MATERNAL PSYCHOLOGY AND MOTHER-DAUGHTER DYNAMICS: A STUDY OF MOTHERHOOD IN CONTEMPORARY INDIAN FICTION

Abstract

“To be, or not to be? That is the question—” (Shakespeare 1) is not only a dilemma for Hamlet but also for mothers in the 21st century. Motherhood is a universal concept. Perhaps women want to be mothers, or all of us might not be mothers, but we are all born of mothers. This itself makes the construct a fundamental reason for the study to take place. Talking of the universal nature of mothering, it is startling to see the invisibility of ‘motherhood studies’ from the academic arena. It does not conclude that theories regarding motherhood or the impact of mothering on child development were not essential topics in past research or famous works of literature. Going back in time would take us to several such works of great writers. Indeed, these ideas from the past have shaped our ideologies. Motherhood was, and remains, accustomed to a sense of goodness, “something regarded as so unquestionably good as to be beyond criticism representing irrefutable and unquestionable goodness and integrity” (“Motherhood” Oxford English Dictionary). There have been multiple debates on renegotiating mothers’ authority in their mothering, yet institutionalised motherhood is so deeply rooted that the transference of the experiences and identity they carry becomes inevitable. Motherhood is a transitional period where the mind and body of a woman suffer significant changes. But, the biological dominance of women becomes a reason for their psychological strength. Karen Horney writes in her book Feminine Psychology (1967), “But from the biological point of view woman has in motherhood, or in the capacity for motherhood, a quite indisputable and by no means negligible physiological superiority.” (60) But this superiority has not been utilised correctly for centuries, and mothers have been struggling to gain authority on their motherhood. While there are significant contrasts between the East and the West in terms of history, culture, politics, and economics of motherhood, there are similarities in symbols, norms, moral content, roles, identities, and the idealisation of motherhood, which has been established based on the numerous readings done within the area. Motherhood in India is dominantly an imposition rather than a choice to be celebrated. Becoming a mother is not individualistic here; instead, it is a patriarchally developed institution where the mothers’ autonomy is colonised, and they are considered the sole caregivers on the rulebook developed by others [society]. Mothers are the devalued superhumans1 [emphasis added] who handle children and the family and are even held responsible for the family’s well-being. A maternal body here becomes an outcome of interpretations, reinterpretations, and discourses, not just biology. Indian scholarship on motherhood associates itself with the scholarship on feminism, which has majorly been fascinated with motherhood’s meanings and what appears to be its mythical actuality. Given that mothers and motherhood have a prominent place in our colonial and post-colonial consciousness, Indian feminists are exposed to a fragile and systemic reality of the concept of motherhood. In India’s social and literary spheres, motherhood has acquired a legendary and iconic status. ‘Motherhood’ as a word has been used for ages without really digging into what all it encompasses. Literature, therefore, becomes a prominent source to exhibit the changing reality and needs of mothering. A woman’s biological capacity to bear and nurture a child has been a significant factor in the existence of human life. A child’s relationship with a mother is the first and closest, thus becoming a powerful force in forming an identity for her, as this is a unique experience for the recently transitioned mother. Another facet of this is the child's identity growing up close to the mother. On the one hand, sons give up or are given up by the mothers at a certain age; daughters, on the contrary, have no reason to be given up, and thus, the mother-daughter bond is cultivated to permanence. At the centre of this relationship is the possibility for intimate understanding and support, as well as the foundation for complicated identity crises. A woman’s journey is distinguished by various transformations, each of which presents unique obstacles and thoughts on identity. This crisis can appear in a variety of ways, affected by their shared identities and the distinct paths they craft for themselves. This thesis dives into the complexities of the mother-daughter connection, examining how it can both cause and resolve the psyche and the process of identity building. Motherhood is a transitional period where the mind and body of a woman suffer significant changes. The present research proposes dismantling the process of inflicting identity from mothers to daughters and its impact on daughters’ lives when they transition to motherhood. The research also seeks to examine the struggles of mothers to commit to an Identity inflicted upon them and how a daughter achieves her own identity, separating from her mother. The researcher will closely analyse the selected novels to understand the literary representation of the mother-daughter relationship and locate it in the area of psychoanalytics by drawing theoretical insights from the works of Adrienne Rich, Jasodhara Bagchi, Sudhir Kakar, Karen Horney, and Nancy Chodorow, among others. The current study has attempted to understand the pattern of Identity development and associated neurosis in the lives of mothers and daughters, which are among the most complex and complicated in the human experience. There have been fictional and non-fictional texts mentioning the various aspects of the ‘dyadic’ relationship that the mother and daughter share and how it impacts and attunes the lives of the two. Literature plays a two-fold role in the understanding and exploration of the area. One, it provides a subjective outlook towards the concept of motherhood, providing the researcher with a wide variety of configurations, and second, it becomes the medium to explore the same subjectivity in contrast to the self-generated ideologies of a reader. The research will take