm of living in
an immoral or illegal environment (Robson 1992 175).
6.5.0. The ambivalence characterlsing the mother -
daughter relationships in Meridian. The Dark Holds No
Terrors, The Diviners and The Summer Before the Dark poses
a question: Is mother-hate the precondltlon for female
liberation and self-determlnation? Do the daughters
necessarily have to rebel agalnst their mothers and overcome
then claustrophobic influence In order to establish an
Independent identity? Why does the mother always exert a
negatl.de xnfluence and why doesn't her daughter imblbe her
?osltlve values3 Why do the daughters strlve hard to
separate both physically and psychologically and why 1s this
comlng apart so painful?
6.5.1. A psychoanalytlc framework for femlnist thinklng
has lts llmltatlons in that lt follows Frend In blamlng the
mother for the daughter's victlmizatlon Nancy Chodorow's
psychoanalytlc femlnlsm 1s mother- directed and so are Nancy
Frlday's My Mother / My Self: A Daughter's Search for
Identity and Marle Cardinal's The Words To Say It. Among
the texts studied here Walker's Meridian and Deshpande's The
Dark Holds No Terrors, adopting a daughter's perspective,
blame the mother for the daughter's predicament. Lesslng' s

251
The Summer Before the Dark and Laurence's
he Diviners
however are more positive portrayals of the mother -
daughter interaction; probing into the causes of mother -
accusation, they make the mother's voice heard as well. The
lnitlal anblvalence in the relatlonshlp is resolved when
each begrns to derive strength and redefine themselves
through the other, reiterating the fact that thls
reiat~onship need not always be a stifllng one, thus adding
welghL to Adrlenne Rlch's statement that the loss of the
mother to the daughter or the daughter to the mother, is the
essentlai female tragedy
Seen from thls perspectlve,
mother-hate can be vlewed as an exception rather than the
rule, for the daughter's llberatlon.
6.6.0. Wlth a developing femlnlst orlentatlon towards
motherhood, the women dellneated above flnd themselves in a
posltlon to perceive, analyse and crltlclse the soclal
construction of motherhood But such an awareness does not
necessarlly make the search for and development of
aiternatlves much easler
The path to femln~st motherhood
1s fraught with varlous dilemmas, guilt, tenslons and
conflicts.
The woman's autonomy as a separate belng
conflicts wlth the ch~ld she bears but is not able to rear
Leaving the old world of feminine motherhood behind is
difficult not only because the traditions and conventions
associated with the mother wield a heavy welght, but also

252
because thls existence has held for women certain
advantages. As they dare to defy the constraints upon them,
they leave behind this security and risk enforced
estrangement and the terrors of isolated life
Gordon, in her book Feminist
Tuula
Mothers, talks of the
pleasures, pains, contradictions and difficulties in the
lives of mothers who are feminists.
many women experienced gullt and paln, when their
power as mothers of thelr chlldren was contrasted
to a framework of Imitations that they lived In.
The world was seen as uncarlng and unlust,
mediating between thls world and thelr ch~ldren
was a hard and emotional task, and mothers felt
relatively powerless (Gordon 1990 131)
The Inadequacles felt by the new mother, who 1s exposed to
chlldcare demands by the social relations of :he
famlly, leaves her feellng an unnatural or bad parent
parrlarchal
As a
mother, she 1s supposed to meet all the child's needs
slngle-handed, to care for and stimulate the chlld's
physical, emotional and mental development, and to feel
fulfilled ln dolng so
But when In reality, she 1s unable
to cope wlth these varlous responslblllties, she experiences
the full welght and burden of maternal gullt, that
dally, nxghtly, hourly, Am I doing what is right?
Am I dong enough? Am I dolng too much' The
lnstitutlon of motherhood flnds all mothers more
or less guilty of havlng failed their children
IRlch 1976.2231
Worklng women especially, who had to tackle a publlc role
along with their private one had to consider how much they

