the problematics of motherhood in twentieth century women's fiction

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,