Motherhood In The Thousand Faces Of Night, By Gita Hariharan

Elaborating the mother daughter relationships, this chapter categorizes three genres of women presenting how they take motherhood in Indian context. Such mothers personify themselves as typical conventional mothers who carry womanhood and motherhood in accordance with imposed norms by male centric society; they are suppressed women but no courage to fight for them. The second types of mothers are more feminine who are very happy to perform their matured role as wife, mother and daughter in law, however such mothers compromise their dreams and wishes to justify their other roles and households. The very third generation of mothers are quite strong and out spoken for their women identities; they perform plenty of duties similarly as their men …show more content…
Devi’s mother Sita stands for feminine mothers who love to perform matron role with all gratitude. Sita’s whole life has been devoted to the up keeping of her social position in Indian Society. The story of these two doesn’t conform to the same values yet Devi at the end realizes her mother’s own difficult life choices in the past. Sita allows her daughter to study in abroad where Devi finds bewildering freedom, has given all intimate relations to her black boyfriend whom she never sees perfect husband. As soon as returning home, Devi finds herself drifting into arranged marriage settled by her mother. Sita is not typical and rude mother who thinks that after marriage, doors are always closed for her daughter. Devi finds no marital bliss with her husband Mahesh. She has nothing to do whole day makes her feel no worth of being a wife. She joins herself with mother’s love for playing veena which was thrown away by her father in law. She little comes closer to Gopal, a singer but soon she acknowledges that he is so devoted to his music and concerts so as Mahesh is to his job. She leaves his husband’s house to start fresh beginning and back home that is appreciated by Sita and she also starts playing veena again. Here feminine mother accepts feministic decision of her daughter is so