the problematics of motherhood in twentieth century women's fiction

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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years out of date (SBD 52)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)