Counter-Narratives of Mother-Daughter Encounter

A daughter, too, needs space to be a woman. Her obedience to her mother and society does not always pay for her salvation. When she is disappointed, she tries to set herself free from her mother's influence to create her own standards of living. Similarly, being mother is not enough; one has to choose between the self and the society. Self-conscious mothers are usually looked down by the society that crowns them with motherhood. The mother once seen as dominating, the daughter realizes after growing up, is in reality not dominating but dominated. The dominated figure does not provide a very adequate model for the daughter who herself is caught into conflicting social roles. Application of Deconstruction here puts forth hitherto proclaimed truths about mothers and daughters into question with a conviction that all is not good with the way mothers and daughters are being represented in Indian English narratives. Differently defined across cultures, mother and daughter can be the same person. In one woman lives the both inextricably after the realization that from cradle to grave every woman is essentially a daughter converted into mother by patriarchy.