Roles In Literature: The Alienation Of Motherhood And Motherism

CHAPTER-4

THE REPRODUCTION OF MOTHERING

The issues regarding the psychological aspect of motherhood and mothering have been the concern of feminists and woman liberationists ever since the first female voice has been raised against the oppression and suppression of women, or maybe even earlier. As has been already discussed in the first two chapters of this thesis, from nearly a century and a half, various theories have been scripted to resolve the issue of gender dichotomy. But one may say that, they have been only partially successful and that too only in some specific socio-cultural strata’s, race, ethnicity and communities. To study the variety of attitudes and voices in poetry written by women concerning the psychological aspect of motherhood,

These doors lead into prisons’ for victims whose only crime consists of being a woman. The burqa alienates woman not only from her own self but also snubs her power to reason or realise that she is being wronged against. This alienation is perhaps what patriarchy aimed for by putting women behind a burqa . This actually ‘enslaves’ a woman rather than ‘empowers,’ ‘safeguards,’ or ‘protects,’ her as has been projected to be the purpose of the burqa.

The poem structured in a way that the metaphor of Purdah repeats and reoccurs in all the stanzas of the poem. In the above quoted lines it stands for the ‘earth that covers the coffin after the burial’, here the “burqa” symbolises the protection that the earth provides to the coffin, which in return provides protection to a corpse, which is perhaps the woman herself. The burqa also provides protection to its wearer whose body like the coffin protects a dead soul within. In the second stanza of the poem, the burqa is metaphorised as:

We sit still, letting the cloth