253
should orientate themselves to their children, and how much
to their work. At thls juncture, they begin to experience
tremendous pressure: they are torn between feelrng that
their chlldren needed more from them than they were glving;
and at the same tlme, did not want to slacken thelr work.
The solutlon lay neither ln withdrawlng into the family nor
In shutting off thelr responsibilltles In thrs ambivalent
situation, women, at one level, experience pleasure in
maternal love, then reproductive capacltles and maternal
competence, they welcome the responsibilzty that confirms
thelr potential as women; yet, on another level, they are
aware that they carry out thelr responsib~litles In a
soclal, materlal and cultural environment which does not
prlvllege mothers In such an atmosphere, medlatxng between
work outslde and chlldren at home becomes physically and
emotlcnally taxlng
6.6.1. The experiences of Kate (The Summer Before the
Dark1 and Sari (The Dark Holds No Terrors) reveal that the
patriarchal flnger of accusation 1s perpetually polnted at
the mocher for anythlng that goes wrong In the famlly
S(mother1 love, the scapegoatlng of mothers, mother-blame,
the pathogenic mother - are the consequences of the unequal
dlstr~butlon of power in a soclety, the natural outgrowth of
a society that approves sexual divislon of labour, seelng
chlld-rearing as exclusively women's work. Almost every

254
conceivable human woe is attributed to the mother. The
father's failures are considered less serious than the
mother's mlstakes because fathers are out of the child's
life most of the time The mother, caught in a vicious
circle, is held responsible for the children's psychological
and behavloural problems. Kate and Sam comprehend that if
they work, they are accused of child neglect, if they stay
at home and devote themselves to the chlldren, they are
berated for smothering their offsprlng. The absent or cold
father 1s rarely seen as the cause of problem chlldren.
Mothers, on the other hand, are warned about the dlre
consequences of llttle or too much love and are therefore
told to perform thelr task wlth great diligence as even one
false move or dereliction of duty could mark the chlld for
ever.
6.6.2. Freudian psychoanalysls has been the chlef factor
in singllng out the mother for speclal attention
Freudlan m:croscope,
Under the
the mother became the scapegoat for
anythlng that went wrong in the famlly
comments In thls context
Betty Frleden
It was suddenly discovered that the mother could
be blamed for almost everything In every case
history of troubled child, alcoholic, suicidal,
schizophrenic, psychopathic, neurotlc adult,
Impotent, homosexual male; frlgld, promlscuous
female: ulcerous, asthmatic, and otherwise
drsturbed American, could be found a mother
[Frledan 1971:1891 .

255
The Sunmar Before the Dark and The Dark Holds No Terrors
henceforth ralse the questions If mothers are really so
dangerous for children, why does soclety insist on forcing
the care of chlldren on them? Why are they solely assigned
the exclusive care of children?
6.7.0. The opposing stances taken by the authors of Woman
On the Edge of Time and The Handmaid's Tale are polnters to
the fact that the hottest bone of contention and the most
volatlle and multi-faceted controversy among various groups
of feminists themselves is the issue regarding technological
motherhood Whlle various other technologies have been
accepted and lmblbed In soclety almost overnlght, the Issue
of repraductlve techniques continues to be flercely debated
over, years after lts inception This is due to the fact
that no other technology affects human belngs so personally
as does reproductlve technology, br1nglr.g in its wake
several ethlcal, soclal and legal concerns as well
Although there 1s no doubt that new developments lr.
reprod-ctlve technology have made it possible for rnfertlle
women to have thelr own chlldren, it 1s also true that these
new possib~lities often exert pressures that restrlct
women's reproductlve freedom and choices Moreover, these
technologies are unevenly available, thus reinforcing
racial, cultural and economic inequalltles

