Representation of Motherhood and Womanhood in Third World Women Writing: A Comparative Study

By Syed Hajira Begum

"Feminism is a recognition of the domination of men over women and attempts by women to end male privilege... It is a theory, a method, and a practice which seeks to transform human relations".

Cynthia Orozco

Writing in the anthology Chicano Voices: Intersections of

• Language: English
• Publisher: SMART MOVES
• Release date: Jul 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9788194357247

Syed Hajira Begum

Syed Hajira Begum is Assistant Professor and Chairperson of the Department of Postgraduate Studies in English at JSS College of Arts, Commerce and Science, Mysore, Karnataka, and has more than seventeen years of teaching experience. She has done her PhD from Sri Krishnadevaraya University, Anantapur, Andhra Pradesh on Nigerian Literature, and has Master's Degree from Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati. At present, she is actively involved in teaching, and research at JSSCACS, Mysore. Her research interests include African Women Fiction, Postcolonial Women Writing, Contemporary Indian Women Poetry, and Gender Studies. She has published a large number of research papers in India and abroad and has presented research papers in many international, national conferences and seminars. She completed a research project funded by UGC.

Book preview

Preface

This book is written for readers who are encountering postcolonial literatures focused on women as a part of their curriculum study or research. I take feminist approach examining some (and only some) of the key texts (novels) of postcolonial women writers which are ground-breaking in themes. I read the novels closely, often quite conventionally in arriving at certain findings and conclusions. This study would engage the readers in critical debates that emerged from study of these texts. A more sophisticated theoretical discourse is used at times, but my basic thesis is that such a discourse was developed because of the exceptional work of the novelists. This book is written to encourage comparative study of writers with diverse cultural backgrounds with a focus on similar issues having similar outcomes in course of action. It also encourages more advanced debate over wide ranging issues related to women’s lives in patriarchal world. My privileging of few key novels may appear arbitrary, yet the selection is made precisely because of the impact that these novels not only once had but continue to have. I have focused on novel genre because of the ways in which postcolonial novels in English have had a rapid, global impact via the international book market.

This study is an attempt to understand the value of feminism in the life of Third world women of different social, cultural backgrounds with a central objective to analyse the significance accorded to motherhood and womanhood as identities of woman’s life. It comprehensively includes the textual analysis of different authors of Indian literature in English and African literature. Structured into six chapters, the present book is an analytic exposition of all the novels of important writers of Indian and African literature.

Syed Hajira Begum

1

Introduction

Feminism is a recognition of the domination of men over women and attempts by women to end male privilege… It is a theory, a method, and a practice which seeks to transform human relations.

Cynthia Orozco

Writing in the anthology Chicano Voices: Intersections of

Class, Race and Gender, 1993

Today women writings in fiction, poetry, drama and short story are gaining strong ground not only in India, but also all over the world. Women in their writings have portrayed the realistic picture of the modern man entangled in the web of materialism, sufferings of women under patriarchal domination and the deteriorating psychological conditions of man (human) kind in general. Women writings implicitly offer profound insights, new perspectives, and explain life of women in male dominated society, raising questions about patriarchally accepted social norms, which are detrimental to wo(man) being.

In spite of the various obstacles and impediments put in the path of women by men, women are struggling for their separate individual identity. The waves of feminist consciousness have brought new uprising for the emancipation and empowerment of women across the world. The changing life styles and the growing prosperity give the modern women confidence and they are now speaking out their concerns – physical security, emotional wellbeing, financial self-sufficiency or their rights.

However, the entire volume of literature abounds in prejudices against women with public misogyny. The false notions – long hair and no brain – are the indicators of universal antagonist and dominant approach against women. This notion is tinged with fear, anxiety and hatred of the other. Such unpleasant documentation of misogynism treats women everywhere as same signs irrespective of the language, origin, class, faith and culture. Simone de Beauvoir is absolute in her statement: Thus, humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him; she is most the inessential as opposed to the essential (The Second Sex 16).

