The Maternal Instinct In Miguel Street By V. S Naipaul

In the story “The Maternal Instinct” within the text Miguel Street by V.S Naipaul, it shows the portrayal of women is seen as a little more on the degrading side, where women are subjected to the 'being set straight ' by men. Thus, creating an atmosphere where a keener, more focused and different approach to examining and emphasizing on the conscious and unconscious parts of men and their manhood, and the realization of their subjectivity is needed. It is pivotal to look at the societal structures that seemingly pushes men into a state of manhood that they cannot yet acknowledge as a reasonability in itself as well as before they can understand how to truly be a man and the expectations of them.

The story presents us with a female character as the protagonist named Laura. She has eight children for seven different men, and this completely shatters and starts the interrogation of traditional gender roles, identity, and female sexuality within the story. She is the ideal anti-feminine character and is already not pictured as a modest woman, who leads to the taking away from the general definition of femininity and what is it to be a 'woman '. The facade of her to be seen as needing someone to keep her in check, emphasizing on the delivering of 'blows ', is the beating that the many women endure, physical violence and abuse soon become something normal and the eye twitching effect of reading the lines that contain the graphic descriptions becomes less and less clear. The