up four contemporary Indian novels as the primary oeuvre: Well-behaved Indian Women (2020) by Saumya Dave; Girl in White Cotton (2019) by Avni Doshi; Oleander Girl (2013) by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni; Em and the Big Hoom (2012) by Jerry Pinto. Some interviews of the authors and their other works shall also be visited to gain perspective on their writings’ ideologies, symbols, and themes. The theoretical framework for the proposed research shall include the theorists of women studies and feminine psychology in its ambit. The select narratives will be analysed within the area of motherhood studies, additionally incorporating the psychoanalytical concepts of ‘Theory of Neurosis’, ‘Self-analysis’, ‘Identification’, and ‘Separation’. As presented in the selected novels, the idea of motherhood and its biological, sociological, and psychological base would be analysed through the perception of ‘voluntary motherhood’ and ‘institutionalised motherhood’ as argued by Adrienne Rich in Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (1976) in chapter two of the thesis. Rich’s argument is that though the existence of humans is through motherhood, it is the most neglected and unknown of all things. She explains how the makers of cultures and social responsibilities, and even the gender division of labour, have been the sons of the mother. This causes the imposition of fulfilling the desired roles and responsibilities for the mothers, failing, which keeps them in the section of careless, bad, and inadequate mothers. Chapter two of the thesis shall use Adrienne Rich’s idea of patriarchal motherhood and analyse the novels separately while unravelling how motherhood is demonstrated, perceived and produced in the Indian social order. The second chapter is divided into four sections. The first section will critically examine the novel Em and The Big Hoom and, with the support of the said theoretical perspective, coins the concept of “colonised motherhood” to explain the controlled and vigilant existence of institutional motherhood as practised in the given setting. The next part discusses the novel Oleander Girl and how motherhood becomes a burden that is not shared. The novel’s circumstances depict how the absence of a mother makes a daughter’s identity feel incomplete and unacceptable. The third section then scrutinises the novel Girl in White Cotton and introduces the concept of ambivalent motherhood. It unfolds the ambivalence and regret that are emotions that are realistic and acceptable of the humans called mothers. The last section of the chapter coins the phrase “produced mothers” to underline the misinterpretation of the facts associated with mothers. Mother is a part of the identity of a woman, who is much more than a mother. A mother is born when she births a child, but through the novel Well-behaved Indian Women, I have attempted to highlight and emphasise how motherhood has become more of a production when mothers are trained to be of a certain kind, and their birth is replaced with their production as desired by the society and its needs. The third chapter of the thesis incorporates the concept of ‘The Theory of Neurosis’ by Karen Horney as described in her work, Our Inner Conflicts (1945). She categorised ten different ‘neurotic needs’ essential for survival in this world. She further condenses them into three movements in a relationship, i.e., compliance, aggression, detachment, and elaboration based on the trend of ‘moving toward people, against people, and away from people.’ Horney further clubs the following four neurotic needs (the need for power, to exploit others, to social recognition, to personal admiration, to personal achievement) into the category of ‘aggression’ referring to moving against people. The last neurotic need is categorised by condensing the ninth, tenth and third neurotic need into a category of moving away from people, referred to as ‘withdrawal/detachment’. The chapter uses the above premises to establish the various causes of anxiety caused in the mothers and daughters of the select narratives and determines the various neurotic tendencies used as coping and defence mechanisms against survival in the world, which is the source of the anxiety. The fourth chapter assimilates the ideas of ‘individuation’ and ‘separation’, proclaimed by Nancy Chodorow in The Reproduction of Mothering (1978), along with the notion of “self-analysis” in Karen Horney’s work Self-analysis (1942). These concepts of feminine psychology shall significantly influence the direction of the chapter. The chapter discusses how the natural identification of the mother and child extends in the case of the mother-daughter relationship, leading to an intergenerational transfer of the ideology of motherhood and daughterhood. It further attempts to understand how separation becomes a tool to overcome the anxiety and the compulsory identification that happens within the mothers and daughters in the select fiction. The above-discussed personality traits in a relationship and the concepts of ‘ideal self’ and ‘real self’ by Karen Horney will further be used to examine the psychological state of the selected fictional characters. Furthermore, the self-realisation theory by Karen Horney is mainly taken into account for analysing the actualisation and realisation of self, leading to either achievement of self or denial of self. The research shall serve as an auxiliary lens in understanding the process of identity infliction and achievement in the mother-daughter bond in contemporary Indian scenarios. The research concludes with the last chapter reassessing the studies in the prior chapters and noting how the thesis adds a novel contribution to motherhood studies and its scholastic discourse by employing an interdisciplinary theoretical framework of feministic motherhood, identity development and psychoanalytic concepts like the Theory of Neurosis and Self-realisation to scrutinise the selected works and to reveal how the various representations of motherhood address the issues as experienced by the contemporary mothers at the forefront. It comments on how can these mothers and daughters [upcoming mothers] grow with access to autonomy and agency towards their mothering.