The controversy also centres on the ‘hegemonic’ and ‘ideological’ foundations with the crux between ‘sex’ and ‘gender’. The biological and socially developed differences in ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ and the ‘femininity’ and ‘masculinity’, the social and political terminology with their related associations and investitures of qualities, values, images and narratives that clothe and tint people’s attitude to lives. These covert oppressions are ably assisted by overt abuses in ‘rape’, ‘molestations’, wife-beating, exploitations within the family, at work and in society etc. Women writing across the Third World countries engages with the issues of empowerment and disempowerment, tensions between modernity and tradition and ideas of development and progress of women. Paying special attention to women’s perspectives, this study presents an impartial and factual depiction of women’s issues related to womanhood and motherhood, highlighted by Indian and Nigerian women writers. The book critically analyses the selected works of Flora Nwapa, Buchi Emecheta, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie of Nigeria and the selected works of Indian writers, Anita Desai, Shashi Deshpande, Manju Kapur and Anita Nair.

Women writing in Africa, in general and Nigeria in particular saw the light of the day only recent times, that assigns to itself the function of bringing out the history of women and their experiences through the centuries. The other side of the story reveals information about African women who were silenced by the master (men) narratives that focused on the canonised racial and sexual superiors. African (Nigerian) writers Flora Nwapa, Buchi Emecheta and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on one hand, have succeeded in liberating women from the mystique of motherhood, and, on the other have, presented womanhood within the concept of larger social problems. Most of the Indian women writers such as Kamala Markandaya, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Nayantara Sahgal, Anita Desai, Shashi Deshpande, Manju Kapur, Arundhati Roy, Shobha De, Anita Nair and others seldom portray the psychic tensions and anxieties of today’s woman in a traditional society. However, their focus is on social value system that affects woman, evolving image of New Woman, assertion and quest for identity of their protagonists, who become epitomes of self-realisation.   

The works of selected women writers form Nigeria and India show their questioning attitude and reasoning ability towards the injustice that has been accepted by the respective societies passively for ages. In the wake of feminist movement in Third World countries, themes like woman’s search for identity, quest for selfhood, relocating the self, and awareness to seek a balance between tradition and modernity became popular in the works of female writers. When we compare Indian fiction with that of African fiction, the role of woman has been to large extent looked at from within the perimeters of home as mother, wife, lover or prostitutes. African women writers have documented a truthful picture of suffering of women from their own experiences, examined the African institutions affecting the interests of women, and rejected those, which are detrimental to their progress. Nonetheless, African men writers are more concerned with the social and moral aspects and they identify women with tradition and the self-denied role of mother. As women writers earned a place in literary histories of these countries, which was denied to them just because of gender, they attempt to dismantle the gender codes inscribed in the male tradition. They began to use literature as a weapon to quote Senegalese Mariama Ba, in their effort to define their individuality and to asset, their economic, social and cultural independence (quoted in Chukwuma 2002).

Third World women’s writing represents diverse female narratives and voices through different themes and styles. Shared concerns involve a commitment to portray women’s narratives of oppression as structured by various powers, given that the female experiences represented in women’s literature are functional in Third World feminism, which attempts to deconstruct the global sisterhood model and the figure of the universal woman in order to acknowledge women’s heterogeneity in theoretical and literary discourses. It depicts women from several developing cultures adopting reconstructive methodologies in order to theorise and challenge oppression. Female liberation and social change can be located in the discourse of Third World women writing which links socio-political practices and local identities to issues of female specificity and writing. The Third World feminists seek cross-cultural solidarity and a framework that focuses on issues of grounding the local and the universal, on women’s roles in redefining their identities, and on differences as a way of promoting solidarity.  They do not simply accept Western concept of mother, but question obligatory motherhood and the traditional favouring of sons. They see utility in the positive aspects of the extended family and polygamy as they show concern for children and for sharing household responsibility.

Black women writing, the post-realist writing as defined by Anthony Appaiah (2005) is a humanistic writing, the strength of which lies in the irony of how realistically it depicts