the problematics of motherhood in twentieth century women's fiction

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(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