the problematics of motherhood in twentieth century women's fiction

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