256
6.7.1. The 'Baby M' case should be mentioned in this
context In this instance, a woman, Mary Beth Whitehead,
contracted wlth a man, William Stern, to be artlflclally
inseminated with his sperm, carry a baby to term, and
deliver it to hlm upon blrth, for a fee of ten thousand
dollars However, the mother changed her mind, refused the
fee, refused to deliver the baby, and fled with her husband
and children. A hlghly publlclsed custody battle ensued in
whlch the judge allocated the baby to Stern and hls wife, an
upper mlddle class couple, stripping the contractual mother,
who belonged to the worklng class, of ail parental rlghts
(Elchler 1988 294) The 'Baby M' case provldes strong
evldence that publlc, ludicla1 and leglslatlve accomodation
lags considerably behlnd the sclentlf:~ and soclal reailty
reflected In the reproductive alternatrve Wlth the
commerclalrzatlon of chlldbearlng and the separation of
motherhood Into genetlc, uterlne and socla; motherhood, a
problematic qcestlon whlch arlses 1s In the case of
confllcr, who would be recognized as the legal mother - the
genetlc mother, the uterlne mother or the soclal mother' If
the ckld 1s produced through AID and egg donation, who 1s
legally the parent' The semen donor, the egg donor, or the
soclai father and mother? In AID, technically lt 1s
irrelevant whether an egg is fertilized wlth the semen of
the husband of the woman lnvolved or wlth somebody else's

257
semen, socially, ethically and legally, however, it makes a
very significant difference.
6.7.2. Familial structures are also affected by
reproductive technology The age-old concept of 'family'
undergoes a restructuring, a revlslon of what it means to be
a parent, and the rights and obligations attached to this
Status Apart from exceptional cases such as adoption,
foster-parenthood and step-parenting, by a 'parent' we
generaily assume that biological and social components merge
In one person Thls concept undergoes a sharp change due to
reproductlve techniques, creatlng further diversity In
family conflguratlons Motherhood has been irrevocably
changed, affecting the experience of pregnancy and parentchild
relat~onshlps Pre-conception contract'Ja1 arrangements
affect chlldren the most who suffer intensely when kept in
lgncrance of blologlcal origlns Detractors of
technological motherkood therefore feel that lt turns
chlldrer. lnto a commodity, pregnancy Into a purchaseable
service and reduces the woman to a breeder, a means to an
end Parenthood becomes comodlfled, pregnancy ]udlclallsed,
reprodllction medlcallsed, and control over one's own
reproductive processes, diminished In the process
6.8.0. Are feminism and motherhood ln diametrical
opposltlon?
Is it impossible to be both a feminist and a

258
mother at the same time? Why do feminists who are mothers
experience a conflict between their feminist leanings and
maternal experiences' Why was lt necessary for women to
relect their own biology, relinquish a part of themselves to
be feminists? Is it possible to integrate feminism and
motherhood so that the two are no longer at odds? Feminlsm
began as a natural and inevitable reactlon against the
poiitlcs of patriarchy which instltutlonalised all familial
structures to subordinate women and used them to lts own
advantage Since patrlarchy Insisted that all women to be
mothers, women had to rebel against their own potential
motherhood, declaring 1t a restrlctlon and imposition on
thelr minds and bodles. in order to combat patrlarchy, they
had to give up a part of their self In recent tmes
however, the decislon regarding whether to mother or not, or
when and how to mother, 1s no more dictated by patriarchy,
but left to the woman's discretion As Drabble's The
Millstone illustrates, women can Integrate femrnlsm and
motherhood In perfect unlson and experience both to the
fullest satisfaction.
6.8.1. Conslderlng the problems that the emerging mothers
- Rosarncnd, Morag, Kate, Mer~dlan and Saru - face, may lead
one to wonder if feminlne motherhood was a more desirable
condition than feminist motherhood. Dld feminlne motherhood
give women more power that femlnlst motherhood? Did

