Me, My Mother And the Patriarchy
Key Words: patriarchy, mother – daughter relationships, inter – generational account, parents, grand parents, feminism
By : Shreya Suhani
Edited by: Lavanya Goswami
I don’t know if this article is an appropriate one, or if this topic is one that will resonate with many —because not every woman has a complicated relationship with their mother and not every woman wants to interrogate the relationships they do have with their mother. But few have, maybe even more than a few and that’s who this piece is for. For those women with complicated mothers and even more complicated relationships to them, for those who have had to struggle with understanding someone who’s supposed to be the closest person in your life–who still struggle with it. I don’t know if this article needed to be written, but I needed to write it. And it may not be ground-breaking, but the journey it has taken me upon was one I have desperately needed since I was a young girl. And maybe that is all it has to be.
The most that I know about my mother is her present, her time after me. Her past is elusive, hidden, withdrawn in a way that doesn’t intrigue, but perplexes. It’s hidden ever so subtly that it does not seem deliberate, rather parades itself as something “not hidden”. But it is. Because why else would she never talk about it? Why else are there no pictures of my mother’s childhood in my home?Why else have I known all about my father and what he was like, his stories and struggles and childhood, encased in warm words, given to me one rainy evening across a couch and a table.
The first time I even fathomed of my mother having an entire life before my birth, was when I was eight and we were staying at my grandparents’ house for the summer and there was a photobook, showing my mother in her college days.
She was thin and pretty and she had friends and a poster of Salman Khan on her wall. And there was my aunt and my uncle, and people I had never seen before nor will probably ever see again. My mother was born in a hospital in a small town, where she grew up. She spent the initial years of her schooling in a Convent school. My grandmother never went to college, but my mother doesn’t speak of this. She speaks of her father, and my father and she speaks of their struggles like they were borne by her.
My grandfather was among the first in his family to pursue a higher education.My grandfather is fearless and strong and learned. He is articulate and knowledgeable and humorous and I have always liked him more than my grandmother. He and my father are not very different from each other. I have always liked my father more than my mother–even if I love both of them the same amount. I have always hated the men they are to their wives.
My mother rarely speaks of herself, or her life, but even the rare few times that she does–She is not the subject of her stories, rather a spectator to it.
The articles and movies that I collected and read during the progression of this piece gave me more closure than any talks with my mother ever have. It was jarring to see my concerns reflected and affirmed back to me. It’s not something that only I struggled with. There are many ways, significant ways in which patriarchal ideals manifest in mother-daughter relationships.
Adrienne Rich, renounced American poet and feminist, once said that “thousands of daughters see their mothers as having taught a compromise and self-hatred they are struggling to win free of, the one through whom the restrictions and degradations of a female existence were perforce transmitted. Easier by far to hate and reject a mother outright than to see beyond her to the forces acting upon her.”
The same truth is echoed by Judith Arcana when she declared that, “The oppression of women has created a breach among us, especially between mothers and daughters. Women cannot respect their mothers in a society which degrades them; women cannot respect themselves.”
A persistent expectation thrust upon me throughout childhood, albeit silent, was that I could never be the person my mother was. I will never know if it originally came from within, but it sank within, and was affirmed externally. My father always tells me to have high expectations, to do the best that I can and never settle. That my worth was directly related to the things I achieved. That I had to be intelligent, and hard-working and self-sufficient. He has never used my sex against me. I remember him asking me once, after my mother failed to carry out a minor operation on the computer—“She’s an idiot, isn’t she?”
I was so young then. I couldn’t have been more than eight. And I agreed of course. I remember laughing, he had said it with a grin. He would say similar things in the years to come, until I was much older. I resented my mother. I never wanted to be like her. Even then, she was painted as someone who is beneath the woman I am supposed to be. She was never nice to me, so why would I rebel against her mistreatment? Even then, when I didn’t know what or who I was supposed to be, it was clear who I wasn’t supposed to be.
“Often father and daughter look down on mother (woman) together. They exchange meaningful glances when she misses a point. They agree that she is not bright as they are, cannot reason as they do. This collusion does not save the daughter from the mother’s fate.”
— Bonnie Burstow, Radical Feminist Therapy: Working in the Context of Violence
My art teacher who used to regularly visit our house for painting lessons, once told me—on a day that I was visibly distressed and aggrieved; because of my mother—that I had to try and understand the motives behind her actions. He talked about her day, her work; her frustration—everything that affected her which in turn, affected me. I refused to understand then because acknowledging that meant that her damage unto me, my damage had no clear perpetrator. It absolved her of responsibility and that was unacceptable to me.
Bethany Webster’s article on mothers and the insidious ways in which patriarchy is expressed through them observes that women who are victims of patriarchal abuse often turn to control – seeking behaviours in order to compensate for the loss of control and respect in their everyday lives. Oppressed mothers enjoy disempowered daughters, since it allows them the illusion of power that they are deprived of not only socially but personally as well.
An empowered daughter would compel a mother to introspection, into a difficult space of confrontation—a necessary precondition to self-healing and growth. And growth is always challenging, especially when it means having to dissect oneself apart.
C.G. Jung, the founder of analytical psychology said—touching upon the temporality of the institution of motherhood, and by relation; daughterhood—“Every mother contains her daughter in herself and every daughter her mother and every mother extends backwards into her mother and forwards into her daughter.” A woman lives half her life as a daughter, and half of it as a mother. Most models studying about and theorising on the institution of motherhood insist upon the continuity between motherhood and daughterhood, the bond shared by a unifying biological and social experience.
Daughters are shaped in the image of their mother. Whether by their aversion or their attraction to them. You either learn how to be or not to be a mother, from your mother. Daughters are shaped by the experiences of their mothers and their mothers too are shaped further by the motherhood thrust upon them—by navigating an institution that is glorified, but isolating, seldom explored, and constantly criticised.
I knew how to manipulate my mom when I was younger. In hindsight, it was less manipulation and more an adaptation—to form a sort of emotional connection with someone I was supposed to have the deepest relationship to. I knew what to say to get her to listen, because I knew she would listen only under certain circumstances, only specific things that would not end in argument, conflict or discomfort. It was easier to laugh at other people and pride ourselves at not being them, than to talk about anything that mattered—anything real. It was still obedience. I catered to her conditions of what constituted a prolonged conversation because I wanted to talk to her. I would always feel guilty afterwards. I could never be honest about her with my interests, my desires, my wishes—everything had to warrant a certain level of sophistication, of substance and value. I couldn’t just like an artist, I had to justify my interest—was the art worthwhile, did it add value to my life, did I learn from it.
The oppressed mother’s escape is the affection starved child. Her favourite pastime is scrutiny. Her conflict with the patriarchy is a conflict she unduly projects onto the only relationship she has power over.
Our mothers are not root of all evil, even the neediest, most calculating mother is, more often than not an echo of her social experiences—of patriarchal ideals shoved down her throat. If one is to break free of the relentless cycle of despotic mothers and resenting daughters, one must recognise them as women first, and mothers later.
As Judith Arcana profoundly puts it across in her book, “Our Mother’s Daughters”— “All our mothers teach us is what they have learned in the crucible of sexism. They cannot give us a sense of self-esteem which they do not possess. We must learn to interpret, anew the experience our mothers have passed on to us, to see these lives in terms of struggle, often unconscious, to find and maintain some peace, beauty and respect for themselves as women.”