Theory on Characters and Characterization

In India, all the household rules held by the wife, or a mother, including the arranged marriage. Women within patriarchies who accept contextually relevant patriarchal norms of female behavior – sexual behavior, dress, appearance, marital status, motherhood – are rewarded as long as they conform to these norms. The mother holds the supremacy. The abundance of mother goddesses in the Indian subcontinent, in the great as well as the little traditions, speaks of the worship of the mother principally as a procreative power and nurturer. The mother goddess is not a mother with child, like the Madonna, but an independent entity standing by herself. She has both benign as well as fearsome aspects. From the exalted Durga to the ubiquitous gram devata, she is present to this day all over the country. She is a matrika Krishnaraj, 2010: 03. Kamala Ganesh, in her article, traces the tradition of the mother goddess to the Indus Valley civilization. These predate the ‘spousified’ goddesses of later ages. According to her, in prepatriarchy, gender relations followed ‘linking’ rather than ‘ranking’. In literature and in mythology, the mother is deified. There is sentimental devotion and mythification of her power to protect. Feminist reappraisal of the matriarchate is a political strategy to reclaim female power. Indian epics like the Ramayana and Mahabharata expound, in a multifaceted way, the significance and experience of motherhood within patriarchy. The television serials which Prabha Krishnan has monitored indicate how at the heart of the epics lie problems of identity, hierarchy and patrilineal Krishnaraj, 2010: 03. Both the epics portray a woman’s honor as located in her sexuality. The epics also denigrate non-patriarchal communities which practice mother–right. Motherhood is seen as an emotion-based state. How Yashodha — the foster- mother of Krishna, the cowherd god — is rapturously absorbed in her child, is told and retold through dance, songs and stories. This is the idealized mother– child relationship. There are some women mentioned in the epics who did resist motherhood. There were others like Madhavi who was lent by Galav to beget sons for kings in order to get Ashwameda horses for his guru Vishwamitra. Once his mission was accomplished, she was discarded without being allowed any claim over her children Krishnaraj, 2010: 04. Indian mothers are revered only as mothers of sons. Sukumari Bhattacharji points out that in ancient India, the main concern of women was to avoid the slur of ‘sonlessness’. The many rituals during pregnancy among Hindus are for the health of the husband and child; nowhere is there any concern expressed for the health of the mother. The care of the mother is the responsibility of the clan — a social commitment. After studying the concept of motherhood, we can see that among that there are three important points in this section. The first is that society has enormous expectations of mothers. Second, widespread feeling of guilt and inadequacy as well as ambivalence among most mothers as a consequence of social pressures. Third, beyond the stereotypes and romanticizing of motherhood it is clear that it is a highly demanding role. Those points can also be found in Indian society, where Indian woman has much insecurity because the idealization of motherhood. Considering the facts above, it can be concluded that Gauri’s position in the society will be revealed by using this theory. Then, it will show about the concept of “ideal Indian mother” that society has constructed.