259
feminine motherhood allow them greater security and more
comfort?
Is the sacriflclng of personal comforts a heay
price to pay for gaining personal freedom?
No doubt,
feminlne motherhood does sometimes have its compensations -
emotional and financial security, a certain amount of power
withln the home, a complacency and sense of satisfaction on
garnlng soclal acceptance, whlle the road to femlnist
motherhood has been a lonely one for many women, involving
various tensions, rlsks, gullt and soclal disapproval.
Yet
the femlnlst mothers are not prepared to trade lndlvlduallty
for security - they gear themselves to face these conflicts
and dllemmas
As Betty Frledan remarks
I wonder if a few problems are not somehow better
than this smliing empty passlvlty If they are
happy, these young women who live the femlnrne
mystique, then 1s thls the end of the road7 Or
are the seeds of something worse than frustration
Inherent In thls image7 11971.641
6.8.2. Motherhood, therefore, is seen as a 'dls-ease'
rather than a dlsease The dlfficultles of mothering are
mewed In the context of a soclety whach does not value
motherhood or afford women control over then llves Only
ln a soclety where women would not have to endure the
censure of iess-than perfect motherhood and less-thanperfect
career performance, In a soclety where lobs are
structured in such a way that the famlly does not become the
sole responsibility of the woman, would motherhood become a

260
fulfilling experience, with the resentment cut out and the
problem of establishrng an effective balance between self-
fulfilment and family obligations resolved.
6.9.0. Th~s dissertation opens up subjects related to
motherhood that could lend themselves for further study
The relationship between wrltlng and motherhood can be
explored, employing the creativity metaphor, grounded in
mother-daughter / artist-creation parallels
Further,
maternal discourse, whlch had been stifled tlll recently by
both androcentrlc writlng (in whlch the mother 1s negated)
and gynocentrlc wrlting (where the story 1s usually told
from the daughter's perspectlvel , now comes to the fore as
mothers begln to speak / write, transmuting then sllence
Into anger, no longer remalnlng the sllent m(other), thus
dlscredltlng the notlon that "mothers don't wrlte, they are
wrltten"
Comparison of gynocentrlc texts wrltten from a
materzal view polnt and those wrltten from a dauahter's
perspective, would provlde scope for an lnterestlng study
6.9.1. Vlewlng motherhood as a soc~ally constructed
lnstltutlon, whlch In ~ t s present form, undermines the
mother's mental health and produces chlldren who are
ambivalent towards their own mothers, lt is obsewed that
maternity and motherhood become springboards towards female
hysteria.
'Motherhood and Madness' could be another sublect

261
for exploration, and Gloria Naylor's The Women Of Brewster
Place,
Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior, Margaret
Atwood' s Surfacing, Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, Marge
Piercy's Woman On The Edge of Time, the posslble texts
chosen for thls study.
6.9.2. 'Mother-daughter Relatlonshlps in Women's
Autoblographles' is yet another area that would provlde
scope for further study Here, the daughter -
autobiographer becomes the recreator of her maternal parent,
and the controlling adult In the llterary relationship
The
autoblographles of Maya Angelou, Slmcne de Beauvolr, Sally
Carlghar, Nikkl Glovannl, Jane Howard, Maxlne Hong Klngston
and Margaret Mead can be taken up for this study.
6.10.0. In flne, th~s
study reveals that the lnstltutlon
Of motherhood 1s not totally absllshed, ~t only gets amended
glvlng way to a more tolerant acceptance of the plurallstlc
attitudes towards motherhood. The fact however remalns that
the institution of motherhood 1s defxntely shaken, in the
process upsetting various religious, soclal and famllla;
patterns
The march towards a new motherhood has brought
with it many tenslons and conflicts in a woman - the
confilct between self-preservation and maternal feelings,
between the individual and the mother In a woman. Yet, the
consensus that emerges in the end 1s that feminists mothers

262
are prepared to face the dilemmas that this awakening brlngs
rather than letting themselves wallow in the happy passivity
of ferninme motherhood.

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