the problematics of motherhood in twentieth century women's fiction

CEAPTER - 11 INTRODUCTIONS PROBLEMATICS OF MOTBEREOOD makes
a global survey of the changing attitudes towards motherhood
in the context of the feminist movement, highlighting issues
such as the creation of the mystlque of motherhood by
religion / myth, patriarchal expectations of a mother and
her reaction to the role, psychological and social problems
involved In bearing and rearm9 chrldren, all of which point
to the hiatus between the experience of motherhood, and the
institutlonalleation of lt The chapter further provides a
literary backdrop to the authors/texts taken up for study
Afro-American - Alice Walker's Meridian 119771 and Toni
Morrison's Beloved (19871, American - Charlotte Perkins
Gilman's Berland 119151 and Marge Piercy's Woman On The Edge
of Time (19761, Brltlsh - Margaret Drabble's The Millstone
119651 and Dorls Lessing's The Sunrmer Before the Dark
(1973). Canadian - Margaret Laurence's The Diviners (1974)
and Margaret Atwood's The Bandmaid's Tale (19861, and Indian
- Kamala Markandaya's Nectar in a Sieve (1954) and Shashi
Deshpande's The Dark Holda No Terrors 11980)
CBAPTER -11: FEMININE MOTHERHOOD focuses on the manner in
which patriarchal institutions with religious sanctlon have
moulded women into femlnlne mothers as a consequence of
which motherhood becomes synonymous with femininity The
chapter examines how women's capacities for mothering and
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