the problematics of motherhood in twentieth century women's fiction

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"