Mother Archetype Mothers are seen occasionally as the strangest, craziest, altruistic people who have ever been encountered. However some argue that they are the complete opposite. The basic perception of mothers that they are loving, caring, and very nurturing, and this makes up the mother archetype, not only modern day but records and perceptions that date back to ancient history. Although it has come along way, Mothers play a very important role in modern day theatre, literature, and even stories dating back to the biblical era. In ancient texts, we see this role being played by Thetis, Achilles mother in Greek mythology.
All life stems from the mother. This is one of the indisputable facts of life and it ties all of humanity together. Adrienne Rich has said that women “are assigned almost total responsibility for children” and that humanity learns about “love and disappointment, power and tenderness” through the mother (xi). Because the mother’s role is so important to the cycle of life, every religion and society from the Western to the Eastern hemisphere has developed an idealized version of the mother. The standard belief is this: the ideal mother is a woman who sacrifices all she has for her children while also allowing them enough space to be independent.
A wise woman once said, "The more a daughter knows about her mother 's life, the stronger the daughter" (http://www.wiseoldsayings.com/mother-and-daughter-quotes/). As any girl raised by their mother can attest, the relationship between a mother and her daughter is a learning experience. As young girls, you look up to you mother as your greatest role model and follow in their steps closely. In Jamaica Kincaid 's short story "Girl", a mother uses one single sentence in order to give her daughter motherly advice. Her advice is intended to help her daughter, but also to scold her at the same time.
Her governing the universe is done with love and compassion, as one would love and show compassion to a child. The Mother is associated with adulthood and motherhood. Adulthood means the accepting of responsibilities, those caused by one's own actions or commitments. Accepting the results of one's own actions is one of the greatest responsibilities for humankind. The Mother Goddess produces all life from herself.
Rushdie’s essay, “Reality TV: A Dearth of Talent and the Death of Mortality”, focuses on the negative effects of media on today’s society. He believes the use of reality television is skewing the minds of everyday Americans by the way “regular” people are portrayed on television. Many readers are persuaded to believe in Rushdie’s cause, not because he is right or his topic is relevant in today’s world, but because of the rhetorical devices he uses to direct his audience in a similar belief. The rhetorical devices Rushdie uses are mainly tone of voice, sarcasm, and irony. Rushdie uses tone of voice which he uses to set the pace for his readers.
This can be seen throughout the entire piece. More of her views are shares as her argument continues to share how she believes society views mothers: “When a woman becomes pregnant, she seems to become public property” (Rinaldi). With this she is referring to how in some societies women are just seen as child bearers, just there to “ensure the continuation of the species.” Another device the author uses in the text is exemplification. When talking about women being viewed as objects and child bearers Rinaldi uses a story by Margaret Atwood titled “The Handmaid’s Tale” written thirty years ago and goes on to explain how women in the story were told that silence is and childbearing was the only way they could be saved. This is used as a comparison to how some women are still treated today.
The feminist critics look into this relationship of mother and child very miniaturely with different factors. Daughter – mother relation is dynamic in nature where it changes down the ages. The changes can be attained by both of them, since every mother was once herself as a daughter and every daughter can attain motherhood later in ther life. Feminist psychoanalytic theorists suggest, “The sex-role socialization process is different for boys and girls. While boys learn maleness by rejecting femaleness via separating themselves from their mothers, girls establish feminine identities by embracing the femaleness of their mothers.
Marianne Hirsch writes that in a patriarchal family model, women are associated with values and traditions (1994: 93). Yet, this ideology does not apply to motherhood presented in the novel because slave mothers “own neither themselves nor their children” (Hirsch, 1994: 96). Another researcher, Carole Boyce Davies, considers motherhood and mothering in the novel as the “central and defining tropes in Black female reconstruction” (in Rindchen, 2002: 7). As a mother, Sethe can be perceived both as a feminine and masculine featured character. The protagonist decides to kill her own baby because she does not want her to go through the atrocities of slavery.
For Hirsch, feminist family romances are those novels where the development of female subjectivity and self-empowerment is determined by the continuation of the mother-daughter relationship, as opposed to the previous common rejection of the maternal figure theorised, among others, by Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray. The bond between mother and daughter is re-evaluated and comes to be considered as an important site for female development, and a basis for a vision of gender difference and female specificity. In this type of narratives, women are represented as subjects capable of relating their own stories. However, despite the increased room for the subjective representations of consciousness, the maternal perspective is still silenced under the weight of the daughter 's emerging
of the most eminent postcolonial writers, he is also generally known as one of the most momentous representatives of magic realism outside Latin America. Salman Rushdie, one of the most renowned writers of Indian Diaspora, settled in England, shot into fame through his magnum opus, Midnight’s Children. He was born to an affluent Muslim family in Bombay on 19 June 1947. He grew up in Mumbai and graduated with honours from King’s College, Cambridge. Settled in England, Rushdie’s literary career started with his first novel, Grimus (1975), which was a meagre seller.